Showing papers on "Structure and agency published in 1998"

Structure, Agency and Historical Institutionalism

Abstract: As be®ts two if its principal exponents, Hall and Taylor's recent article `Political science and the three new institutionalisms' provides a meticulous and provocative review of the many faces of the `new institutionalism' and a distinctive contribution to the growing literature in this area in its own right.* It provides an important opportunity to consider again the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary institutionalism and to raise the question of how its many insights might be more fully incorporated within the British political science mainstream. While careful to distance themselves from the idea that a `crude synthesis' of rational choice, sociological and historical institutionalism is `immediately practical or even necessarily desirable' (p. 957), they suggest that a dialogue between them is both necessary and crucial. We argue that the prospects for such a dialogue are more limited than Hall and Taylor suggest. For, rational choice and sociological institutionalisms are based on mutually incompatible premises or `social ontologies'. Moreover, in identifying two social ontologies ± the calculus and cultural approaches ± within the historical institutionalist canon (and hence in reconstructing historical institutionalism in rational choice and sociological terms), we argue that Hall and Taylor do a considerable disservice to this distinctive approach to institutional analysis. While this view of historical institutionalism makes it appear `pivotal' to future dialogue between institutionalisms, such a reading neglects the potentially distinctive social ontology of this approach. This may leave historical institutionalism prone to precisely the tendential structuralism characteristic of much institutionalist analysis, while giving a super®cial impression that the approach has already overcome this problem. We argue that if institutionalism is to develop to its full potential, it must consider the relationship between structure and agency, on which Hall and Taylor merely touch, as a central analytic concern.

Theorising inequalities in health : the place of lay knowledge.

Abstract: This paper contributes to the development of theory and research on inequalities in health. Our central premise is that these are currently limited because they fail adequately to address the relationship between agency and structure, and that lay knowledge in the form of narrative has a significant contribution to make to this endeavour. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first section we briefly review the existing, largely quantitative research on inequalities in health. We then move on to consider some of the most significant critiques of this body of work highlighting three issues: the pursuit of overly simple unidimensional explanations within 'risk factor' epidemiology and the (probably inevitable) inability of this research tradition to encompass the full complexity of social processes; the failure to consider the social context of individual behaviour and, in particular, the possibility for, and determinants of, creative human agency; and, thirdly, the need for 'place' and 'time' (both historical and biographical) to be given greater theoretical prominence. In the final section of the paper the potential theoretical significance of 'place' and 'lay knowledge', and the relationship between these concepts, in inequalities research is explored. Here we suggest three developments as a necessary condition for a more adequate theoretical framework in this field. We consider first the need for the conceptualisation and measurement of 'place' within a historical context, as the location in which macro social structures impact on people's lives. Second, we argue for a re-conceptualisation of lay knowledge about everyday life in general and the nature and causes of health and illness in particular, as narratives which have embedded within them explanations for what people do and why – and which, in turn, shape social action. Finally, we suggest that this narrative knowledge is also the medium through which people locate themselves within the places they inhabit and determine how to act within and upon them. Lay knowledge therefore offers a vitally important but neglected perspective on the relationship between social context and the experience of health and illness at the individual and population level.

Anthony Giddens and Modern Social Theory

Abstract: Introduction PART ONE: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL THEORY The Legacy of Classical Sociological Theory New Rules of Sociological Method Positivism, Interpretive Sociology and Structuration Theory Structuration Theory Reconceptualizing Agency and Structure PART TWO: SOCIAL CHANGE AND MODERNITY The State, Capitalism and Social Change The Culture of Modernity From the Critique of Postmodernism to the Rise of the New Social Movements The Problems and Possibilities of a Democratic Public Life in Late Modern Societies Feminism, Sexuality and Self-Identity Conclusion

Structure and agency in youth transitions : student perspectives on vocational further education

Abstract: The school-to-work transitions of two samples of 16–19-year-old college students in the UK arc examined in terms of their vocational preparation and expectations of labour market entry. Current processes of vocational preparation are evaluated primarily from the perspectives of the young people themselves. The aims are to explore influences of structure and agency in young people's lives in the light of their perceptions of the ‘new vocational ism’ and to assess how much control they feel they have over the further education phase of the school-to-work transition. A multi-method approach involving a structured questionnaire and a series of semi-structured group interviews is used to try to discover something of the ‘lived realities’ of these young people. An important finding is that young people in a ‘depressed’ labour market appear to be at least as optimistic about finding employment, and also experience similar levels of independence and control, as a similar sample in a more ‘buoyant’ labour...

Anthony Giddens: The Last Modernist

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Anthony Giddens: The Last Modernist 3. The New Versus the Old Rules of Sociological Method 4. The Role of Desire in Agency and Structure 5. Gidden's Political Sociology 6. Gidden's Modernism Lite 7. Unlimited Agency as the New Anomie 8. Conclusions

Conceptualising Constraint: Mouzelis, Archer and the Concept of Social Structure:

Abstract: This paper outlines and evaluates recent contributions by Nicos Mouzelis and Margaret Archer to the structure-agency debate. Mouzelis offers an internal reconstruction of Giddens's structuration theory; Archer an external alternative. I show that, although representing an advance on Giddens's position, Mouzelis's account fails because he relies on the former's definition of structure as comprising rules and resources. I then examine Archer's solution to the problem. I argue that her definition of activity-dependence makes her account of the relationship between agents and structures unclear. I outline an alternative account in terms of super- venience, and argue that it contains the minimum ontological claim necessary for a realist understanding of the structure-agent relationship. This paper evaluates two recent attempts to prune the hardy perennial of structure and agency. In their recent writing, both Nicos Mouzelis and Margaret Archer offer alternatives to Anthony Giddens's structuration theory (Mouzelis 1995, 1996; Archer 1995, 1996b). The renewed attention paid to older writing in this field, and particularly to the work of David Lockwood, has caused McLennan (1995:117) to note 'a loose but noticeable neo- traditionalist revival' in sociological theory. The two authors exemplify this trend in different ways. Mouzelis says we should go 'back to sociological theory,' whereas Archer sees Lockwood as a forebear but explicitly tries to formulate a new research paradigm. I begin by outlining the problem as inherited from Giddens. I then discuss Mouzelis's and Archer's solutions in detail. Mouzelis's work is a careful internal critique and reconstruction of Giddens's theory. Archer's is a distinct, external alternative to it. Both authors try to make a clear distinction between agents and structures in order to make these concepts (and particularly the latter) coherent and useful. In their efforts to give the concept of social structure back its bite, both Archer and Mouzelis draw on Lockwood's (1956, 1964) distinction between social and system integration. Mouzelis attempts to build the distinction into Giddens's account. In doing so, he points to a number of important aspects of structure and agency that Giddens cannot grasp. However, Giddens's key idea that structure should be thought of as rules and resources is left largely untouched. I show that Mouzelis's refinements run into difficulty because of this.

Structure and Agency in the Holocaust: Daniel J. Goldhagen and His Critics

Abstract: A striking aspect of the so-called Goldhagen debate has been the bifurcated reception Hitler's Willing Executioners has received: the enthusiastic welcome of journalists and the public was as warm as the impatient dismissal of most historians was cool. This article seeks to transcend the current impasse by analyzing the underlying issues of Holocaust research at stake here. It argues that a deep structure necessarily characterizes the historiography of the Holocaust, comprising a tension between its positioning in universalism and particularism narratives. While the former conceptualizes the Holocaust as an human tragedy and explains its occurrence in terms of processes common to modern societies, the latter casts its analysis in ethnic and national categories: the Holocaust as an exclusively German and Jewish affair. These narratives possess important implications for the balance of structure and human agency in the explanation of the Holocaust: where the universalism narrative emphasizes the role of impersonal structures in mediating human action, the particularism narrative highlights the agency of human actors. Although historical accounts usually combine these narratives, recent research on the Holocaust tends in the universalist direction, and this bears on the sensitive issue of responsibility for the Holocaust by problematizing the common-sense notion of the perpetrators' intention and responsibility. Goldhagen is responding to this trend, but by retreating to the particularism narrative and employing an inadequate definition of intention, he fails to move the debate forward. It is time to rethink the concept of intention in relation to events like the Holocaust.

The place of the laboratory in secondary science teaching

Abstract: The paper is based on interviews conducted with secondary science teachers in schools in England. It focuses on how teachers understand the place of the laboratory and laboratory work in their practice. It emphasizes, however, not the epistemological dimensions of their view but rather the following issues: how they construe their practice tactically in terms of ‘theory’ and ‘practical work’; how they use this construal in their judgements of lessons, in lesson planning and in relationships with pupils; and how laboratory work influences their institutional and material situation. It concludes with an analysis of the senses in which science teachers' work can be said to be ‘structured’ by its engagement with the laboratory, drawing on the work of the sociologist Anthony Giddens on the relationship between structure and agency.

Teaching in Adult Education: Opening the Black Box:

Abstract: Research on teaching adults is often a theoretical, focuses more on learning than teaching, and regards teaching primarily as techniques removed from subject-matter or social contexts. A richer understanding would be gained from empirical studies informed by the theoretical sophistication that marks other social science research. Specifically, the micro aspects of teaching and classroom interaction could be linked with the macro influences of educational and social systems. This paper considers the development of research on teaching, discusses why such research should address issues of structure and agency, and describes one empirical study that attempts to do so.

DEFINING WOMEN: Notes toward an Understanding of Structure and Agency in the Negotiation of Sex

Abstract: A preliminary analysis of undergraduate women's accounts of early sexual experience examines structural factors and interpretations of these frameworks to explain decision making. The author articulates coercive historical, cultural, and hierarchical contexts; processes of interpretation; and interactional strategies. An examination of tactics women employ in their quest for valued identities shifts attention from victimization and agency to the negotiation of these identities and links individual actors to larger social structures. The author argues that a woman is neither simply the product of her circumstances (a victim) nor the producer of her world (a powerful female) but, rather, she is both.

The Fall of the Angelus Novus: Beyond the Modern Game of Roots and Options

Abstract: Sociology and social sciences in general have developed as part and parcel of the tension between social regulation and social emancipation that underlies the project of modernity. This tension seems to have vanished as social emancipation has become the double, rather than the opposite, of social regulation. Therefore, the reinvention of the social sciences presumes a new start for the social sciences focused on the generation of powerful interrogations and destabilizing images, made possible by the supersession of the modern equation of roots and options and by a shift from the conventional duality between structure and agency to a new, enabling duality between conformist action and action-with-clinamen.

Gender Inequality in Law: Problems of Structure and Agency in Recent Studies of Gender in Anglo-American Legal Professions

Abstract: It is no surprise that the fate of women within the legal profession has attracted considerable attention in recent sociolegal scholarship. Women lawyers stand at the intersection of three major transformations in modem society: changes in the gender composition of traditionally male occupations, changes in the social organization of professional firms and the markets for professional services, and changes in the role of law as a vehicle for redressing social inequality. Women made up a tiny fraction of American lawyers in 1970 (Curran and Carson 1994). They now constitute roughly one quarter of all lawyers

Housing in Taiwan: Agency and Structure?

Abstract: The social relations of housing provision economic performance and housing in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore the social relations of pre-sale housing house buyers under pre-sale system housing finances and pre-sale the housing market and the pre-sale system housing market and policy conclusion.

Social Integration and System Integration: Reconsidering the Classical Distinction

Abstract: In a recent article in Sociology, Mouzelis argues that Lockwood’s distinction between system integration and social integration is, with some modifications, still to be retained because of its logical coherence and its methodological virtues. While its basic value is recognised, this article reconsiders the distinction in the light of some recent achievements in social theory. It is argued that the distinction does not merely offer two different perspectives on society but that, in the actual social world, both dimensions are intertwined in a number of ways. In particular, reflexive actors can draw the distinction themselves which raises questions about the objective status of ‘incompatibilities’. The implications are developed through some reflections on the nature of social processes as well as the role of institutions, strategic action and conflicts. On the one hand, it is shown that system integration is an important objective for social agency, since many actions are aimed at controlling the performance of processes. On the other, social integration has a decisive impact on those processes because conflict and cooperation transform the institutional preconditions those processes are based upon. The social–system integration distinction offers therefore interesting insights into how social actors themselves attempt to cope with their worlds. Apart from being a methodological tool, the distinction expresses a substantial characteristic of society.

Mafia, cultura e politica

Abstract: While the past years have witnessed an explosion of cultural studies in sociology, the sociological literature on the Sicilian mafia has shifted towards non-cultural kinds of explanation and conceptualizations. This shift was justified because of the many difficulties of the once mainstream normative, value-based conception of culture, but is no longer justifiable with the new conceptions of culture, agency and structure which have developed in the last years in the fields of the sociology of culture, historical sociology and sociology of organization. Contrary to most sociological interpretations, which sees in the mafia a kind of economic activity or institution, this paper argues also for a reconceptualization of Sicilian mafia as a kind of political culture, different from that of the liberal-democratic state which implicitly constitues the axiological reference of sociological and economic theories on the mafia.

Economic institutions and routine practices : the case of high-technology small and medium-sized enterprises

Abstract: The dissertation provides a rich analysis of routines in four case-study companies. Explanations for the behaviour of the firms are developed and provide new building blocks for the understanding of other firms in different circumstances, emphasising empirical evidence, rule-based action and recognising the historical, social and interpretive contexts. Routines are defined as established, significant, sanctioned and recurrent practices within organizations. A number of key features of organizations figure in the analysis: the relationship between structure and agency, the firm's culture and the firm's history. Structures are identified as rules and relationships. The analysis of agency focuses on the position of the agent, the agent's skill and the desire to reduce uncertainty. Technology is an important factor in the analysis. It is (partly) constitutive of the firms, that is it has the power to enact or establish the firms. It cannot do this on its own, it is argued, but, in interacting with other factors, has major implications for the structure and routine behaviour of the firms. The cases suggest that technology has implications for human agency which go beyond the initial intentions of the agents. Technology is not determining but interacts with the other factors in a recursive way and cannot be adequately analysed outside the social system of which it is a part. The primary contribution of the research is the development of a broader concept of routine, in particular, the identification of routine practices at a strategic level and the demonstration that such practices can incorporate change. In addition, the analysis identifies the role of technology in economic change. It adds to the understanding of routines more generally and confirms that an institutional approach to the understanding of firms' behaviour is fruitful and can add to the current repertoire of approaches in Economics.

Psychiatrists make diagnoses, but not in circumstances of their own choosing : Agency and structure in the DSM

Abstract: PSYCHIATRIC activity that CLASSIFICATION IS A PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT directs subsequent treatment decisions, assumptions about etiology, and prognostic considerations. While the ideal classification scheme would be clear, concise, comprehensively inclusive of, and hospitable to, the entities under consideration, in practice, all classification systems reflect tradeoffs and embody flawed structures. Accordingly, it is essential to be fully cognizant of the shortcomings, biases, and tacit assumptions of extant systems so that classifications can be improved and so that misrepresentations will not be blindly repeated or reproduced. Modern psychiatric classification and diagnosis are almost exclusively defined within the context of the nomenclature and diagnostic categories of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This article adapts Giddens’s (1984) theory of “structuration” to explain how at least some of the consequences of relying on the DSMfor classification result in unexamined conditions of its use and unintentionally reproduced its underlying assumptions. This article uses the DSMto explicate agency in structuration theory and structuration theory to illuminate the structure and use of the DSM. The discussion suggests that Mouzelis’s (1995) four-fold duality-dualism typology, by empowering the agent not only virtually but in actuality, is a necessary and salutary modification of structuration theory. Finally, it will be suggested that several prominent issues and concerns in psychiatric nosology resonate profoundlywith those that have concerned, and continue to interest, library classificationists.