Showing papers on "Structure and agency published in 2009"

Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory

Abstract: People are inescapably shaped by the culture in which they live, while culture itself is made and remade by people. Human beings in their daily lives feel a genuine freedom of thought and belief, yet this is unavoidably constrained by cultural limitations--such as those imposed by the language spoken, the knowledge developed and the information available at any time. In this book, Margaret Archer provides an analysis of the nature and stringency of cultural constraints, and the conditions and degrees of cultural freedom, and offers a radical new explanation of the tension between them. She suggests that the "problem of culture and agency" directly parallels the "problem of structure and agency," and that both problems can be solved by using the same analytical framework. She therefore paves the way toward the theoretical unification of the structural and cultural fields.

Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation

Abstract: Following on from Roy Bhaskar's first two books, A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, establishes the conception of social science as explanatory-and thence emancipatory-critique. Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation starts from an assessment of the impasse of contemporary accounts of science as stemming from an incomplete critique of positivism. It then proceeds to a systematic exposition of scientific realism in the form of transcendental realism, highlighting a conception of science as explanatory of a structured, differentiated and changing world. Turning to the social domain, the book argues for a view of the social order as conditioned by, and emergent from, nature. Advocating a critical naturalism, the author shows how the transformational model of social activity together with the conception of social science as explanatory critique which it entails, resolves the divisions and dualisms besetting orthodox social and normative theory: between society and the individual, structure and agency, meaning and behavior, mind and body, reason and cause, fact and value, and theory and practice. The book then goes on to discuss the emancipatory implications of social science and sketches the nature of the depth investigation characteristically entailed. In the highly innovative third part of the book Roy Bhaskar completes his critique of positivism by developing a theory of philosophical discourse and ideology, on the basis of the transcendental realism and critical naturalism already developed, showing how positivism functions as a restrictive ideology of and for science and other social practices.

Analysing Women's Substantive Representation: From Critical Mass to Critical Actors

Abstract: This article makes a case for rethinking traditional approaches to the study of legislative behaviour on behalf of women by asking (1) not when women make a difference, but how the substantive representation of women occurs; and (2) not what ‘women’ do, but what specific actors do. The first shift aims to explore the contexts, identities and attitudes that motivate and inform substantive representation. The second seeks to move beyond a focus on female legislators to identify the ‘critical actors’, male and female, who may attempt to represent women as a group. In so doing, this framework calls attention to how structure and agency interact in the substantive representation of women.

The mysterious case of the pervasive choice biography: Ulrich Beck, structure/agency, and the middling state of theory in the sociology of youth

Abstract: This paper explores the emergence of the concept of choice biography, as it is linked to the work of Ulrich Beck, in youth research. The concept has been called a current pervasive theoretical orthodoxy. However, this article argues that the concept is most often taken up to critique, and Beck used mostly as a foil, through arguing that he overemphasizes agency and neglects structural constraints, in establishing or occupying a middle-ground theoretical position between structure and agency. I propose that the relationship and balance between structure and agency is of little interest to Beck and aim to discourage forcing his work into this frame. Instead of focusing on a shift towards agency, and proposing the concept of choice biographies to understand the shift, Beck is making the more complicated claim that at the very moment, and through the same processes, that some of the constraints placed on people are breaking down, the predictability and security that would allow these new options to function a...

Transitions in the lifecourse: the role of identity, agency and structure

Abstract: This book has its origins in a seminar series on transitions through the lifecourse which was part of the UK Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP; see www.tlrp.org). It aims to bring together and evaluate insights about educational, life and work transitions from different elds of research and a range of theoretical orientations. The book responds to the injunction that researchers need to chart ‘what individuals actually do and how this is changing’ as a ‘rst step to understanding what it means’ (Bynner quoted by Hayward et al. 2005: 115). In different ways, the chapters that follow explore the concept of transitions and its contemporary importance in policy and educational practices. In doing so they enable the book to address the following questions:What are the main characteristics of transitions depicted in policy, practice • and research? How do different ideas and perspectives about transition, people’s agency, • identity and the effects of structural conditions help us to understand transitions better in research, policy and practice? Why are transitions a problem for some individuals and groups and, • conversely, for whom are transitions not a problem? What interventions, activities or practices are seen as useful in dealing with • transitions? What aspects of transitions are contested from different perspectives?•This book arose from a recognition that the research eld around transitions is fragmented both historically and between disciplines and theoretical orientations. The book does not claim to represent a unitary view about transitions in the lifecourse. Rather, it brings together policy, professional and academic concerns about transitions in the lifecourse through the conceptual lenses of identity, agency and structure. The theorising and ndings about transition, and the questions they raise about new forms of support, management and pedagogy, offered in the book, are meant to provide a basis for further thinking and empirical study.

Identity in science learning: exploring the attention given to agency and structure in studies of identity

Abstract: This paper explores the ways in which the concept of identity has been conceptualised and studied within science education. The Personality and Social Structure Perspective is used to examine the attention paid by researchers to three levels of identity analysis: personality, interaction and social structure. Tracing the development of science identity studies and the resulting body of literature reveals that most authors have focused their attention on aspects of identity related to individual agency to the exclusion of issues of social structure. This paper argues that this attention is related to the position of communities of practice as the dominant theoretical framework for identity studies and argues that researchers need to consider broader frameworks that encourage the integration of ideas at all three levels of analysis. Broadened methodological approaches, including mixed methods, are also advocated as a way to increase consideration of the level of social structure.

Analysing Teaching-Learning Interactions in Higher Education: Accounting for Structure and Agency

Abstract: Whilst current research into teaching and learning offers many insights into the experiences of academics and students in higher education, it has two significant shortcomings It does not highlight the dynamic ways in which students and academics impact on each other in teaching-learning interactions or the ways in which these interactions are shaped by wider social processes This book offers critical insight into existing perspectives on researching teaching and learning in higher education and argues that alternative perspectives are required in order to account for structure and agency in teaching-learning interactions in higher education In considering four alternative perspectives, it examines the ways in which teaching-learning interactions are shaped by teaching-learning environments, student and academic identities, disciplinary knowledge practices and institutional cultures It concludes by examining the conceptual and methodological implications of these analyses of teaching-learning interactions and provides the reader with an invaluable guide to alternative ways of conceptualising and researching teaching and learning in higher education

Leadership, Service Reform, and Public-Service Networks: The Case of Cancer-Genetics Pilots in the English NHS

Abstract: In attempting to reform public services, governments worldwide have sought to effect change through policies aimed at both transforming structures of public-service provision and facilitating the agency of public servants working within these. Various obstacles have been found, however, to impede the effectiveness of such efforts. In this article, the authors examine the role of organizational networks and distributed leadership—two prominent policies aimed at structure and agency, respectively—in the establishment and consolidation of service reform in the English National Health Service. Using a comparative case-study approach, they contrast the trajectories of two attempts to introduce and gain acceptance for service reform, noting important differences of context, process, and outcome between the sites. The findings indicate the importance of dispersed, as well as distributed, leadership in achieving change in a networked public-service setting. Effective leaders may indeed achieve change through the structures and processes of the network. However, the coexistence alongside the network of other organizational forms constrains the ability of leaders to achieve change without complementary action beyond the boundaries of the network.

Structure and agency in transition research

Abstract: Based on the results of transition studies in the UK, Germany, USA and Canada, the virtues of analysing the structural contexts, institutional arrangements and the young peoples' action orientation...

“Girls Just Aren't Interested”: The Social Construction of Interest in Girls' Sport

Abstract: Given the significant increase in the number of women and girls participating in sport, it is now a commonly held belief that girls have ample opportunities to participate in sport and, consequently, that girls who do not participate choose to do so because they simply lack interest in sport. Using qualitative methodologies and the sociology of accounts, the author examines a recreational sport program for low-income minority girls in the metropolitan Los Angeles area. Applying Giddens's theory of structuration to emergent themes from participant observations and interviews, the findings illustrate how structures, as they are embodied through the everyday interactions of their participants, simultaneously constrain certain forms of agency while enabling other forms. This study advances sociology's disciplinary understanding of social construction by illustrating how social structure and cultural discourses interact in shaping everyday social interactions.

Evolving the theory and praxis of knowledge translation through social interaction: a social phenomenological study

Abstract: As an inherently human process fraught with subjectivity, dynamic interaction, and change, social interaction knowledge translation (KT) invites implementation scientists to explore what might be learned from adopting the academic tradition of social constructivism and an interpretive research approach. This paper presents phenomenological investigation of the second cycle of a participatory action KT intervention in the home care sector to answer the question: What is the nature of the process of implementing KT through social interaction? Social phenomenology was selected to capture how the social processes of the KT intervention were experienced, with the aim of representing these as typical socially-constituted patterns. Participants (n = 203), including service providers, case managers, administrators, and researchers organized into nine geographically-determined multi-disciplinary action groups, purposefully selected and audiotaped three meetings per group to capture their enactment of the KT process at early, middle, and end-of-cycle timeframes. Data, comprised of 36 hours of transcribed audiotapes augmented by researchers' field notes, were analyzed using social phenomenology strategies and authenticated through member checking and peer review. Four patterns of social interaction representing organization, team, and individual interests were identified: overcoming barriers and optimizing facilitators; integrating 'science push' and 'demand pull' approaches within the social interaction process; synthesizing the research evidence with tacit professional craft and experiential knowledge; and integrating knowledge creation, transfer, and uptake throughout everyday work. Achieved through relational transformative leadership constituted simultaneously by both structure and agency, in keeping with social phenomenology analysis approaches, these four patterns are represented holistically in a typical construction, specifically, a participatory action KT (PAKT) model. Study findings suggest the relevance of principles and foci from the field of process evaluation related to intervention implementation, further illuminating KT as a structuration process facilitated by evolving transformative leadership in an active and integrated context. The model provides guidance for proactively constructing a 'fit' between content, context, and facilitation in the translation of evidence informing professional craft knowledge.

The Moral Foundations of Social Institutions: A Philosophical Study

Abstract: Introduction to 'the moral foundations of social institutions' Part I. Theory: 1. A teleological account of institutions 2. The moral foundations of institutions 3. Individual autonomy: agency and structure 4. Collective moral responsibility 5. Institutional corruption Part II. Applications: 6. The professions 7. Welfare institutions 8. The university 9. The police 10. The business corporation 11. Institutions and information and communication technology 12. Government.

Understanding Education: A Sociological Perspective

Abstract: Acknowledgements Preface Part 1: Approaching education sociologically Chapter 1 Understanding education: the role of sociology Chapter 2 Understanding structure and agency Chapter 3 Varieties of critique Part 2: Key themes Chapter 4 Social reproduction Chapter 5 Knowledge and the curriculum Chapter 6 Identity Chapter 7 Teachers' work Part 3: Conclusion Chapter 8 Extending reflexivity in sociology of education References

Faces of integration

Abstract: Theme: Two central themes permeate this paper—the interplay between structure and agency in integration processes and the extent to which this is mediated through sensemaking by individual actors. Case study: The empirical base for the paper is provided by case study research from Wales which draws on examples of different types of integration in health and social care. The individual case studies highlight different interpretations of integration set against a background of the resources involved, processes employed and outcomes achieved. Discussion: A wide ranging discussion exposes the complex interplay and dynamics between structural factors and the manner in which they enable or constrain integration, and individual actors realising their potential agency through leadership, professionalism and boundary spanning to influence outcomes. The importance of structure and agency complementing each other to determine effective integration is emphasised, together with the scope that is available for interpretation and meaning by individual actors within the contested discourse of integration.

Living the dream? Understanding partnering as emergent practice

Abstract: The ‘practice turn’ in organizational studies has recently emerged as an important set of perspectives which has implications for understanding processes of knowing and learning within and between organizations Consisting of a range of different approaches, it emphasizes the situated nature of knowing and learning in practice and offers an alternative to understanding human action that transcends the dualism of structure and agency effects on action The ontological and epistemological underpinnings of a practice‐based approach are explored before attention is directed towards assessing the implications for understanding the knowledge, learning and change in project‐based organizations associated with the emergence of partnering

Cleavage Politics in Old and New Democracies

Abstract: Stein Rokkan's comparative historical account of party system formation in Western Europe has proved enormously influential due to the appeal of tying individual political behaviour to large-scale historical transformations. This article reviews the literature that has studied the genesis of cleavage-based party systems, as well as theoretical and empirical assessments of the degree to which they have remained stable or "frozen". If it is adapted to allow for a more dynamic perspective, the cleavage approach also helps us to make sense of recent transformations of Western European party systems by pointing to new "critical junctures" that are likely to have a lasting impact on party competition and on individual political behaviour. In the second part of this review, I discuss applications of the approach outside Western Europe, focusing above all on Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. If it is modified according to the specific historical trajectories of these countries, the cleavage concept helps us understand both how party systems become institutionalized in new democracies, as well as the type of conflicts they are likely to reflect. Furthermore, criticisms of social structural determinism have resulted in a new generation of scholarship that insists on paying more attention to the interplay of structure and agency in forging long-term bonds between parties and voters.

Students make a plan: understanding student agency in constraining conditions

Abstract: Drawing on Archer’s perspectives on the agency/structure relationship, this paper explains situations where students in varied, challenging circumstances find ways to negotiate difficult conditions. It reports on a 2007 study undertaken through a survey at three quite different universities in three South African provinces, addressing inter-related questions on access and use. Our findings are that on-campus access is generally reported favourably, and off-campus access is problematic and uneven. There is a cluster of students using their cell phones to access the Internet, and using their cell phones for academic purposes, and this is true across socio-economic groups (SEGs). It is especially striking that students from low SEGs do so. The findings show the choices students are prepared to make and the strategies which they find in order to engage online or access the Internet to support their studies. Archer’s nuanced approach to agency and structure helps us begin to make sense of the way that students exhibit a more complex and nuanced way of engaging with the availability of different kinds of technologies, as well as making considered decisions about using ubiquitous technologies in unexpected ways and for purposes for which they may not have been intended. Her concept of reflexivity provides a way of describing how those choices are made in relation to structural conditions and enables us to explain how students are ‘persons’ showing an inventive capacity to circumvent the constraints imposed by structures. Keywords: students; Archer; agency; higher education; access; use; ICTs; information and communication technologies; South Africa; cell phones DOI: 10.1080/09687760903033058

Lost and found in transition: Educational implications of concerns about ‘identity’, ‘agency’ and ‘structure’

Abstract: Managing educational transitions effectively has become a focus for policy, practice and research in the UK, leading to growing numbers of interventions throughout the education system. These tend to be rooted in assumptions that transitions are problematic for certain groups and individuals and therefore need to be managed more effectively. In order to evaluate the implications of different meanings and assumptions about transitions for educational goals and practices, this chapter draws on a seminar series ‘Transitions through the life-course’ in the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). It explores how concepts of identity, agency and structure appear in political, academic and practical concerns about transitions. It asks whether current emphasis on identity and agency over structure leads to practices that present transitions as inherently difficult and threatening, remove risk and challenge, formalise support and create the ‘self ’ as a new subject with a curriculum, pedagogy and forms of assessment.

Contexts for teaching and the exercise of agency in early‐career academics: perspectives from realist social theory

Abstract: In this study, we investigate the interplay between context and agency for three early‐career academics as they seek to develop their teaching Our analysis is conducted in light of Archer’s realist social theory, framed by critical realism We argue that it is possible to see ways in which Archer’s account of the interplay between structure and agency is evident in the practice of these academics, with the influence of contextual factors mediated by their concerns and reflexive deliberations We thus open up a range of questions for further research and points of departure for the development of practice Dans cet article, nous etudions l’interrelation entre le contexte et la participation de trois universitaires au debut de leur carriere, alors que ceux‐ci cherchent a ameliorer leur enseignement Notre analyse est effectuee a la lumiere de la theorie realiste sociale (realist social theory) de Archer, selon une approche realiste critique Nous defendons la these qu’il est possible de reconnaitre des fac

No time to fool around with the wrong education: Socialisation frames, timing and high-stakes educational decision making in changing rural places

Abstract: There have been as yet few qualitative analyses of either the lives of rural youth or their schooling in North America. While urban or suburban sociologies of education have focused heavily on the social mobility of youth, rural sociologies of education have focused on the geographic mobility of youth, typically out of rural areas. Indeed there have been a number of studies of youth migration from rural parts of North America, but these have almost exclusively focused on national or regional data sets. This study uses mixed methods in order to understand the interplay of structure and agency linking postsecondary decision making for rural youth and their families with the broader transformations at the structural level. Using semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation, and drawing theoretically on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper analyses decision-making frames employed by families in a coastal community to understand and navigate the increasing demand for formal education their children face in changing rural communities.

Social structure and nursing research.

Abstract: The concept of social structure is ill defined in the literature despite the perennial problem and ongoing discussion about the relationship between agency and structure. In this paper I will provide an outline of what the term social structure means, but my main focus will be on emphasizing the value of the concept for nursing research and demonstrate how its erasure in some research negatively effects on our understanding of the nurses' role in clinical practice. For example, qualitative research in nursing has largely focused on agency through such theories as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and symbolic interactionism. The result is that social structure may be erased or seen as epiphenomena of agency. My purpose is to provide a theoretical discussion of social structure and how such a discussion can help us to understand how nurses live and experience clinical practice. While not denying the importance of agency, I will argue that the thinned out approach to social structure places limits on our understanding of the constraints nurses experience in their working lives. The result is that nurses' attitudes and clinical failings are individualized, resulting in ever more calls for improved education, when a more thorough examination of structural issues may elucidate more fundamental problems.

Pierre Bordieu and the theory of medical education: thinking 'relationally' about medical students and the medical curricula

Abstract: Sociologists have been studying medical education for more than 50 years. Rich empirical studies of life in medical schools and hospitals have been conducted by some of the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, sociology has yet to put forth a coherent and comprehensive theory of medical education. Fred Hafferty (2000: 241) has highlighted an analytical schism within the sociology of medical education between the majority of studies which focus on student socialization, and a less developed strand centring on organizational structure. In general, students’ experiences have received ample scrutiny, while medical curricula, medical schools and the complex web of healthcare and higher-education institutions and policies impacting on medical education have received comparatively little attention. This divide is reflected in the use of theory within the sociology of medical education, which has tended to privilege agency over structure, and, less often, the reverse. As a consequence, sociology lacks a comprehensive theory accounting for both institutional arrangements and student practice in medical education, and the relationships between them. This chapter offers one way of bridging this divide by drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework in medical education. Bourdieu (1930-2002) was one of the most influential sociologists of his generation. Although relatively recently applied within the sociology of health and illness, Bourdieu’s work has been profoundly influential in many other areas, particularly in the sociology of education, where his theories and empirical work have elucidated how the social order is reproduced through the educational choices and practices of individuals and institutions. Bourdieu seeks to overcome the theoretical opposition between structure and agency, urging us instead to ‘think relationally’ about social practices. This framework can potentially enrich a part of sociology which has tended to overemphasize either individual experience or institutional politics, thereby neglecting their interrelation. The chapter begins by examining two key problems which sociologists have interpreted from a socialization and an organizational perspective respectively: the way medical students learn to value ‘competence’ over ‘caring’, and the lack of change brought about by medical-curriculum reform. It then explores how Bourdieu’s central concepts of habitus and field could be used to reinterpret andreconcile existing interpretations, and to generate a comprehensive sociological theory of medical education.

Models of navigation and life management

Abstract: Navigation is a nautical term. Nautical charts must lead the ship and its crew safely through the endlessness of unknown oceans and bring them safely back to their home harbour. Why is it that this metaphor is used so frequently by youth sociologists to characterize the lives of young people who live in contemporary societies? Obviously their status and life circumstances are not clear but need active and informed navigators to do the intricate navigation work. The antagonistically intertwined concepts of structure and agency can teach us how to investigate that work and their workers. What makes the navigation work difficult and the outcome uncertain is the growingtension between intended actions and unintended risks and outcomes. That tension is caught in the much discussed concept of ‘risk society’, originally introduced by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck (Beck 1992). Living in contemporary risk societies intensifies feelings of contingency, feelings of never being sure if personal decisions will take me where I want to arrive. The motor which transforms traditional societies into risk societies is the speed withwhich new technologies are developed, applied, spread and further developed. That development disquieted and fascinated philosophers and social scientists like Max Weber, Georg Simmel and Emile Durkheim at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century and many scholars again after the Second World War and up to the present. Interestingly (and disquietingly?) the fear of abusively used technology and knowledge has ceased these days. The ‘knowledge society’ seems to have sunny rather than dark connotations for most people (or not?). The term signifies that the acquisition of knowledge is worthwhile and even necessary to cope with modern life. Rapid structural changes are not restricted to certain societies and continents but arespread over the globe, although at an uneven pace and with different outcomes. One of the many results of these developments is increased mobility of people within their own society and between countries and continents, resulting, among many other effects, in growing heterogeneity of national populations. Western-type societies willingly or unwillingly become host societies for people emigrating to find employment in thericher continents of Europe and North America. Youth in a given society is no longer identical to autochthonous young people and can therefore not only be analysed within the traditional categories of social class and gender, but must now be conceived as an ethnically and culturally mixed group. Incalculable risks, growing knowledge and diverse ethnic-cultural composition of thepopulation are three influential conditions which steer the navigation work of young people today – or fail to do so. Youth sociologists have developed over the past three or so decades useful concepts to describe and analyse that navigation work – and its failures. Those concepts we now discuss in the remainder of this chapter.

Leisure and pleasure in London society, 1760-1820 : an agent-centred approach

Abstract: The historiography of leisure has focused on class conflict, commercialization, and the arts. In the latter two areas historians have attempted to make statements about consumers, but as historians of consumption have demonstrated, examining the consumer from the perspective of producers is insufficient. This thesis demonstrates what the developing methodologies used to examine practice and consumption reveal about leisure and recreation. Exploration of forty-five diaries kept in London between 1757 and 1820 makes it possible to consider different aspects of choice with reference to recreation. This dissertation analyses how simple determinants of choice such as time, location, and cost shaped behaviour before moving on to the more complex and fuzzy concepts of social position, the role of domesticity, and taste. Choice is central to understanding what amusement was in Georgian society, therefore it is necessary to consider both people’s scope for choice, and the forces shaping those choices. Following an introductory section, chapters two to four examine choice by looking at simple factors. London was by far England’s largest city, but the distribution of establishments and patterns of mobility affected different segments of society in complex ways. In addition, leisure routines and the ability to spend money on recreation differed between socioeconomic groups who had different amounts of time and money to use. Affinities within social groups appear, but diaries also illuminate the importance of individual variations. Chapter four signals a shift in the analysis by looking at determinants of choice like feeling obliged, wanting to please friends or family, or the impact of social networks on reactions to activities. Chapters five to eight examine interpersonal relationships and the function of recreation in eighteenth-century society and raise questions about how we combine agency and structure in our models of society. This account challenges claims that group identities were the only identities available to Georgians and that individual variations were downplayed before the nineteenth century. Rather, individuals existed in networks that had to be negotiated and maintained.

Youth voices: connections between history, enacted culture and identity in a digital divide initiative

Abstract: The design of educational experiences is often mediated by historical, institutional, and social conceptions. Although these influences can initially shape the way that educational opportunities are created and implemented, this preliminary form has the potential to reorganize. In this paper, we illustrate how history shows its presence in the ways that instructors systematically arrange a technology course for urban youth. This original approach to the course inhibits youth participation. Incrementally, however, the cultural enactments of instructors and students lead to a reorganization of activity. Through highlighting history and examining the intersection of culture, we provide insight into the ways in which adolescents of color become successfully engaged in learning technology. We focus our study by asking how co-existence and the dialectic of structure and agency play a role as youth develop an identity as a technology user. Further, this emergent learning design affords outsiders a unique view of the educational and contextual experiences of these youth. Our illustration of how history, enacted culture and identity mediate the emergent learning design stems from a grounded theory approach to analyzing video, interview and artifact data in this after-school technology course.

Impressions, improvisations and compositions: reframing children's text production in social network sites

Abstract: Social networking can currently be described as a mainstream youth activity, with almost half of 8–17year-old children, who have access to the Internet, claiming to participate. As an activity it is of particular interest to literacy educators because it is enacted through the production and consumption of text. However, a growing body of research is finding that while young people transfer knowledge and practices across the sites that they occupy, children’s text production using informal digital literacy practices and children’s school-based text production can be regarded as increasingly disparate activities. This paper draws from a current research project that is exploring three pre-teenage children’s text production in social networking sites. Here one child’s Bebo profile page is presented and discussed in order that the forces that play upon her text production can be identified. Through consideration of these forces, a framework for considering children’s text production in informal digital environments is suggested. This framework steps away from the existing frameworks currently found within the Primary National Strategy for Literacy and Mathematics and instead requires that children’s texts are viewed in relation to structure and agency. Social networking and children’s text production: an introduction

Overcoming Structure and Agency: Talcott Parsons, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Theory of Social Action

Abstract: Since the 1960s, the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein has had a marked influence on the social sciences. As an important sub-field, the sociology of science has drawn extensively on Wittgenstein a...

Theorising and Analysing Social Change in Central and Eastern Europe: The Contribution of Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract: Although commonly used and theorised,1 the notion of ‘social change’ is definitely one of the most problematic concepts in the social sciences. On the one hand, ‘social change’ has been embedded and discussed in the field of social theory ranging from seminal classics, such as in Marxist conflict theory or in the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz (1962, 1967), up to functionalist and systemic approaches,2 and insights from social constructivism (Berger and Luckmann, 1966) and the ‘structure and agency debate’.3 However, these approaches have rarely, if at all, applied in practice.

Re-evaluating the Links between ‘Race’ and Residence

Abstract: There is a wide swathe, and indeed long history, of UK literature featuring attempts to theorise differentials in housing position and shifting spatial settlement patterns in relation to ethnicity and ‘race’ (and also, more recently, faith group). Most of the earlier accounts were based on simplified versions of the structure-agency dualism or one or other variant of rational choice theory. Responding to criticisms that these relied too heavily on overly static notions of ‘choice’ and ‘constraint’, a few then turned to a form of theorisation that deployed a modified version of Giddens' structuration theory. This paper seeks to take the debate further by developing a model that retains much of the essence of structuration yet embodies a more dynamic and theoretically nuanced interpretation of both structure and agency. Structure, normally seen predominantly as a form of social regulation, will be seen as multi-layered and multi-dimensional and also, importantly, as subject to often unpredictable exogenous ...