Showing papers on "Structure and agency published in 2010"

Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective

Abstract: The debate on migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from developmentalist optimism in the 1950s and 1960s, to neo-Marxist pessimism over the 1970s and 1980s, towards more optimistic views in the 1990s and 2000s. This paper argues how such discursive shifts in the migration and development debate should be primarily seen as part of more general paradigm shifts in social and development theory. However, the classical opposition between pessimistic and optimistic views is challenged by empirical evidence pointing to the heterogeneity of migration impacts. By integrating and amending insights from the new economics of labor migration, livelihood perspectives in development studies and transnational perspectives in migration studies – which share several though as yet unobserved conceptual parallels – this paper elaborates the contours of a conceptual framework that simultaneously integrates agency and structure perspectives and is therefore able to account for the heterogeneous nature of migration-development interactions. The resulting perspective reveals the naivety of recent views celebrating migration as self-help development “from below”. These views are largely ideologically driven and shift the attention away from structural constraints and the vital role of states in shaping favorable conditions for positive development impacts of migration to occur.

The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Emergence 3. Cause 4. Social ontology and social structure 5. Agency 6. Normative institutions 7. Organisations 8. Social events 9. Conclusion.

Some Reflections on Structure and Agency in Migration Theory

Abstract: This paper explores the complex relationship between structure and agency and the way it has been incorporated into migration theory It argues that attempts to develop a coherent and robust body of migration theory have been thwarted by a structure–agency impasse: some approaches lean too close to functionalism while others veer into structuralism Those who search for middle ground have tended to draw on Giddens' notion of structuration as a way of articulating the balance between structure and agency in migration processes The article shows that, while structuration is beguiling, it has failed to offer any significant advances for migration theory This is a result of theoretical weaknesses in structuration theory rather than a failure of its application; this argument is based on a critical realist critique of the dualism inherent in structuration It is suggested that critical realism offers a fruitful avenue for a more sophisticated analysis of structure and agency in migration processes The article ends with a brief outline of a critical realist approach to migration theory and argues that this may offer a way around the structure–agency impasse

So, how did Bourdieu learn to play tennis? Habitus, consciousness and habituation

Abstract: Bourdieu's development of the notion of ‘habitus’ has proved a rich vein for cultural theory. Habitus has been useful, with the growing interest in processes of embodiment, in countering the cognitive and representational bias in much cultural analysis, and in providing a basis for avoiding the dualisms - of mind and body, structure and agency - that trouble social theory. However, in stressing the unconscious nature of embodiment, and refusing to engage with the question of consciousness, an implicit form of mechanistic determinism has crept into Bourdieu"s implementation of habitus. By returning to the Spinozan monism that informs Bourdieu's work, this paper elaborates a productive conceptualization of habitus that attends to the various intensities of consciousness, the relations between multiple mind-bodies and processes of habituation through a focus on the literature of sports training.

Social structures and desistance from crime

Abstract: Desistance studies have routinely focused on issues such as family links, employment prospects and moving away from criminal friends, but they have said less about the meso- and macro-level structural issues that might facilitate or impede the transition of ex-offenders to the status of more mainstream members of civil society.Yet, in view of the necessary interaction between agency and structure in producing processes of desistance, a consideration of social structures (and the implications of changes in structures) is clearly of some importance. This paper addresses these issues, with special reference to recent structural changes in the UK in the fields of employment, families and housing, and criminal policy. The paper concludes with a discussion of conceptual foundations for social policy responses.

The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery: Social Learning in a post-disaster environment

Abstract: Introduction: Understanding the Sources of Resilience Part I: Theoretical Frame and Methodology 1. The Nature and Causes of Social Order as Seen Through Post-Disaster Recovery 2. Qualitative Methods and the Pursuit of Economic Understanding Part II: Deploying Socially Embedded Resources in a Post-Disaster Context 3. Collective Action in the Wake of Disaster: Social Capital Rebuilding Strategies of Early Returnees 4. Social Capital, Community Narratives, and Recovery Within a Vietnamese-American Neighborhood 5. Collective Narratives and Entrepreneurial Discovery in St. Bernard Parish 6. Negotiating Structure and Agency in the Ninth Ward: Sense of Place and Divine Purpose in Post Disaster Recovery Part III: Political -Economy and Social Learning in Non-Priced Environments 7. The Deleterious Effects of Signal Noise in Post-Disaster Recovery 8. Expectations Anchoring and the Civil Society Vacuum: Lessons for Public Policy 9. Concluding Remarks Part IV: Appendices Appendix A: Demographic Summaries of Research Subjects in Neighborhoods of Interest Appendix B: Sample Interview Guide Appendix C: Primary and Secondary Theme Codes

Technology, Organization, and Structure---A Morphogenetic Approach

Abstract: This article relates Archer's morphogenetic approach, derived from the philosophical tradition of critical realism, to the use of information and communication technology in organizations. Three gains are seen to accrue from this approach: greater clarity about the material properties of technology, links to broader structural conditions arising from the conceptualization of the relationship between agency and structure, and the potential to explore the importance of reflexivity in contemporary organizations, especially in conditions of the widespread use of information and communication technology. The importance of disaggregating the artifacts of this technology into levels and features is stressed to enable analysis to explore the specific impacts of particular combinations. This is developed through a discussion of data warehousing in connection with the attention being given to the importance of analytics in organizational strategies. Key features are in wider aspects of the cultural and structural context, demonstrating the fruitfulness of a morphogenetic approach.

Beyond Institutions: Rethinking the Role of Leaders, Elites and Coalitions in the Institutional Formation of Developmental States and Strategies

Abstract: Compared with economics, the engagement of political science with development studies and development policy is still (with notable exceptions) in its relative infancy. This can be illustrated by the manner in which fundamental issues of structure and agency in politics have barely been addressed in the development context. In the main, policy‐makers and researchers – perhaps unwittingly, or perhaps simply oblivious to the profound epistemological and ontological issues at stake – have adopted emphatically structuralist approaches with their stress on institutions and institution building. In doing so they have not only often failed to account for the agential factors in the design, formation and maintenance of institutions, but also for the important success stories which run against the general patterns of institutional failure or corruption. This paper suggests that if researchers and policy‐makers are to engage seriously with the politics of economic growth, state‐building and social inclusion, they w...

In Relation: The ‘Social Self’ and Ego-Documents

Abstract: What is an ‘ego-document’? The answer might at first sight seem simple: a source or ‘document’—understood in the widest sense—providing an account of, or revealing privileged information about, the ‘self ’ who produced it. The term itself, which is of relatively recent coinage—just over half a century old—has variants: while it is a term originating in Dutch that works well in several languages including both English and German, some scholars prefer the notion of ‘self-narratives’ or ‘testimonies to the self ’ (Selbstzeugnisse), a term in use since the late nineteenth century, with corresponding differences in theoretical approach and emphasis from those who retain the notion of ego-documents.1 But the broader concept of texts which (mis)represent a self is far older; and, as the contributions in this area by Rousseau, Goethe and countless less well-known others indicate, the character of such sources and the uses to which they can be put are far more problematic and diverse than might at first glance appear. We are dealing here, then, with not just a particular type of source, but a source which uniquely serves to open up a wide set of theoretical issues and questions of history and historiography. The use of ego-documents allows us, in particular, to focus on a key issue that might conveniently be summarized as that of ‘structures and subjectivities’. There has for a long time been a sense that the ways in which key historical events and developments are subjectively experienced need to be brought into sharper focus. And conversely, scholars such as Max Weber and Norbert Elias, not to mention Karl Marx, registered the ways in which historical subjectivities are shaped and transformed by the structures through which people make their lives, long before ego-documents became a direct focus of analysis as a distinctive type of source. More recently, theorists from a wide range of perspectives have struggled not merely to reconnect structure and agency, but to look at the ways in which agency is itself historically constructed, coloured and inflected. But it is less easy to reach agreement on ways to achieve this using ego-documents in a sophisticated and theoretically selfaware manner. One of the most distinctive strands of German history to emerge during the past decade or so has been extensive research on such sources, which seem to allow insights

Not Thinking Ethnicity: A Critique of the Ethnicity Paradigm in an Over-Ethnicised Sociology

Abstract: The many critical approaches to an 'ethnicity framework' have fallen short of a very possible conclusion-that the language of ethnicity provides, for the most part, a poor paradigm with which to work. In the present paper we seek not only to re-state some key weaknesses of this paradigm but also to suggest that these weaknesses are more general in an over-ethnicised sociology. There are numerous critiques of particular models or elements of ethnicity thinking, including critiques of primordialist approaches (Fenton 2003), of multiculturalism ( 2000), and of the over-objectification of groups (Brubaker 2004; see also Jenkins 2008). The major critiques constitute a strong case against 'thinking with ethnicity'; the broader weaknesses are more general in contemporary 'identitarian' sociology. From this position we turn to the question of offering an alternative approach in a sociology which emphasizes agency, and is grounded in an analysis of actors in material situations. This is allied to the concept of ideational resources, social categories and identities upon which actors draw, and a middle-range view of causality and tendency in social change. Ideas of ancestral belonging are among those ideational resources, and these ideas and assumptions are played out in a context of material and political change. The subject of study is not ethnicity, but power, resources, social relations and institutions (which may and may not be) informed by cultural identities and ideas of ancestry. The strategy of the paper will be first to re-state the deficiencies of 'ethnicity thinking' and second to offer an alternative framework for thinking about social action and social structure.

Engaging young children in collective curriculum design

Abstract: In this study we investigate how 5-year-old children in Brazil and their teachers collectively design science curriculum. More specifically, we develop an agency|structure dialectic as a framework to describe this collective praxis in which science curriculum may emerge as the result of children–teacher transactions rather than as a result of being predetermined and controlled by the latter. We draw on a cultural-historical approach and on the theory of structure and agency to analyze the events showing the complexity of the activity inside a classroom of very young children by science education standards. Data were collected in the context of a science unit in an early-childhood education program in Belo Horizonte. Our study suggests that (a) throughout the movement of agency|passivity || schema|resources one can observe participative thinking, a form of collective consciousness that arises in and from lived experience; (b) learning is a process in which a group is invested in searching for solutions while they create schemas and rearrange resources to evolve a new structure; and (c) the emergent curriculum is a powerful form of praxis that develops children’s participation from early childhood on.

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

Commentary: Structure or agency? The importance of both for addressing social inequalities in health

Abstract: In their paper entitled ‘Rose’s population strategy of prevention need not increase social inequalities in health’, McLaren et al. offer a cogent response to our earlier paper ‘The inequality paradox: the population approach and vulnerable populations’. It is a pleasure, and was indeed our goal, to see a lively debate sparked by our initial musings. It is therefore an equal pleasure to respond to their paper as part of a further debate. McLaren et al.’s argument rests in part on the idea that not all population prevention interventions influence social inequalities in health to the same extent. They argue that their influence depends on whether the strategy is what they call structural or agentic; the former targets the conditions in which behaviours occur, the latter, behaviour change among individuals. They conclude that structural interventions are less likely to worsen social inequalities in health than agentic strategies. While this distinction is interesting it may be somewhat distracting given that social inequalities in health, we have argued in the past, arise due to the interplay of ‘both’ structure and agency. While McLaren et al. rightly cite Anthony Giddens as an important 20th century thinker with respect to the structure/agency debate, they fail to mention that among Giddens’ most important contributions to sociology has been his structuration theory. Structuration theory is based on the idea that both agency, defined as the ability to deploy a range of causal powers, and structure, objectified as the rules and resources in society, give rise to people’s social practices, which are the activities that make and transform the world we live in (referred to by people in public health as behaviours). Using the heuristic of collective lifestyles, it has been argued that an adequate tackling of inequalities in health should address all three aspects of structuration theory (agency, social structure and social practices) rather than structure or agency alone. Indeed, we thank the authors for bringing us back to some of our earlier reflections with regard to the structure/agency relationship as it plays a crucial role in our new argument regarding vulnerable populations. By using the term vulnerable populations, we sought to move away from risk factor epidemiological thought, which tends to focus largely on behaviour alone, and suggest that some groups are vulnerable with regard to their agency, their position with regard to the social structure and their social practices. It is only by focusing on all three that one would be able to reduce social inequalities in health, as all three are at the base of these inequalities. However, we agree with McLaren et al. that the use of the term vulnerable populations is not without problems, including potential stigmatization. One might consider instead the concept of exclusionary process developed by the Social Exclusion Knowledge Network of the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. Their critique of the notion of vulnerability is that it emphasizes a state without identifying causes, and that it becomes a characteristic of people and not the result of a process. On the contrary, an exclusionary process originates in the unequal distribution of four types of resources: material, cultural, social and political. It is the unequal distribution of these resources that reproduces health inequalities. This notion of exclusionary processes points to the importance of working upstream in order to address some of the original causes that led to the unequal distribution of these resources. A final note is warranted regarding our perspective on participation. The authors suggest that participatory strategies may ultimately be agentic if structural conditions are not addressed. It is true that the public health literature tends to be ideological and offers little theoretical breadth with regard to the conditions required in the participatory process. In our view participatory planning is a political process. This process Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association

Agency, reflexivity and risk: cosmopolitan, neurotic or prudential citizen?

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the turn to risk within sociology and to survey the relationship between structure and agency as conceived by popular strands of risk theorizing. To this end, we appraise the risk society, culture of fear and governmentality perspectives and we consider the different imaginings of the citizen constructed by each of these approaches. The paper goes on to explore what each of these visions of citizenship implies for understandings of the structure/agency dynamic as it pertains to the question of reflexivity. In order to transcend uni-dimensional notions of citizenship and to reinvigorate sociological debates about risk, we call for conceptual analyses that are contextually rooted. Exampling the importance of knowledge contests around contemporary security threats and warnings of the deleterious effects of pre-emptive modes of regulation that derive from the 'risk turn' within social science, we argue for a more nuanced embrace of reflexivity within risk theorising in order to facilitate a more dynamic critique of the images of citizenship that such theorizing promotes.

Maternal ambivalence in contemporary Australia : navigating equity and care

Abstract: The thesis argues that an important step in an agenda calling for change is a resignification of the mother–infant connection from a role to a relationship so as to embed the subject position of the woman-as-mother and enhance her reflexive stance. It identifies intersections between structure and agency as played out in the lives of a small group of women in the early years after the birth of their first child. It contributes to a call for transformational change so as to accommodate dependency while attending to gender equal outcomes. The study is multidisciplinary, bringing together gender, sociology, psychoanalysis and health through a conceptual framework informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Cornelius Castoriadis, Jessica Benjamin and Lois McNay. It locates the work of care through the dependency theory of Eva Feder Kittay and Martha Fineman and the proposition that both the state and the market rely on the family for care. Data are drawn from in-depth and semi-structured interviews with sixteen first-time mothers from Sydney and Canberra. The participants self identified from posters circulated through playgroups and childcare centres from northern, southern, eastern and western suburbs to ensure a diverse sample. What has generally been thought of as a paradox between the rights of women and an assertion of gender difference associated with the maternal body can be recast in terms of tensions. The family as a social unit in the early twenty-first century is marked by tension and change evidenced through the experience of women when they first become mothers. Research that focuses on the early years after the birth of an infant under the banner of the Transition to Parenthood brings to light gendered economic outcomes, maternal stress, depression and a decline in marital satisfaction; in essence a mismatch between expectations and experience that is played out through the sense of self. This is a consequence of a divergence between cultural trends and social structuring with a lack of recognition of both intersubjective dynamics between women-as-mothers and their infants and intrapsychic processes of the self. I cast this dissonance in terms of tensions between macrosocial and microsocial factors. A disjuncture is evident through the ambivalences of these new mothers. In the interview data there is a sense of displaced self, difficulties reconnecting with former lives through the workplace, and often disruptions within families arising from unfulfilled expectations. There is nevertheless a strong and abiding connection with their infants. Motherhood is often characterized as selfless. The needs and interests of the infant/child became paramount and this is seen as a good thing, a moral imperative. Identifications with one’s mother and/or the projected interests of the child or family promote continuity while everyday expectations and practices within families point to change. Women have historically promoted both social and cultural capital through asserting the interests of their families and child/ren. However, attending to these related tasks generally comes at an economic cost and at a cost to their health. There is a significant body of both academic and popular texts reflecting on the experience of being a mother at the microsocial level which is accompanied by a common experience of ambivalence in locating the maternal self. There is evidence of movement for change at the macrosocial level through a rethinking of welfare economics, feminist proponents calling for a public ethic of care, trends towards a gender equal or egalitarian family form, a feminist mothers’ movement, and the emergence of a concept of social care.

Re/structuring science education : reuniting sociological and psychological perspectives

Abstract: Preface 1. ReUniting Sociological and Psychological Perspectives in/for Science Education: An Introduction Wolff-Michael Roth 2. Tuning in to Others' Voices: Beyond the Hegemony of Mono-Logical Narratives Kenneth Tobin A. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS Editor's Introduction 3. Activity, Discourse, & Meaning: Some Directions for Science Education Gregory J. Kelly, Asli Sezen 4. Been There, Done That, or Have We? Yew Jin Lee 5. History, Culture, Emergence: Informing Learning Designs Donna DeGennaro 6. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Balancing Act of Dialectically Theorizing Conceptual Understanding on the Grounds of Vygotsky's Project Anna Stetsenko 7. A Sociological Response to Stetsenko Regina Smardon 8. Turbulence, Risk, and Radical Listening: A Context for Teaching and Learning Science Wesley Pitts 9. Thinking and Speaking: A Dynamic Approach Wolff-Michael Roth 10. Thinking and Speaking: On Units of Analysis and their Role in Meaning Making Eduardo Mortimer 11. Thinking Dialogically about Thought and Language Pei-Ling Hsu B. POSITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES Editor's Introduction 12. Re-Visioning Conceptual Change from Feminist Research Perspectives Kathryn Scantlebury, Sonya Martin 13. Conceptions and Characterization: An Explanation for the Theory-Practice Gap in Conceptual Change Theory Michiel van Eijck 14. Looking at the Observer: Challenges to the Study of Conceptions and Conceptual Change Jean-Francois Maheux, Wolff-Michael Roth, Jennifer Thom 15. It Doesn't Matter What You Think, This is Real: Expanding Conceptions about Urban Students inScience Classrooms Chris Emdin 16. Making Science Relevant: Conceptual Change and the Politics of Science Education Giuliano Reis C. SCIENCE AGENCY ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN Editor's Introduction 17. Glocalizing Artifact and Agency: An Argument for the Practical Relevance of Economic Injustice and Transformation in Science Education of Mexican Newcomers Katherine Richardson Bruna 18. Concept Development in Urban Classroom Spaces: Dialectical Relationships, Power, and Identity Maria Varelas, Justine M. Kane, Christine C. Pappas 19. Science as a Context and Tool: The Role of Place in Science Learning among Urban Middle School Youth Edna Tan, Angela Calabrese Barton, Miyoun Lim 20. Becoming an Urban Science Teacher: Teacher Learning as the Collective Performance of Conceptions Maria S. Rivera Maulucci 21. Science Agency and Structure across the Lifespan: A Dialogical Response Jennifer D. Adams, Christina Siry, Koshi Dhingra, Gillian U. Bayne D. EPILOGUE 22. Sociology | Psychology: Toward a Science of Phenomena Wolff-Michael Roth Index

Explaining economic and social transformations in post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine and Belarus: The social quality approach

Abstract: This paper looks at the impact of the economic collapse of the former Soviet Union on the lives of ordinary people in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus using qualitative as well as quantitative data We argue that to understand the impact of the transformation it is necessary to take a sociological approach To provide a framework for our analysis we use the Social Quality model which enables us to consider the recursive relation between agency and structure and social and systems integration We draw upon a sample survey of 8,400 individuals carried out in 2001 together with qualitative interviews with a purposefully selected sample of individuals, health experts and focus groups conducted in 2002 The use of qualitative data enables us to look beyond classifying variables to experience We conclude that the collapse has not only resulted in a decline in the material circumstances of households but also on social integration, social cohesion and the ability of people to take control over their own lives

Accounting for the hero: A critical psycho-discursive approach to children's experience of domestic violence and the construction of masculinities

Abstract: This article employs a critical psycho-discursive approach to social identity processes and subjectivity in an important and under-researched area; the psychological impact of domestic violence on children. We use a case study of interview interaction with two teenage brothers talking about their father's past violent behaviour to show that a highly idealised, dominant form of hegemonic masculinity--'heroic protection discourse' (HPD)--was a major organising principle framing both brothers' understandings of events. However, significant differences occurred in how each boy identified and made sense of self and others within this discourse. We discuss our findings in terms of (1) the destructive power of HPD to position sons as responsible for a father's violent behaviour and (2) the utility of our approach for developing a better understanding of when, if or why psychological and behavioural problems associated with domestic violence are likely to develop in a particular child. In so doing, we hope to contribute to theoretical debates in social psychology on identity and subjectivity by showing how it is possible to make sense of the 'collision' between structure and agency through the study of social interaction.

The Logic of Policy Change: Structure and Agency in Political Life

Abstract: Policy universes are usually characterized by stability, even when stability represents a suboptimal state. Institutions and processes channel and cajole agents along a policy path, restricting the available solution set. Herein, structure is usually to the fore. But what of agency? Do no actors choose? In fact, they do, even in policy environments of incrementalism, even amid hostility. But where agency makes for momentous change is during the punctuations of long policy equilibriums, perfect storms enabling nonincremental movement onto a new policy trajectory, departing from the old path. On both levels, the interaction effects of both structure and agency make a difference--incrementally in the first case, nonincrementally in the second. It's not just one damn thing after another, nor does just anything go.

Re-structuring Power

Abstract: Steven Lukes and Clarissa Hayward have been at the forefront of the debate surrounding the relationship between power, structure, and agency. Yet certain weaknesses beset their conceptualization of power and its relationship to structure and agency. Both Lukes’s and Hayward's conceptualization of structure is problematic, and neither theorist shows fully how power is instantiated in both structure and agency. Consequently, there are empirical instances that cannot be explained satisfactorily within one or the other framework. This article offers an in-depth critique of Lukes’s and Hayward's conceptualizations of power, especially their understandings of its relationship with structure and agency, and sets out an alternative realist conceptualization of power that offers a way to avoid or minimize the weaknesses and tensions identified in their work. This approach, I argue, can help inform radical strategies that aim at freedom by transforming and transcending, rather than merely ameliorating, existing power relations and states of affairs.

Indeterminacy and regularization: a process-based approach to the study of sociolinguistic variation and language ideologies

Abstract: This article explores the concept of indeterminacy as a fundamental property of social life (Falk-Moore 1978) as it relates to key issues in sociolinguistic theory: the relationship between structure and agency and the way that linguistic signs are invested with social meanings. Indeterminacy emerges as a fundamental principle of sociolinguistic variables, context, speaker identity and participation structures, as a resource for speakers and as a possible objective of communicative practice. It stands in constant tension with processes of sociolinguistic regularization, as it is instantiated across texts, time and discourses and as it is embedded in particular social and political fields. The article argues that studying this tension is how a contemporary sociolinguistics can approach a coherent account of agency and constraint, change and continuity, reproduction and contestation of normative practices and dominant language ideologies.

Structure and agency

Abstract: The relationship of social structure to individual and collective agency has been central to sociology from the outset. It remains so in period in which poststructuralists have challenged the idea of stable social structures and even the usefulness in social science of the concept of structure itself. The historical trajectory of the debate about the respective importance of structure and agency and the relationship between the two provides the narrative context of this collection of articles.

Social citizenship of Polish migrants in London : engagement and non-engagement with the British welfare state

Abstract: This thesis offers an account of how social citizenship is understood and actualised by ordinary citizens engaged in international mobility. It is based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with 62 Polish migrants conducted within their family and/or household context in London in 2007/2008. The interviews explored how participants satisfied their welfare needs in areas of housing, health and securing an adequate standard of living during their stay in Britain, and to what extent the satisfaction of those needs took place via welfare state or alternative institutions. The eligibility constraints of EU and UK policies on the social entitlements of Polish migrants are reflected in statistical data such as the UK Labour Force Survey. Nevertheless the interviews show that engagement and non-engagement with the British welfare state depend considerably on the participants‟ perceptions of their position in British society. The needs, desert and membership logics of engagement and the market, care and indeterminate logics of non-engagement have been identified. For instance, the self-image of a contributing citizen with a strong work ethic underpins the desert-based logic of engagement. In contrast, the self-image of a pure migrant worker attains to the market-based logic of non-engagement. Furthermore this thesis explains interactions that arise in the processes of engagement and non-engagement with London-based welfare state institutions and traces the consequences for the agent. Methodologically, the study follows the principles of the constructivist reworking of grounded theory. The emerging theoretical perspective emplaces agency in the tension between the ideational and actual levels of individualised experience of social reality, and suggests a sequential interplay between structure and agency. By relaying migrants‟ views and practices of social citizenship, the research identifies the non-national foci of solidarity and legitimacy rooted in the norms of conditionality and local citizenship which redefine the boundaries of modern welfare communities.

Co-evolution between Stages of Institutionalization and Agency: The Case of the Music Industry’s Business Model

Abstract: The relationship between structure and agency is a central issue in studying change. The aim of this paper is to focus on the interactions between the process of institutional change and the actors’ strategic behaviour. Based on research on the music industry, we observed co-evolution between the actor level and the organizational field level by identifying three consequences of the incumbents’ actions on the institutional change process (alternative practices selection, alternative practices modification and process duration) and three consequences of coercive pressures on agency (strategic adjustment, traditional practices modification and legitimization).

Strategizing of China's major players: a Bourdieusian perspective

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose Bourdieu's theory of practice (TOP) as a useful framework for conceptualizing agents' strategizing by considering players' strategizing as based on their habituses and capitals as well as their assessments of their relevant field(s).Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on Bourdieu's theory to better understand the strategizing of some of China's major players. The basic concepts of the model – strategy, field, habitus, and capital – are defined and developed for the major players studied.Findings – This paper conceptualizes the strategizing as a dynamic set of players playing within and between multiple fields. It applies the fractality – in social space – of Bourdieu's TOP into specific agents or fields not only encompassing but going beyond isolated cognitive, cultural, and institutional considerations of one or more players to offer the possibility of taking into account structure and agency, variability and commonality and diverse degrees of g...

A Theoretical Debate and Strategy to Link Structure and Agency in Policy Process Studies: A Network Perspective

Abstract: Questions of policy formation/implementation are often translated into the language of power and policy process is little doubt a political issue rather than a technical issue. The studies of policy process are used to apply either structural or individual perspective to explain power distribution in policy formation/implementation and have also led to the methodological puzzle of that what the real policy process is or how it does be consisted. This paper attempts to review the previous works and provide a suitable framework to link structural and individual perspectives in the study of state policy process. Traditional state policy process approaches such as Marxist theory, Pluralist approach, Elites approach and Corporatism approach are discussed to demonstrate the methodological controversy of different analytical levels. In order to grasp more comprehensive understanding of policy process, the interests and interactions of the political actors, how the institutional rules of game, the distribution of political resources and power construct their choices and political judgement should be considered in the research framework. It can be argued that policy network approach (or network perspective) can be seen as an appropriate strategy to combine microscopic and macroscopic analysis of policy process.

Some Research Challenges for Studies of Virtual Communities Using On-Line Tells

Abstract: This article reports on a study of learning and the coordination of activities in a geographically distributed community (a research consortium) using survey / Social Network Analysis methods combined with interviews. This article comments on and expands some of the important issues that were raised. After outlining the wider context, it highlights two broad themes related to research in the area of Virtual Communities: the nature of the communities themselves and the way in which they are studied. Following this, four areas for future research are outlined: the continuing role of face-to-face communication in Virtual Communities; the significance of the dual nature of such groups; the importance (or otherwise) of the structure of such communities; and the role played by exogenous factors. The article concludes with some comments on where this field relates to the debate among social theorists about the role of agency and structure in human activities.

Authors of our own lives? : individuals, institutions and the everyday practice of sociology

Abstract: Theories of practice suggest that social structure is reproduced and transformed through the everyday enactment of mundane practices. However, individuals' careers, institutions and policy interventions are typically marginalised within conceptual frameworks and empirical studies, of 'practice' and 'social structure'. This thesis redresses this imbalance. It does so by showing that understandings of social reproduction and transformation can be deepened by exploring intersections of everyday practice, careers, institutions and government policy in the lives of sociologists working in different kinds of UK university. Theoretical arguments about the reproduction and transformation of'practice' and 'structure', and how individuals' lives both shape, and are shaped, by these processes, are examined and developed with reference to a programme of empirical research. Interview data relating to everyday practice and careers are woven together with institutional and economic histories of UK universities and the discipline of sociology. By these means the thesis isolates and analyses different 'intersections' within academic life, and details the processes of reproduction and transformation identified in each intersection. The thesis shows that different 'registers' of structure and agency are at work in processes of reproduction and transformation. In the process it develops theoretical contributions from Archer (2000, 2003, 2007), Giddens (1979, 1984), Bourdieu (1980, 1984, 1986) and MacIntyre (1981), and shows how these might be combined to provide new ways of conceptualising the relation between individuals' careers, institutional history and shifting 'landscapes' in practice reproduction and transformation. The implications of this work for analysing and understanding how policies impact on daily lives are discussed.

Genre Theory and Research

Abstract: This entry provides overviews on current genre theory and research that investigates texts in their social contexts. Specifically, the entry focuses on relevant theory in Rhetorical genre studies and Linguistics and provides illustrations from applied studies in Professional Communication and Composition research. Since much current research in genre theory utilizes social theories that deal with questions of structure and agency, relevant theories in that area are reviewed as well. Finally, the entry notes some of the pedagogical implications of genre research