Showing papers on "Structure and agency published in 2015"

Identity and a Model of Investment in Applied Linguistics

Abstract: This article locates Norton's foundational work on identity and investment within the social turn of applied linguistics. It discusses its historical impetus and theoretical anchors, and it illustrates how these ideas have been taken up in recent scholarship. In response to the demands of the new world order, spurred by technology and characterized by mobility, it proposes a comprehensive model of investment, which occurs at the intersection of identity, ideology, and capital. The model recognizes that the spaces in which language acquisition and socialization take place have become increasingly deterritorialized and unbounded, and the systemic patterns of control more invisible. This calls for new questions, analyses, and theories of identity. The model addresses the needs of learners who navigate their way through online and offline contexts and perform identities that have become more fluid and complex. As such, it proposes a more comprehensive and critical examination of the relationship between identity, investment, and language learning. Drawing on two case studies of a female language learner in rural Uganda and a male language learner in urban Canada, the model illustrates how structure and agency, operating across time and space, can accord or refuse learners the power to speak.

Social Determinants and Health Behaviors: Conceptual Frames and Empirical Advances.

Abstract: Health behaviors shape health and well-being in individuals and populations. Drawing on recent research, we review applications of the widely applied "social determinants" approach to health behaviors. This approach shifts the lens from individual attribution and responsibility to societal organization and the myriad institutions, structures, inequalities, and ideologies undergirding health behaviors. Recent scholarship integrates a social determinants perspective with biosocial approaches to health behavior dynamics. Empirical advances model feedback among social, psychological and biological factors. Health behaviors are increasingly recognized as multidimensional and embedded in health lifestyles, varying over the life course and across place and reflecting dialectic between structure and agency that necessitates situating individuals in context. Advances in measuring and modeling health behaviors promise to enhance representations of this complexity.

The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption

Abstract: 1. Understanding control of corruption 2. Diagnosis and measurement 3. The road to Denmark: historical paths to corruption control 4. Structure and agency: determining control of corruption 5. Understanding contemporary achievers 6. Domestic collective action capacity 7. International agency and its anticorruption impact 8. From critical mess to critical mass: some tentative policy conclusions.

Habitus and the psychosocial: Bourdieu with feelings

Abstract: This paper explores the potential of habitus to provide a window on the psychosocial. The paper works with a notion of psychosocial study as inquiry into the mutual constitution of the individual and the social relations within which they are enmeshed. At the same time it attempts to deepen and enrich notions of habitus. Although the strong focus on agency and structure has overshadowed the role of emotions and the emotional life of individuals within conceptualisations of habitus in Bourdieu’s work, the paper argue that there are strong links between the psychosocial and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Drawing on empirical data on the affective aspects of living in an unequal society, the paper seeks to develop a psychosocial understanding of habitus that allows for a better and richer understanding of how the exterior – wider social structures – is experienced and mediated by the interior, the psyche.

Understanding health through social practices: performance and materiality in everyday life.

Abstract: The importance of recognising structure and agency in health research to move beyond methodological individualism is well documented. To progress incorporating social theory into health, researchers have used Giddens' and Bourdieu's conceptualisations of social practice to understand relationships between agency, structure and health. However, social practice theories have more to offer than has currently been capitalised upon. This article delves into contemporary theories of social practice as used in consumption and sustainability research to provide an alternative, and more contextualised means, of understanding and explaining human action in relation to health and wellbeing. Two key observations are made. Firstly, the latest formulations of social practice theory distinguish moments of practice performance from practices as persistent entities across time and space, allowing empirical application to explain practice histories and future trajectories. Secondly, they emphasise the materiality of everyday life, foregrounding things, technologies and other non-humans that cannot be ignored in a technologically dependent social world. In concluding, I argue the value of using contemporary social practice theories in health research is that they reframe the way in which health outcomes can be understood and could inform more effective interventions that move beyond attitudes, behaviour and choices.

Reflections on Regime Politics From Governing Coalition to Urban Political Order

Abstract: With hindsight covering a quarter of a century of Regime Politics, this reflection calls for refashioning the concept of an urban regime into a more encompassing idea of a multitiered political order. As an approach to political change, cross-time comparisons suggest that periodization can highlight how forces conjoin in different ways as political development unfolds. From this perspective, there is little reason to expect to find in today’s cities a stable and cohesive governing coalition held together around a high-priority agenda. Yet the need for resources to be commensurate with policy goals and the strength of purpose in the face of an established mind-set are key lessons to be retained from the past experiences of Atlanta and other cities. While systemic inequality continues as an overarching reality, mitigating responses can be worked out in the middle ground between structure and agency.

Introduction: What is Strategy as Practice?

Abstract: In recent years, Strategy as Practice has emerged as a distinctive approach for studying strategic management, organizational decision-making and managerial work (Whittington 1996 ; Johnson et al . 2003 ; Jarzabkowski et al . 2007 ). It focuses on the micro-level social activities, processes and practices that characterize organizational strategy and strategizing. This provides not only an organizational perspective into strategy but also a strategic angle for examining the process of organizing, and thereby serves as a useful research programme and social movement for connecting contemporary strategic management research with practiceoriented organizational studies. Strategy as Practice can be regarded as an alternative to the mainstream strategy research via its attempt to shift attention away from merely a focus on the effects of strategies on performance alone to a more comprehensive, in-depth analysis of what actually takes place in strategic planning, strategy implementation and other activities that deal with strategy. In other words, Strategy as Practice research is interested in the ‘black box’ of strategy work that once led the research agenda in strategic management research (Mintzberg 1973 ; Mintzberg and Waters 1985 ; Pettigrew 1973 ), but has thereafter been replaced by other issues, not least because of the increasing dominance of the micro-economic approach and a methodological preoccupation with statistical analysis. Because of its micro-level focus, studies following the Strategy as Practice agenda tend to draw on theories and apply methods that differ from the common practices of strategy scholars. In this way, Strategy as Practice research can contribute to the evolution of strategic management as a discipline and body of knowledge with new theories and methodological choices. It would, however, be a mistake not to link Strategy as Practice research to the broader ‘practice turn’ in contemporary social sciences. In fact, ‘practice’ has emerged as a key concept for understanding central questions about how agency and structure, and individual action and institutions are linked in social systems, cultures and organizations (Bourdieu 1990 ; Foucault 1977 ; Giddens 1984 ; de Certeau 1984 ; Sztompka 1991 ; Schatzki 2002 ). This practice turn is visible in many areas of the social sciences today, including organizational research (Brown and Duguid 1991 ; Orlikowski 2000 ; Nicolini et al . 2003 ). It is about time that we utilized this paradigm to enrich our understanding of organizational strategizing. ‘Practice’ is a very special concept in that it allows researchers to engage in a direct dialogue with practitioners. Studying practices enables one to examine issues that are directly relevant to those who are dealing with strategy, either as strategists engaged in strategic planning or other activities linked with strategy, or as those who have to cope with the strategies and their implications. By so doing, studies under this broad umbrella promise to accomplish something which is rare in contemporary management and organization research: to advance our theoretical understanding in a way that has practical relevance for managers and other organizational members. Like any emergent research approach, Strategy as Practice can either develop into a clearly defi ned but narrow theoretico-methodological perspective, or it can grow into an open and versatile research programme that is constantly stretching its boundaries. A key motivation behind this handbook is to

Defining personal reflexivity A critical reading of Archer’s approach

Abstract: Margaret Archer plays a leading role in the sociological analysis of the relation between structure and agency, and particularly in the study of reflexivity. The main aim of this article is to discuss her approach, focusing on the main contributions and limitations of Archer’s theory of reflexivity. It is argued that even though her research is a pioneering one, proposing an operationalization of the concept of reflexivity in view of its empirical implementation, it also minimizes crucial social factors and the dimensions necessary for a more complex and multi-dimensional study of the concept, such as social origins, family socialization, processes of internalization of exteriority, the role of other structure–agency mediation mechanisms and the persistence of social reproduction.

Agency amidst formidable structures: How girls perform gender in science class

Abstract: Larger social structures such as race, class, gender, and sexuality and classroom structures like narrowly defined participation practices constrain individuals' agency to engage in untroubled and sustained science identity work This article explores the central dilemma of attending to structure and agency in settings where inequities are blindingly pronounced Using a framework that highlights gender as discursive performance, we examine a data set of 13 girls' engagement with school science from fourth to seventh grade (ages 9–13) that shows how structures of gender, race, and class became more salient for girls' trajectories over time The gender performances that became most pronounced were: minimizing one's differences/fitting in, pleasing adults, and making oneself submissive or invisible “Helping others” became a subversive, rather than celebrated, practice over time To illustrate the themes with more depth, we present a longitudinal case study of Mirabel, an academically gifted and scientifically interested first generation immigrant to the US, whose science trajectory became increasingly precarious and entangled with larger social structures A focus on structures pointed to the narrowly constructed classroom subject positions that left virtually no room to be simultaneously “girly” and “scientific” and the prominence of heteronormative versions of femininity A focus on agency made evident that girls were less engaged with how to become scientific and more concerned with figuring out what kind of girl to be, given what was acceptable in the setting We end with an account of Mirabel that highlights her resourcefulness and agency that make possible a hopeful shift in her trajectory © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc J Res Sci Teach 52: 474–488, 2015

What can research into graduate employability tell us about agency and structure

Abstract: Traditionally theorists who have written about agency and structure have eschewed empirical research. This article uses the findings of an empirical study into graduate employability to inform the sociological debate on how they relate to each other. The study examined how Dutch and British final-year students approach the labour market right before they graduate. The study revealed that the labour market and education structures are mirrored in how students understand and act within the labour market. It also showed that the interplay between agency and structure is mediated by an intersubjective framework shared by other students. The article argues that previous theoretical views on employability have failed to understand this and suggests how to improve our understanding of agency and structure.

The Joint Accomplishment of Identity

Abstract: Identity has become a central concept in the analysis of learning from social perspectives. In this article, we draw on a situative perspective to conceptualize identity as a joint accomplishment between individuals and their interactions with norms, practices, cultural tools, relationships, and institutional and cultural contexts. Employing vignettes from our prior research, we examine the joint accomplishment of identity with respect to different levels of activity, including how identity develops in relation to the practices of a particular activity, how identity shifts over time across activities, and how more enduring communities and practices frame the ways that identity develops within and across activities. We illustrate, in particular, how a situative perspective on identity enables researchers to capture the dynamic interplay of individuals and resources, thus accounting for aspects of structure and agency in all social interactions.

Teacher agency and professional learning: Rethinking fidelity of implementation as multiplicities of enactment

Abstract: In this paper we use practice theory, with its focus on the interplay of structure and agency, to theorize about teacher engagement in professional learning and teacher enactment of pedagogical practices as an alternative to framing implementation research in terms of program adherence and fidelity of implementation. Practice theory allowed us to reconsider assumptions about characteristics of effective teacher professional learning, and to rethink our own notions of agency. Using data from our three-year middle school science teacher professional learning project, Language-rich Inquiry Science with English Language Learners (LISELL), we discuss how individual teachers negotiated power structures of schooling and exerted their agency in ways that were influenced by their project participation. Framing our work in terms of engagement and enactment, we theorize about how a structure-agency dialectic challenging assumptions about effective teacher professional learning can support new ways of thinking about implementation research in education. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 489–502, 2015

Situating Speech: A Rhetorical Approach to Political Strategy

Abstract: Ideas are increasingly acknowledged as factors in explaining political behaviour But often they are treated as inert resources rather than dynamic instances of action in themselves The latter, I propose, requires reflection on the character of speech – as the medium of ideas – in responding to and refiguring a prevailing situation I undertake such reflection by setting out a rhetorical approach to political strategy Building upon ‘interpretive’ advances in political science I shift the focus from stable cognitive frames to the dynamics of argumentation where ideas work expressively I then explore the rhetorical aspect of strategising with attention to the way speech serves to orient audiences by creatively re-appropriating a situation That approach is shown to be consistent with a ‘dialectical’ political sociology that emphasises the interaction of structure and agency Finally, I sketch a method for undertaking rhetorical analysis and indicate how it might be applied to a concrete example

Making institutional accounting research critical: dead end or new beginning?

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review extant accounting research combining institutional and critical theories to examine whether the paradigmatic tensions associated with such research can be alleviated whilst engendering politically engaged scholarship aimed at facilitating processes of emancipation in organisational fields. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a review of relevant accounting research and offers recommendations for how to combine institutional and critical research approaches in a paradigmatically consistent way. Findings – Extant accounting research combining institutional and critical theories has not dealt effectively with the partly inter-related problems of ontological drift (i.e. misalignment of ontological assumptions and epistemological commitments) and the conflation of notions of agency and structure. If such problems remain unaddressed institutional research aimed at generating politically engaged scholarship and human emancipation is unlikely to progre...

The Possibilities and Limits of the Structure-Agency Dialectic in Advancing Science for All.

Abstract: In this special issue, the structure–agency dialectic is used to shift the analytic frame in science education from focusing on youth as in need of remediation to rethinking new arrangements, tools, and forms of assistance and participation in support of youth learning science. This shift from “fixing” the individual to re-mediating and transforming the functional system is key to reimagining new forms of learning and doing science that are tied to the imaginings of new futures, trajectories, and identities. In this manuscript, we discuss the major contributions of these studies in the special issue. In so doing, we seek to lay out both the possibilities and limits of the structure–agency dialectic in advancing science for all. We suggest that social and pedagogical imaginaries enable one to move the structure–agency dialectic towards transformative ends. We further suggest that to account more actively for how position and power shape the ways in which individuals seek to take action, the meanings they ascribe to such action, symbolically and otherwise, we must be ready to interrogate the relation between structure and agency and issues of equity and consequential and valued forms of science learning in local environments and in larger educational systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 574–583, 2015

The uncritical realism of realist evaluation

Abstract: This article is a response to Ray Pawson’s critique of critical realism, the philosophy of science elaborated by Roy Bhaskar. I argue with Pawson’s interpretation of critical realism’s positions on both natural and social science and his charges concerning its totalizing ontology, its arrogant epistemology and its naive methodology. The differences between critical realism and realist evaluation are not as significant as Pawson contends. The main differences between the two realisms lie in their approaches to the relationship between social structures and human agency, and between facts and values. I argue that evaluation scientists need to clearly distinguish structure and agency. They should also make their values explicit. The uncritical approach of realist evaluation, combined with its underplaying of the importance of agency, leaves it open to implication in the abuses of bureaucratic instrumentalism.

A non-essentialist model of culture: Implications of identity, agency and structure within multinational/multicultural organizations

Abstract: This article, opens, briefly clarifying paradigms of essentialism and non-essentialism (also known as anti-essentialism) and shows evolving dimensions of dominant models of culture, namely, Hofsted...

The role of reflective practice in educating about race, identity and difference

Abstract: This thesis sets out to examine how the supposed ‘transformative’ qualities of reflective practice that are cited largely uncritically in education and health literature, viewed as a panacea, might be applied to race and difference. Central to this is the work of Donald Schon on reflection-in-action, which elevates practice above theoretical knowledge that Schon casts as a product of ‘technical rationality, influenced by the growth of higher education. Schon’s work through its pre-eminence on action gained much greater exposure, in contrast to Boud and Mezirow who placed a greater emphasis on the role of emotion and through this to draw attention to differing types of knowledge offering more holistic ways of knowing. The study is influenced by critical lenses from institutional ethnography (Smith 1987, 1990, 2005, 2006) and critical race theory (Delgado and Stefancic 2001) that draw on intersectionality in drawing up nuanced constructions of race and difference embedded in ‘texts’ forming everyday racism and sexism in the workplace, preventing educators from actively opposing institutionally discriminatory practices. Work on race, viewed in this study as a series of moments, has most recently seen the ascendancy of post-racism, suggesting that ‘authentic’ racism is a relic of the past. This has accelerated the stripping of critical spaces to examine race in education, both for trainees and also current practitioners. Work on race and difference in particular though needs to produce critical examinations of structure and agency in work settings. Space, resources and expertise for this are being denied, replaced by simplistic calls for an uncritical ‘meritocracy’ in education underpinned by a neo-liberal managerialist approach, focusing on efficiency and achievement discourses. Both IE and CRT build data from the ground up using informant perspectives to map the flows of power rather than through a ‘sociological’ critique of policy to produce narratives examining how ‘ruling relations’ are embedded in everyday taken for granted work processes. Drawing on visual methods, as well as interviews and observations this study produced rich, deeply descriptive data to uncover ruling relations, evidenced in policy as well as everyday practice. Methodological reflexivity produced a critique of the use of NVIVO as a data processing and reducing tool. Increasingly regarded as an indispensable part of the qualitative researcher’s ‘kit’, it leads to a predilection for grounded theory and therefore misses more nuanced readings of data. ‘I-poems’ provided entry to power relations of race, gender, age, class and religion in the settings via a richer alternative hermeneutic process. Producing narratives which gave access to emotions in the workplace and in relation to race highlighted how the presence of bureaucratic systems for ‘handling’ difference and the presence of multicultural ‘performance’, a facet of post-race work have resulted in producing an illusion of ‘race work’ with little informed examination, buttressed by strong, emotional constructs. This results in reflection being used for solitary, internal contemplation as a palliative rather than being a site of collaborative, critically informed, transformative action.

Entrepreneurial social capital research: resolving the structure and agency dualism

Abstract: Purpose – While there is a large volume of entrepreneurial social capital research, the philosophical assumptions have received limited attention. The purpose of this paper is to review and classify entrepreneurial social capital studies according to the following approaches – objectivist (positivist-realist, structuralist) and subjectivist (social constructionist). There is a neglect of structure and agency, and the authors encourage a critical realist approach that permits an understanding of observable network structure, constraint-order and human agency as a dynamic system. Design/methodology/approach – The ontological and epistemological assumptions, and associated strengths and weaknesses of objectivist (positivist-realist, structuralist) and subjectivist (social constructionist) entrepreneurial social capital studies are discussed. The case for a more progressive critical realist approach is developed. Findings – The authors demonstrate that objectivist (positivist-realist, structuralist) research with findings bereft of situated meaning and agency dominates. The emergence of subjectivist research – narratively examining different network situations from the perspective of those embedded in networks – is an emerging and competing approach. This dualism is unlikely to comprehensively understand the complex system-level properties of social capital. Future research should adopt critical realism and fuse: objective data to demonstrate the material aspects of network structures and what structural social capital exists in particular settings; and subjective data that enhances an understanding of situated meaning, agency and intention in a network. Originality/value – This paper contributes a review of entrepreneurial social capital research and philosophical foundations. The development of a critical realist approach to understanding social capital gestation permits a system-level analysis of network structure influencing conduct, and agency.

Fostering structurally transformative teacher agency through science professional development

Abstract: This study draws on data from a 10-month critical narrative inquiry of science teaching and learning in a third grade, dual language, integrated co-teaching classroom. The teachers were participants in a 14-week science professional development seminar that enrolled inservice and preservice teachers and focused on enhancing science teaching and learning in the classroom while drawing on the unique resources of the city. Data for the study include classroom audiotape, student work samples, audiotape of teacher planning meetings, semi-structured interviews, and a team portfolio. Data were analyzed using constant comparative methods. The findings illustrate a dialectical relationship between agency and structure and show a transition from more structurally reproductive toward more structurally transformative teacher agency over time. The emphasis on literacy in the school, the dual language program, and teachers' lack of science content knowledge tended to promote structurally reproductive agency, whereas the teachers' participation in a science professional development program and the unique context of a museum climate change exhibit fostered more structurally transformative teacher agency. Student agency was greatest when teachers engaged in more structurally transformative forms of agency. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 545–559, 2015

Preservice teacher agency concerning education for sustainability (EfS): A discursive psychological approach

Abstract: In this paper, we utilize a discursive psychological approach to further explore agency and structure in science education research. The aim of our research is to understand how we can provide opportunities for marginalized students in preservice elementary teacher education in an Australian university to become agentic concerning environmental sustainability. Preservice teacher agency in this study is understood as the positioning of preservice teachers as responsible for their action. Responsibility can be indexed using grammatical devices including pronouns. Structure and agency are analyzed as constantly remade through socially meaningful action and the smallest course of our analysis is the social act. In this way, we have treated agency and structure as a dialectic but avoided their central conflation. Our findings emerged from the analysis of open ended reflective journals written by the preservice teachers related to taking action in their daily lives to reduce their ecological footprint during a semester-long science course. We select an instrumental case, Ecocarmie, to illustrate our findings and the potential of our discursive psychological approach for further research in this area. In our analysis, we show how Ecocarmie self-positions in the public domain of Tumblr as pro-environmentally engaged, drawing upon social and material resources and discuss the implications of our study for preservice teacher education in EfS. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 560–573, 2015

Reconceptualising the Mundane and the Extraordinary: A Lens through Which to Explore Transformation within Women’s Everyday Footwear Practices

Abstract: This article explores the transformatory potential of the lived realities of people’s everyday social lives, seen here to be patterned by a dynamic interplay between the ‘mundane’ and the ‘extraordinary’. Their interaction acts as an interpretive device that can generate new, empirically grounded theoretical insights. Thus, I argue for greater recognition and focus on relationality and connectedness, or rather, that is to say, a meso-level in between structure and agency that individuals both contribute to and are influenced by within everyday life. Using data from a qualitative three year ESRC-funded study of identity, transition and footwear, the article weaves these concerns together with a focus on women’s agency, as seen through the interpretive capacity of the mundane and the extraordinary. In so doing, the boundaries and relationship of the mundane and the extraordinary are reconceptualised.

A ‘new’ speech style is born. The omnipresence of structure and agency in the life of semiotic registers in heterogeneous urban spaces

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the sociolinguistic discussion about the need for a unified sociological theory, by applying realist social theory (RST) (Carter and Sealey, this volume) to the total linguistic fact (TLF) (Silverstein 1985) or to the semiotics of ‘new’ speech styles in heterogeneous urban spaces. We explore, with data from Belgium (Flanders, Limburg) on Citétaal and Norway on so-called kebabnorsk, the ways structure and agency are omnipresent in the enregisterment of these semiotic registers. Through media discourse analyses, we investigate essential parts of this enregisterment process, in particular the invention and diffusion of labels and the assignment of stereotypical indexical values to these speech styles and to their alleged speakers. We demonstrate, in line with other studies, that media in interplay with scholars is a key force in the enregisterment of these speech styles. In the analysed media discourse, kebabnorsk and Citétaal are constructed as a ‘mixed language’, as a countable and uniform entity, the use of which inevitably results in unemployment. The alleged language users are constructed as a homogeneous group, namely ‘young people with migrant backgrounds’. It is shown that social structure, including asymmetric power relations and language hegemonies, are omnipresent in the valorisation of these registers and that media discourses rely on language ideologies of unity and purity, ideologies central to amonolingual orientation. We advocate a translingual orientation towards language and communication in which communication transcends languages and involves negotiation of mobile resources. This orientation captures the ontology of language and communication and has, as such, the potential to empower the language users’ individual agencies. Bente A. Svendsen: Professor of Norwegian as a second language and Scandinavian linguistics and the Deputy Director of MultiLing Centre for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, a Centre of Excellence at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo, E ˗ mail: b.a.svendsen@iln.uio.no Stefania Marzo: Assistant Professor at the Department of Linguistics at the KU Leuven, Belgium, E ˗ mail: Stefania.Marzo@arts.kuleuven.be EuJAL 2015; 3(1): 47–85 MOUTON

The Emergence of Cambodian Civil Society within Global Educational Governance: A Morphogenetic Approach to Agency and Structure.

Abstract: This paper uses Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic approach to analyze the emergence of civil society within global educational governance. The purpose is to understand the intersection of historical structures with global actors and spaces that have accompanied the globalization of education. Based on findings from a study on the impact in Cambodia of the Civil Society Education Fund – sponsored by the Global Campaign for Education – we first identify the relevant sociocultural, political-economic, and governance structures within which the politics of education is embedded in Cambodia. Then, we detail the relational processes through which Cambodian civil society has been able to join and, in so doing, modify the structures of education governance. The value of the morphogenetic approach is its treatment of time – that is, the way that it temporarily separates structure and agency in order to make possible an analysis of the dynamics of global education governance. While this approach is not new, we sugges...

Neolithic rock-art in the north of Europe : structures, discourses and agency

Abstract: Archaeology involves creating meaningful narratives of prehistoric societies, using only the remains of their material culture. This study focuses on Neolithic rock-art in two very different regions – Jamtland (Northern Sweden) and Cumbria (North West England) – seeking to explore, directly, the ‘meaningfulness’ of this art. During the Neolithic period in Britain (c. 4000-2400 BC) and Northern Sweden (c. 4000-1800 BC), rocky outcrops were elaborated either by pecking abstract designs (Britain) or by carving and painting animal and human representations (Northern Sweden). Prehistoric rock-art in Britain and Scandinavia is usually understood and made ‘meaningful’ in relation to one, or a combination of, methodological approaches: it may be understood as part of the landscape (experienced through the human body (phenomenology)), or given meaning in light of ethnographic evidence. All of these approaches, however, ignore the subtle ways in which the rock-art itself was structured. The study, presented here, employed three methodological approaches in order to attempt to understand rock-art in a new and, arguably, more meaningful way. Firstly, a structure- based approach involved establishing the primary methods that the carvers used to create meaningful rock-art narratives. Secondly, a discourse- based approach was used to uncover how these basic design forms were articulated, to allow communication and dialogue of Neolithic ideas into the sphere of social practice (discourse being an attempt to identify themes within the rock-art narratives, which act as intermediaries between structure and agency). Finally, the third agency- based approach blends structure with discourse (agency allowed meaningful social action to occur during the Neolithic). The structure-based approach in Cumbria revealed that the art of the central fells region was based on the manipulation of natural and cultural cups or circles into linear patterns. This is in contrast with the approach in eastern Cumbria, where the reverse was found- with lines being manipulated into circular shapes. In Jamtland, the fundamental structure of the art was based on the division of elk into both male/female and moving/stationary categories. The results of the discourse methodology revealed that three themes dictated the style of rock-art carvings during the Neolithic, in both Cumbria and Jamtland; naturalistic, stylised and abstract. The agency approach concluded that the visual statements made using the rock-art were examples of agents’ changing relationship with the natural world and the resources it contained- especially the quarrying of stone for axes. Metaphorically, it is argued that the three changing discourses of rock-art were a reflection of the changing relationship people had with the quarrying of stone and its exchange. One of the main implications of this research is the finding that there is still a place for investigating rock-art and material/visual culture. Furthermore, using the methodological approach of this research, we are in a position to explore some of the deeper dimensions of visual culture, and its relationship to social structure and agency, in the Neolithic.

Bridging Structure and Agency: Exploring the Role of Teacher Leadership in Teacher Collaboration:

Abstract: Building on York-Barr and Duke's (2004) conceptual framework for teacher leadership, this article explores teacher leadership as an informal influence that arises out of interactions and is exerted...

A study of structure and agency interactions in the changing context of English higher education: what is happening to pedagogy and what are we doing about it?

Abstract: This research explores aspects of emerging pedagogy in the work of seven members of faculty across disciplines, in three English higher education institutions. It takes place in a context of changing global and national circumstances and contributes insights into pedagogy as it is enacted under the distortion of market forces and the commodification of education. A case study approach, underpinned by critical realism is used to analyse participants’ pedagogic endeavours. This is combined with a multi-level consideration of the global, national and institutional processes influential in each case. To overcome the epistemological challenges involved with dealing with the complexity of the myriad possible influences, methodological features of the research involve the use of retroduction and abductive inference. Features of agency, of human knowledge and pedagogy and of the changing nature of higher education are analysed by identifying structures as having interacting social, cultural and material aspects within a stratified reality. An Archerian morphogenetic approach reveals structure and agency interactions over time in participants’ accounts. The study finds that, in spite of adverse conditions, there is a richness and depth to participants’ understanding and facilitation of their students’ learning. Participants draw upon significant internal resources to overcome the problems faced in teaching. Pedagogic approaches that are most distorted, under the drive to commodify and marketise aspects of higher education, are those that allow students to develop their own practices within the discipline they are entering, and to reformulate external knowledge for themselves within their own unfolding experiences. This study claims that the use of critical realism has been an extremely fruitful way to analyse emergent aspects of participants’ pedagogy within the current complex and shifting terrain of English higher education.

Practicing Community Engagement: Engaging contradictions in inclusion and exclusion in collaborative planning and policymaking

Abstract: This dissertation analyzes community engagement practices as a fundamental feature of democracy, planning, and policymaking processes. Multiple disciplines, including public policy, planning, and public health, understand community engagement as a mechanism to make planning, policymaking, and research processes and their outcomes more democratic, effective, and sustainable. Yet scholars, practitioners, and community residents continue to observe and experience difficulty collaborating in the design and implementation of policy. I investigated these conundrums of democracy, representation, governance, and collaboration through this dissertation, a four-year ethnographic study of community engagement in a foundation-funded neighborhood health initiative in Southern California. In this dissertation research, I inductively expand current understandings of exclusion and inclusion in planning and policymaking by enlisting practice theory as a theoretical and analytical lens. Practice theory entails both agency and structure; thus, it provides an alternative view to social phenomena, like community engagement, that are commonly studied using an agentic focus (e.g. practitioners need more training to be inclusive) or a structural analysis (e.g. practitioners have the decision-making power and thus exclusion persists). Using a practice lens, I define exclusion through a set of exclusionary practices, all of which prevent connections between different stakeholders, between their issues, and between current and preexisting advocacy and community organizing efforts. I also relate exclusion and inclusion to structural advantages and disadvantages, including the use and maintenance of common organizational and institutional practices in community settings. I describe structural advantages and disadvantages as practices that constitute community power dynamics. Specifically, I explain the relationship between power, defined as the ability to take action, and practices of exclusion and inclusion. I explore the rationale and implications of exclusionary and inclusionary practices by drawing from scholarship on institutional logics. I conclude that community engagement and planning and policymaking are ontologically nonlinear and emergent processes, and that empirical or practical approaches to community engagement must embrace nonlinearity and emergence in order to be inclusive.

A Critical Evaluation of Interventions to Progress Transdisciplinary Research

Abstract: Transdisciplinary research is widely being promoted for its potential to effectively address complex issues, such as ecosystem management in a changing climate. Working across disciplines and with broader society can benefit greatly from continuous evaluation to improve transdisciplinary practices. However, methods for such continuous self-reflection are scarce, with little evidence of the application of social science concepts, theory, or methods. This article presents a case study of how researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds have familiarized themselves with the key social science concepts of “structure” and “agency” to reflect on the integrative research efforts of a research center in southwestern Australia. They identified influential “structures” as the geographical separation of the center's research groups, contrasting research cultures, and little previous engagement with the social sciences. Evidence of “agency” comprised various interventions to promote collaboration. Intriguingly, these interventions rendered some challenging paradoxes.

Ethical selves and glass chains : a complex understanding of career experiences through the voices of British Pakistani women

Abstract: This thesis begins with an intellectual puzzle (Mason, 2002): why are there so few British Pakistani women (BPw) in managerial and professional positions in organizations in the UK? (EOC, 2007:9). A literature review based on the context: gender, ethnicity, religion and nationality, as well as the social phenomenon: career experiences, revealed a number of blind spots. These blind spots were theoretical, methodological and empirical. I theorize for an approach that links structures that create intersecting identit(y)ies to organizations, and then further. I posit that as identities are under construction, the identity of ethnic minority women in managerial and professional roles can be shaped in organizations and by organizations. However, being a woman is still an area of concern (Calas et al., 2014). Thus, gender needs to be in the forefront among all social categories (Broadbridge and Simpson, 2011). The research findings reveal three insights. The first is linked to the discussion on choices that women make with respect to careers and employment (Hakim, 2002). The participants’ in this research make choices based on ethical selves, borrowing on Foucault’s technologies of self and ethical subject. Ethical selves focus on both structure and agency as playing a role in choices. The second insight is linked to the notion of free choice. Underpinning ethical selves is the insight of glass chains. The glass chain is a metaphor I am using to elucidate invisible links to a moral code. I posit the individual is never free from Discourse because she is linked to moral codes (Foucault, 1991a). While disciplinary power gives no room for manoeuvring, I propose that glass chains do. It is self-exercised by an individual to keep herself within her moral codes, yet allows her freedom, although limited. Glass chains allow individuals to see themselves as ethical subjects and transform their lives ethically. The third insight is linked to the literature that postulates that identity is in process and the argument of Ely and Padavic (2007) that identity work continues in organizations. I demonstrate the identity of an individual is affected by organizations and their “inequality regimes” (Acker, 2006a). In addition, intersecting identities and glass chains working simultaneously within inequality regimes result in invisible barriers (the inability to fit in or merge and become invisible), further re-producing feelings of being the other. This creates a situation that perpetuates and reproduces inequalities.