Showing papers on "Structure and agency published in 2022"

Rethinking Social Upgrading in Global Value Chains: Worker Power, State‒Labour Relations and Intersectionality

Abstract: This article builds on critiques of the concept of social upgrading in global value chain (GVC) research, which problematize its coupling to lead firm strategies and economic upgrading by supplier firms, by reconceptualizing social upgrading through the lens of worker power. It argues that a better understanding of the causal processes of social upgrading can be obtained by integrating insights from labour geography, which situates worker agency at the intersection of a ‘vertical’ dimension of transnational relations and a ‘horizontal’ dimension of local relations, with conceptualizations of worker power from (global) labour studies, particularly the modes of structural and associational power. The authors call for a deeper theorization of the places in which GVCs ‘touch down’, arguing that worker power is decisively shaped by state–labour relations as well as the intersectionality of worker identities and interlinkages between spheres of production and reproduction. Case study analyses of the apparel sectors in Cambodia and Vietnam employ this reconceptualization, drawing on the authors’ own fieldwork. In both cases, worker power expressed in strike action was a key causal driver of social upgrading; and in both, the outcomes were conditioned by GVC dynamics as well as shifting state–labour relations and intersections of worker identities linked to gender, household and community relations.

Migrants and Undeclared Employment within the European Construction Sector: Challenging Dichotomous Approaches to Workers’ Agency

Abstract: Drawing upon qualitative data on Albanians residing in Italy and Greece, this article furnishes new insights into the topic of undeclared migrant construction workers’ agency. It analyses different types of undeclared work through Katz’s theoretical framework that suggests a disaggregated conceptualisation of agency. In so doing, it adds to thinking on the factors shaping fluidity between types of agency and challenges dichotomous views on passive or voluntary participation. The article also highlights that mutual interests between workers and employers enable migrant builders to defy and resist state regulations, despite the impacts of undeclared work on workers and the fact that power dynamics are unequal. Thus, the main contribution the article makes is to suggest a more nuanced understanding of labour agency that may go beyond the conflict between employers and workers. Overall, the article highlights the relevance of this study for different economic sectors, geographical areas and migrant groups.

OUP accepted manuscript

Abstract: Abstract This commentary proposes a reorientation of diaspora studies towards new configurations of participation and identification. Digital media affordances in this sense are just such new configurations that enable, sustain and multiply diasporic encounters through social media platforms, digital devices and infrastructures. The emerging digital diasporas do not oppose or replace traditional diasporas, but on the contrary further expand and transform their agency in the digital age Mihaela Nedelcu (2018). In our thinking, we are inconversation with, as well as departing from, previous notions of diaspora. In this commentary, we briefly establish the complex and non-linear genealogy of the term, as partaking in multiple disciplinary takes and discursive orientations, and then migrating to the new realm of technology and digital connectedness.

Family theorizing for social justice: A critical praxis

Abstract: Although families are subject to multiple social stratifications and systemic injustices, family science was built upon foundational ideas that theorized a unitary, normative structure of family life. Increasing social and political awareness has brought a new urgency to theorize about and study how families actually live, with a need for critical theories to explain and understand the multiplicity and reality of family experiences. We examine new theoretical possibilities among a selection of seven family theories, including four foundational theories in the family science canon (symbolic interactionist theory, functionalist theory, life course theory, and family stress and resilience theory), and three critical theories that are rising in potential and prominence (intersectional feminist theory, critical race theory, and queer theory). We address the ways in which new forms of critical family theorizing—including the redemption of older foundational theories—are needed to account for macro-level issues of antiracism and social justice, thereby offering innovative possibilities for generating explanations about diverse family structures, processes, and contexts. Critical praxis—turning theory into action—can fuel transformative social justice work, including antiracist activism that makes a difference in the lives of the families we study and with whom we live.

An interdisciplinary perspective on scaling in transitions: Connecting actors and space

Abstract: The question of how sustainable innovations and how niche experimentation lead to systemic changes are a core motivation of sustainability transitions research. As an inherently interdisciplinary field, although this question is addressed from different academic perspectives, the dominant understanding of relevant scaling processes is grounded in concepts of growth, diffusion and expansion. This article contributes to the discussion of more nuanced understandings of scaling, acknowledging the value of ontological levels for analytic purposes, but also drawing on knowledge from socio-psychological and spatial perspectives. Alternative understandings of spatial and agency-related scaling approaches are discussed and compared. An integrative socio-spatial framework is developed, providing a mid-range framework capable of supporting analysis of transitions that connects different disciplinary perspectives within a level-based ontology. We use an illustrative case study and derive implications for how this can inform questions of scaling and particularly spatial upscaling of new ways of doing, thinking & organizing

Why Do Comparative Public Policy and Political Economy Scholars Need an Analytic Eclectic View of Structure, Institution and Agency?

Abstract: Abstract This article illustrates an analytic eclectic value of structure, institution and agency (SIA) framework in comparative public policy. It engages and utilizes certain structural, institutional and agential perspectives from past literature to specify how elements of their causal properties coexist as part of a more complex argument. It argues that desired or preferred policy and/or institutional outcomes are most likely when multiple structural and institutional complementarities (from structures and institutions to agents) and multiple structural, institutional and agential enabling conditions accompany one another in motivating and empowering actors (from agents to structures and institutions) to engage in purposeful agential actions.

A Call for Critical Bifocality: Research on Marginalization in Mathematics Education

Abstract: Education researchers have long wrestled with the interplay of oppressive structures and individual agency in reproducing, sustaining, and contesting marginalization. In this article, we suggest that Weis and Fine’s construct of critical bifocality may assist researchers in understanding and addressing marginalization in mathematics education. We conduct a conceptual review of existing mathematics education literature that accounts for both structure and agency in theorizing marginalization. By reading this literature alongside Weis and Fine’s 2012 article, we develop four criteria for operationalizing critical bifocality in mathematics education research. The findings from this review highlight the interconnectedness of structures and individual lives, of the material and ideological elements of marginalization, of intersectionality and within-group heterogeneity, and of histories and institutions. Additionally, they offer theoretical and methodological recommendations for researchers studying marginalization in mathematics education.

Education as a Source for Transformative Agency: Theoretical and Practical Issues

Abstract: The issue of “transformative agency”, which proactively improves and transforms social structures, is relevant both for theoretical discussions and practical agenda. The field of education is of particular importance in terms of shaping the potential for agency. However, the dominant areas of research in education, including the sociology of education, focus, on the contrary, on the mechanisms and factors of reproduction of social structures and related activities. The authors propose to expand the research agenda by increasing attention to the conditions and mechanisms of the formation of “transformative agency” at different levels of education and in its various segments, with an account of the processes of de-structuration that weaken the forms of institutional coercion familiar to the 20th century. The article raises theoretical questions and suggests relevant empirical phenomena for further research.

State structures and the limits of agency: governing the transformation from coal in Australia

Abstract: To what extent do subnational differences in the configurations of formal and informal institutions shape the relative capacities of state and regional agents? This article considers the distribution of capacities and powers among regional actors, as defined by their organizational roles and the power of the state. After comparing the management of economic change in two peripherally located and coal-dependent areas in different States in Australia, the article concludes that accounts of institutional change in regional studies have paid insufficient attention to the limitations on agency arising from organizational positioning and the ‘top down’ assertion of state power.

Entrepreneurialism as Discourse: Toward a Critical Research Agenda

Abstract: This paper contributes to a growing literature that examines entrepreneurship with a critical perspective, arguing for a research agenda that makes entrepreneurialism as discourse visible. We define the discourse of entrepreneurialism as a style of thinking and economic intervention that invites actors to pursue their interests by drawing on a limited notion of agency that locates itself in an imaginary economic universe independent of institutions, broad social contexts, and identity considerations. Associated with the global rise of neoliberalism, entrepreneurialism provides actors with tools and competences to imagine organizations in narrow, instrumental terms and with an idealized notion of agency. We argue that seeing entrepreneurial capacity in such a limited way makes it impossible to fully understand entrepreneurship as a phenomenon. Highlighting the adverse consequences of entrepreneurialism, we map areas of inquiry that can contribute to the emergence of a more effective and comprehensive critical research agenda concerning entrepreneurialism.

What Does Comparative Policy Analysis Have to Do with the Structure, Institution and Agency Debate?

Abstract: Abstract A growing number of political and policy scientists have utilized institutional theory to explain how the purposeful actions of agents shape and are shaped by structural, institutional, and agential factors. Most current studies, however, have conflated and/or combined the fundamental concepts of structure, institution, and actor, overlooking how their interactions shape policy and institutional outcomes. Furthermore, such research lacks an approach that allows a more comprehensive means to integrate the various dimensions of such interactions. By studying these distinct but interdependent causal factors through an integrative approach, we provide a richer, more comprehensive understanding of contingent conditions, agency, and outcomes.

Understanding Rural School Teachers’ Professional Agency and Its Relationship to Social Structure

Abstract: Abstract Research on the role of teacher agency has been growing significantly during the last decade. Agentic teachers act purposefully and constructively to direct their professional development and contribute to the quality of education, especially in rural areas. Professional development is mutually constituted between teachers and socio-cultural conditions (e.g., circumstances, physical artifacts, power relations, and school cultures) that constrain or enable their agency. This study explored teacher professional agency, and its relationship to teacher perceived social structure, using two newly developed scales: (1) the Teacher Professional Agency (TPA) and (2) the Teacher-Perceived Social Structure (TPSS). A total number of 592 teachers working at rural schools in western China completed the questionnaire. The findings revealed that the two scales were valid and reliable instruments for measuring teacher professional agency, and teacher perceived social structure. Findings show a modestly-moderately correlation between teachers’ professional identity and their perceived social identity. Collegial relationships, followed by school climate and social identity, have the strongest impact on teachers’ professional agency.

Structure and agency in the development of education policies for refugee-background students

Abstract: This article reports on a critical policy study on refugee education in two states of Australia, which involved an analysis of policy documents and interviews with policy developers. The findings show that policy development for students from refugee backgrounds is affected by structures including ways of knowing refugees, desires to measure their linguistic ‘performance’ and the internal structures of the organisations in which policies are developed. These structures shape and are shaped by the actions of individual policy makers as agents. Without awareness of these structures in policy making, they can inadvertently reinforce deficit framings of student groups such as refugees.

Contextualising rural entrepreneurship – A strong structuration perspective on gendered-local agency

Abstract: This article employs Stones’ (2005) Strong Structuration Theory (SST) to contextualise rural entrepreneurship. Through shadowing a single case study of a woman entrepreneur from rural Sweden, we propose gendered-local agency as operationalisation of active agency in practice. While SST positions active agency as a property of agents, we demonstrate it is as a property that is intertwined with both agents and structure. Simultaneously enabled and constrained, gendered-local agency itself becomes contextualised within gender-related and locality-related rural-specific interplay that modifies, preserves and challenges rural structures. The article contributes to the literature on contextualising entrepreneurship through a structuration lens by signifying gendered-local agency as a manifestation of rural-specific interplay between contexts as environments (out there) and context as constructed (through entrepreneurs). This conceptualisation proposes everyday entrepreneurship as a demonstration of agency in action, thus setting a foundation for exploring entrepreneurship through the context-specific agent-structure interplay in the rural context and others.

Considering an agency–vulnerability nexus in the lives of street children and youth

Abstract: ABSTRACT This article seeks to engage in a critical debate around the sociocultural contexts and academic understandings of agency and vulnerability. It proposes an agency–vulnerability nexus as a useful conceptual tool to consider these linked concepts and how they have been related in the literature on children and youth and across social and cultural contexts. We use the term ‘nexus’ as we seek to explore ‘agency’ and ‘vulnerability’ not as antonymic binaries but as multi-dimensional connections created both by individuals and by the sociocultural settings in which they inhabit. Drawing on secondary analysis of data from Growing up on the Streets, a longitudinal ethnographic research project where street children and youth were both participants and researchers, this article examines the applicability of the agency–vulnerability nexus among young people living in street settings. It concludes that by acknowledging a plurality of conceptual perspectives around children and youth agency, the agency–vulnerability nexus can be used conceptually to better understand street children and youth’s experiences.

Thwarted or Facilitated? The Entrepreneurial Aspirations and Capabilities of New Migrants in the UK

Abstract: This article draws on biographical interviews with migrants to assess their aspirations and capabilities to become entrepreneurs. By augmenting mixed embeddedness emphasis on contextual factors with Sen’s capabilities framework, we contribute to extant sociological debates on the interaction of structure and agency, the conceptualisation of aspirations, the non-pecuniary aspects of entrepreneurship and the role of institutions in neoliberal Britain. We argue that structural barriers drive the formation of aspirations to become entrepreneurs while at the same time limit their capabilities to do so. Entrepreneurial agency must be seen as relative autonomy, effective in strategic decision making but limited to the weak financial position in which migrant entrepreneurs operate.

How Communion and Agentic Beliefs Predict Technology-Supported Formal and Informal Learning: The Implications for Educational Technology

Abstract: Recent pandemic circumstances facilitated a rapid shift to online learning. The home and school environments are now intertwined, so the connection of formal and informal environments is inevitable. The studies of online learning resources (OLR) use before the pandemic shed light on studies of pandemic school-home learning nexus. This paper examines the higher edu-cation situation before the pandemic. We discuss students’ use (N = 1323) of technology in learning in light of the role of educational technology, taking a socio-cultural perspective of learning in the broader context of formal and informal socio-cultural contexts and practices of interaction with humans and tools. An analysis of OLR identified three factors. The first two factors involved overlapping formal and informal learning, while the third was clearer collaboration and interaction for formal learning. The three factors were analysed using hierarchical regression to assess predictors for technolo-gy use, focussing on three factors. (1) Beliefs about learning with technolo-gy, examined within the two-dimensional structure of agency and commun-ion. (2) Self-regulated learning, which is critical for informal learning and al-so received significant attention in formal learning. Since it is claimed that teachers are not ready for integrating informal learning, we examined (3) teachers as role models as predictors of ICT use in learning. Finally, (4) since obstacles were among the primary critical factors in previous related studies, we examined whether they still have predictive power. The findings indicate that communion and agentic beliefs are the strongest predictors.

The contributions of study abroad to home countries: an agential perspective

Abstract: Abstract Contributions to home country after international higher education (IHE) have long been considered within the traditional frameworks of brain drain or brain circulation. However, recent scholarship has hinted at more nuances into this issue than what has been predominantly discussed. This study focuses on IHE graduate agency to investigate the contributions of studying abroad to a home country. It builds from international-comparative fieldwork that included interviews with 50 recent Turkish IHE graduates who studied in four purposefully selected countries—Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Germany and the UK—and who either stayed or returned to their home country afterwards. The findings highlight the role of agency in IHE graduates’ contributions to their home country. Returning to the home country does not equate to contributing to it, as some participants expressed that they contribute better from abroad while others refuse to contribute even after returning. The study also demonstrates that combining individual agency with push–pull factors emanating from the home country provides a more holistic explanation, as the home country dynamics have been found to be influential on agential stances regarding contributions.

Critical Realism in Comparative and International Education

Abstract: This chapter addresses current trends regarding how the meta-theory of critical realism (CR) frames comparative and international education research and practice. It introduces the key tenets of CR and explores how these ideas have been and can be applied in educational research. It demonstrates how CR provides a valuable alternative to the positivist, interpretivist and constructivist paradigms, and leverages elements of all three to provide new approaches to develop knowledge that is free from the dualisms embedded in their ontological assumptions. I argue that by offering a dialectical understanding of structure and agency, as well as the material and ideational dimension of social reality, CR provides an ontological framework that does not do conceptual violence to the reality we seek to research. This ontological basis is particularly valuable to the social justice agenda of educational research in general because it allows researchers to work beneath the surface of empirical research to disclose the field of possibilities for social action.

Social structures, social change and the metric/nonmetric distinction

Abstract: This paper examines how the concepts of social structure and social change are interpreted in sociological theory today. Social structures are commonly defined in opposition with agency and accordingly as constraints on action. Concomitantly, social change is understood as emancipation or the removal of such constraint through the exercise of agency (and for it). Against this common understanding, the paper develops an alternative approach so as first to articulate a more sophisticated model of social change, one that does not boil to an over-dramatic opposition between constraint and release from constraint, and second to distinguish between different types of social structures, metric and nonmetric, thereby making room for a variety of social changes depending on how structures interact with other structures. Le présent article porte sur les modes d'interprétation des concepts de structure sociale et de changement social dans la théorie sociologique actuelle. Les structures sociales sont généralement définies par opposition à l'agence et donc comme des contraintes sur l'action. Parallèlement, le changement social est compris comme l’émancipation ou la suppression d'une telle contrainte par l'exercice de l'agence (et pour elle). Prenant le contre-pied de cette compréhension commune, l'auteur de l'article élabore une nouvelle approche afin, d'une part, de formuler un modèle plus détaillé du changement social, qui ne se résume pas à une opposition radicale entre contrainte et libération de la contrainte, et, d'autre part, de faire la distinction entre différents types de structures sociales, métriques et non métriques, ce qui permet d'envisager une variété de changements sociaux en fonction de la manière dont les structures interagissent.

Leadership as Agency

Abstract: The concept of agency has become widely used in education, social sciences, psychology, and more. This article explores the concept of agency and provides a critical review from two main bodies of work: The social cognitive theory and the structure agency theory. The two are not the same. Structure agency theory was used to illuminate agency from an organizational perspective. Social-cognitive theory was used to better understand leader agency from a social perspective. In order to understand the relationship between structure agency and leader agency, both of these theories are reviewed through the same lens: agency within the workplace, mainly in school structure and school leadership. Conclusions are drawn to a better understanding of how to develop a school leadership agency. We can summarize that the implications of agency in school are the key to effective school leadership.

Utilising a Critical Realist Lens to Conceptualise Digital Inequality: The Experiences of Less Well-Off Internet Users

Abstract: This study aims to contribute to existing understandings of the relationships between social inequality and Internet use through 30 in-depth interviews with people in Britain who have digital access, are digitally competent, and use the Internet for a broad range of purposes, yet come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Using a critical realist lens, it examines the everyday experiences and implications of using the Internet for this group. The paper explores individuals uses of the Internet, the ways people are able to exert agency using the affordances of the Internet and the structural conditions which constrain or enable what is possible for participants to achieve. The analysis provides a way to understand the complex mechanisms of agency and structure that help to explain the varied outcomes of Internet use for different individuals; and promotes a move beyond a focus on access and skills in digital inclusion policies.

Practices in transitions: Review, reflections, and research directions for a Practice Innovation System PIS approach

Abstract: Social Practice Theories (SPT) can contribute to transition studies by deepening our understanding of the key social mechanisms and dynamics underpinning transitions in everyday life and the role of agency and collective action in processes of social change. Several studies have applied SPTs with concepts from transition studies, and these connections merit attention. The review presented here shows five ways how SPT are applied in studies of system change in transition studies by (i) considering change and continuity in practice elements, niches and regimes, (ii) connecting consumption and production, (iii) going beyond user practices, (iv) mapping diffusions of innovations in daily life and (v) examining policy implications and interventions. Reflecting on this, I argue that the studies in the review show promises of using SPT for transition studies to study system change by linking consumption and production, normality and novelty, stability and instability, micro and macro change, social and technical change, and flat and hierarchal levels. Based on this and a discussion of the need for a practice paradigm of local actions in the MLP, I propose concretising the connections between SPTs, MLP and innovation systems approaches to form a Practice Innovation System framework for future research directions.

On Revolutions

Abstract: On Revolutions integrates insights from diverse fields—civil resistance studies, international relations, social movements, terrorism—to offes new ways of thinking about the study of revolution. Conventional lines of thought draw on a number of categorical distinctions: social versus political revolutions, structure versus agency, violent versus nonviolent strategies, domestic versus international factors, and success versus failure. In contrast, the book outlines an approach that reaches beyond these dichotomies. Revolutions are not just political or social—they feature many types of change. Structure and agency are not mutually distinct—they are mutually reinforcing processes. Contention is not just violent or nonviolent—it is a messy process that usually involves both strategies. Revolutions do not just succeed or fail—they achieve and simultaneously fall short. And causal conditions are not just domestic or international—they are dependent on the interplay of each. The merit of this approach is demonstrated through consideration of a wide range of cases. The volume also explores new opportunities for conceptual thinking about revolution, provides methodological advice, and engages with the ethical issues that exist at the nexus of scholarship and activism. Taken together, these innovations chart a new path for revolution studies.