Structure and agency

About: Structure and agency is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1265 publications have been published within this topic receiving 63660 citations.

Uncomfortable Antinomies: Going Beyond Methodological Nationalism in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Abstract: This chapter considers some of the ways in which social and cultural anthropology has changed since its heyday in the immediate post-World War Two period.1 In particular, it focuses on the challenges to anthropological fi eldwork methodology, with its stress on long-term stays in specifi c places, arising from the increasing mobility of people, ideas, and things – the process normally labeled globalisation. Just as practice theorists have argued for an irresolvable antinomy between structure and agency both sides of which must be embraced (Ortner 1990), I argue here that anthropologists must learn to live with uncomfortable but necessary antinomies (in the Kantian sense) between their face-to-face methods and the global issues they wish to address, and between their commitment to holism (with its associated dangers of methodological nationalism and/or ethnic groupism) on the one side, and the necessity of encompassing within their purview fl ux, movement, and change, on the other. Whether anthropologists couch their response to globalisation in terms of multi-sited ethnography (a methodological stance), global ethnography (a research programme), or in some other way, these antinomies cannot be avoided and should be embraced. Ethnographic exemplars are taken largely from the Asian contexts with which I am most familiar, but I hope that nothing advanced here depends on the particular cases considered.

Children, Structure and Agency: Realities Across the Developing World

Abstract: The child labour debate, the Child Rights Convention and the target of universal primary education in the Millennium Development Goals have drawn increasing attention to children in developing countries. Alongside, a debate has waged on the need for child participation and the appropriateness of spreading allegedly western norms of childhood. This book aims to uncover the daily life of children in selected areas in Vietnam, India, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Nicaragua and Bolivia against the background of those debates. Children, Structure and Agency takes a close look at the activities, the aspirations and the deliberations of hundreds of poor children in the age category from 9 to 14, on the basis of a dawn-to-sunset observation over a couple of days. By empowering children to make people listen to them, children can play a more an active role in their community. The book addresses the issue of such child agency and the structural constraints to that agency. This text would be of interest to child-centred development aid organisations and scholars dealing with issues of child participation, child rights, child labour and education.

"Trapped": Gender, Identities and PE

Abstract: Physical Education (PE) is one of the most gendered school subjects, and is historically based on a binary which normalises a difference between young men and young women. As young people develop through adolescence, their social lives are characterised by interconnected social fields, including schooling, sport and media. This study sought to explore how young people negotiate their gendered identities within, and across, these interconnected fields using a Bourdieusian analysis. I used a mixed-methods approach of collective case studies to answer three research questions: 1. What role does sport play in the ways young people negotiate their gendered identity? 2. What role do schooling and media messages play in reproducing gender norms for young people? 3. How does social class influence how young people understand sport and their gendered identity? My methods combined a content and narrative analysis of media messages produced by four online sports media outlets during Rio 2016 Olympic Games with case studies in three demographically different schools in North East England. In each school, Year 11 students completed a questionnaire about their participation in sport and physical activity, coupled with their views of masculinity and femininity. Following this, interviews with 70 young people (33 males, 37 females) were conducted which focused on how young people negotiate their gendered identities within different social fields. Using Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, field and capital, this study has shown that these young people are strongly influenced by rigid and stereotypical representations of masculinity and femininity which are often conflated with binary notions of biological sex. The internalisation of these norms within one’s gendered habitus has meant that many young people expressed a sense of being “trapped” by these rigid notions of “acceptable” gendered behaviours, and consequently reproduce an ideology of difference between masculinity and femininity. Sport is internalised as “natural” within young men’s habitus, where participation and excellence in the “right” sport can lead to the accrual of social status and popularity. In contrast, the “sporty” female is othered, and little capital can be accrued for female participation in sport. Instead, young women are pressured to presenting an image of a “healthy” female appearance (one which is often unattainable as both skinny and curvy) through a symbolic attention to the body. Many young women go to the gym, but do not engage in vigorous exercise when they are there. Within this thesis, I refer to young people playing the game of gender, whereby there are “rules”, tactics, referees and winners/losers. The expectations of the game differ depending on whether the individual is male or female, and also on one’s classed position. This metaphor demonstrates an awareness that young people can be simultaneously affected by both structure and agency. By using tactics and strategy to manipulate one’s own gendered identity, young people can show agency. However, the rewarding of stereotypical and binary representations of masculinity and femininity through capital often means that many young people feel pressure to reproduce normative behaviours which do not challenge the status quo of the doxa. This PhD paints a negative image of how schooling and PE reinforce gender norms which prevent many young people experimenting and exploring their own gendered identities. However, through challenging young people’s reflexivity during the interview process, I found that many young people can reflect on their behaviours, bringing the often-non-conscious habitus into consciousness. This suggests that to challenge taken-for-granted norms of the habitus, pedagogy and research must encourage this reflexivity and force young people to think about gender in ways they have not done before.

Collaborative agency to support integrated care for children, young people and families: an action research study

Abstract: Introduction: Collaboration was legislated in the delivery of integrated care in the early 2000s in the UK. This research explored how the reality of practice met the rhetoric of collaboration. Theory: The paper is situated against a theoretical framework of structure, agency, identity and empowerment. Collectively and contextually these concepts inform the proposed model of ‘collaborative agency’ to sustain integrated care. The paper brings sociological theory on structure and agency to the dilemma of collaboration. Methods: Participative action research was carried out in collaborative teams that aspired to achieve integrated care for children, young people and families between 2009 and 2013. It was a part time, PhD study in collaborative practice. Results: The research established that people needed to be able to be jointly aware of their context, to make joint decisions, and jointly act in order to deliver integrated services, and proposes a model of collaborative agency derived from practitioner’s experiences and integrated action research and literature on agency. The model reflects the effects of a range of structures in shaping professional identity, empowerment, and agency in a dynamic. The author proposes that the collaborative agency model will support integrated care, although this is, as yet, an untested hypothesis.