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.

Something for everyone? : changes and choices in the ethno-party scene in urban nightlife

Abstract: The urban population is becoming increasingly diverse and growing (ethnic) diversity is having a singular effect on nightlife in Dutch cities. By studying the motivation behind and nightlife choices of the young people who participate in ethno-party scenes, Boogaarts-de Bruin investigates how the changing urban population affects the supply side of the nightlife market using an analytical model she has developed and which she calls the model of structured choice. This approach is sensitive to the flexible use of the processes of agency and structure due to the systematic distinction that it makes between societal and personal factors. Accordingly, it is revealed that in order to analyze and adequately explain the nightlife experiences of and choices made by ethnic youngsters, an integrated model is required which centralizes the interaction between the structural strategies of the producers on the one hand and the personal preferences and agency of the consumers on the other. What is more, this book demonstrates that nightlife has changed because of the increasing ethnic diversity of the Dutch population. Finally, in the epilogue, the fieldwork results are discussed in light of the currently heated debate regarding the integration processes of ethnic minority young people (in nightlife).

Access to and Accessibility of Education: An Analytic and Conceptual Approach to a Multidimensional Issue

Abstract: This article presents analytical considerations for the discussion of issues of access to education and inequality. It first sharpens the concept of access and inequality by pointing to the interplay of structure and agency as well as to processes of social differentiation in which differences are constructed. This implies a critical view on “access” not as something that is simply given in educational systems or as something students “have.” Referring to interactional and intersectional considerations, the more comprehensive concept of “accessibility” is suggested, which points to the process of making education accessible. Second, the chapter distinguishes and discusses four levels of analysis to be considered, while providing a review of the existing research and putting into context the research findings of the European research project GOETE. In the concluding section, accessibility is discussed as requiring a multidimensional and multidisciplinary theoretical approach.

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.

The Drivers of Transitional Justice: An Analytical Framework for Assessing the Role of Actors

Abstract: The transitional justice (TJ) field has gone through phases in which the role of actors and their environments – or structure and agency, more broadly viewed – have been alternatively emphasised. This article privileges agency as the focal point of analysis. The main task is to conceptualise ways in which actors promote, or obstruct, transitional justice. Taking time and context into consideration, we construct a multi-level framework to explore how domestic and international actors operate within local, national and transnational environments. We focus on how diverse actors employ their various capabilities and are affected by values as well as interests when advancing their TJ preferences. Actors simultaneously shape and are shaped by the multi-level environments in which they operate. The framework presented here is designed to enhance knowledge about TJ outcomes. The working assumption is that the type of actors that promote (or obstruct) TJ will significantly influence the type of TJ initiatives adopted and also shape their impact.

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.