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.

Agency and structure: The role of individual social values and material interests in changing contribution rules to, and benefits from, a collective good

Abstract: Societies heavily depend upon high levels of cooperation towards a collective. Both formal rules, i.e., explicit regulations formally enforced by a third party, and informal rules, i.e., social norms, structure those cooperative interactions of individuals within groups by guiding individual and collective action. Unfortunately, rules can allow for a breakdown of cooperation, leaving the collective worse off. Or they prescribe an unequal division of the benefits of cooperation, leaving some members of the collective with less benefits from cooperation. This dissertation investigated whether individuals attempt to change those rules, with a focus on change attempts which would ensure cooperation and an equal allocation of benefits within teams of individuals. While earlier research typically focused on individual attempts to change the informal rules, this dissertation examined individual attempts to change the formal rules. We incorporated the influence of the informal rules on team interactions in our analyses of formal rule change attempts. We also included the heterogeneity of the individuals making up the teams in which cooperative interactions take place with respect to their social values and their interest in providing the team collective. Our analyses thus focused on the micro level of individual interactions and institutional change. We took a bottom-up perspective by applying an experimental method. This enabled us to investigate the causal mechanisms in a laboratory-controlled setting, and to consider a formal rule both as the dependent variable to be explained and as the structure which constrains or allows for change.

The Intellectual Origins of the Debate Over the Astructural Bias

Abstract: A history of the intellectual origins of the debate over the astructural bias is presented. The chapter summarizes both the emergent bias thesis and the charge of an astructural bias. The major works within this debate are reviewed. It has been found that the astructural bias still exists within the work of contemporary interactionists. The conclusion is that if interactionists want their work to be taken seriously, then they must seriously confront the distinguishing concept in sociology: social structure.

University choosers and refusers: social theory, ideas of 'choice' and implications for widening participation

Abstract: The purpose of this chapter is to critically interrogate ideas about “choice” and higher education as they are framed in second modernity societies. We argue that “choice” is a Foucauldian-type of problematization, or a key aspect of the social world that, despite appearing to be a common sense norm, is riddled with uncertainty. We demonstrate how the concept of “choice,” as it is framed within the context of second modernity societies and their neoliberal universities, is a problematization by deploying a set of specific theoretical lenses—choice biography, structure and agency, and instrumental rationality. These sociological lenses illuminate why the idea of making choices about going to university is neither as straightforward or as logical as it seems in equity policy and practice.

‘Bitch I’m back, by popular demand’: agency and structure in a study abroad setting

Abstract: This paper explores the gender order and heteronormativity as salient ideologicalstructures affecting identity construction and agency in a study abroadcontext. Drawing on a multi-layered case study of Hugo (a French universityexchange student in New Zealand), I examine interactional and ethnographicdata to shine light on processes involved in negotiating sexuality and genderidentities in both the host and home contexts. Specifically, the analysis allowsinsights into the development of agency within changing structural environmentsduring and after study abroad, and makes the case for a recognitionof the force of ideological constraints. At the same time, I show that 'seeds ofagency', sparked by a destabilisation of habitus, are planted in the study abroadcontext and argue that crossing borders can be the impetus for a liberatingontological excavation of what might be possible. Normal 0 false false false EN-NZ X-NONE X-NONE

Mafia, cultura e politica

Abstract: While the past years have witnessed an explosion of cultural studies in sociology, the sociological literature on the Sicilian mafia has shifted towards non-cultural kinds of explanation and conceptualizations. This shift was justified because of the many difficulties of the once mainstream normative, value-based conception of culture, but is no longer justifiable with the new conceptions of culture, agency and structure which have developed in the last years in the fields of the sociology of culture, historical sociology and sociology of organization. Contrary to most sociological interpretations, which sees in the mafia a kind of economic activity or institution, this paper argues also for a reconceptualization of Sicilian mafia as a kind of political culture, different from that of the liberal-democratic state which implicitly constitues the axiological reference of sociological and economic theories on the mafia.