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.

Introduction: Chinese Fatherhood Revisited

Abstract: This chapter maps out the focus of past studies on the impact of fathers’ involvement in the family and on children’s development. Only recently have studies begun to look at how fathers make sense of their paternity. In particular, agency is generally lacking in research into Chinese fatherhood. Therefore, the chapter first revisits the literature on fatherhood and the Chinese family, and then discusses the theoretical framework, using practice and reflexivity theories to delineate the interaction between structure and agency in the perpetuation and resistance of conventional fatherhood among Chinese fathers in Hong Kong. It then goes on to explain the contexts of the two research projects and the methodology involved.

Agents Caught in Structure: Organizations, Globalization, and Inequality

Abstract: Globalization is a hotly debated empirical phenomenon. Two aspects of globalization are discussed particularly frequently: The extent to which globalization leads to convergence, and the impact of globalization on inequality within and across countries. This chapter argues that it is worthwhile to look at firms in a disaggregated manner to address these research problems. So far, globalization research has mostly looked at firms as an amorphous mass of actors. This can be traced to the two classic schools of thought, Marxism and liberalism, which both conceptualize capitalism as a single and expanding system, ultimately leading to convergence. As corollary, companies are regarded as mostly sharing dominant strategies and practices. This renders them uninteresting for research. In contrast, versions of capitalism in the plural, as developed in comparative capitalisms literature, maintain that there is continued diversity between countries as well as between firms. Such arguments are supported by empirical evidence in management and international business studies. This suggests paying closer attention to firms in a disaggregated manner to understand globalization processes. This chapter proposes to conceptualize organizations as actors caught in structure: Firms are agents in today’s globalized world, but at the same time they face strong and often contradictory pulls exerted by the different contexts in which their activities are embedded. The emerging picture reveals firms situated within the complex and dynamic interdependence of structure and agency. The way this materializes is far from determined, yet highly relevant in answering issues of convergence and inequality, and thus provides a promising agenda for globalization research.

Art and citizenship : governmental intersections

Abstract: The thesis argues that the relations between culture and government are best viewed through an analysis of the programmatic and institutional contexts for the use of culture as an interface in the relations between citizenship and government. Discussion takes place through an analysis of the history of art programmes which, in seeking to target a 'general' population, have attempted to equip this population with various particular capacities. We aim to provide a history of rationalities of art administration. This will provide us with an approach through which we might understand some of the seemingly irreconcilable policy discourses which characterise contemporary discussion of government arts funding. Research for this thesis aims to make a contribution to historical research on arts institutions in Australia and provide a base from which to think about the role of government in culture in contemporary Australia. In order to reflect on the relations between government and culture the thesis discusses the key rationales for the conjunction of art, citizenship and government in post-World War Two (WWII) Australia to the present day. Thus, the thesis aims to contribute an overview of the discursive origins of the main contemporary rationales framing arts subvention in post-WWII Australia. The relations involved in the government of culture in late eighteenth-century France, nineteenth-century Britain, America in the 1930s and Britain during WWII are examined by way of arguing that the discursive influences on government cultural policy in Australia have been diverse. It is suggested in relation to present day Australian cultural policy that more effective terms of engagement with policy imperatives might be found in a history of the funding of culture which emphasises the plurality of relations between governmental programmes and the self-shaping activities of citizens. During this century there has been a shift in the political rationality which organises government in modern Western liberal democracies. The historical case studies which form section two of the thesis enable us to argue that, since WWII, cultural programmes have been increasingly deployed on the basis of a governmental rationality that can be described as advanced or neo-liberal. This is both in relation to the forms these programmes have taken and in relation to the character of the forms of conduct such programmes have sought to shape in the populations they act upon. Mechanisms characteristic of such neo-liberal forms of government are those associated with the welfare state and include cultural programmes. Analysis of governmental programmes using such conceptual tools allows us to interpret problems of modern social democratic government less in terms of oppositions between structure and agency and more in terms of the strategies and techniques of government which shape the activities of citizens. Thus, the thesis will approach the field of cultural management not as a field of monolithic decision making but as a domain in which there are a multiplicity of power effects, knowledges, and tactics, which react to, or are based upon, the management of the population through culture. The thesis consists of two sections. Section one serves primarily to establish a set of historical and theoretical co-ordinates on which the more detailed historical work of the thesis in section two will be based. We conclude by emphasising the necessity for the continuation of a mix of policy frameworks in the construction of the relations between art, government and citizenship which will encompass a focus on diverse and sometimes competing policy goals.

Time, Space, Social Change

Abstract: In developing the account of agency and structure suggested earlier, I have proposed that the conception of structuration introduces temporality as integral to social theory; and that such a conception involves breaking with the synchrony/diachrony or static/dynamic divisions that have featured so prominently in both structuralism and functionalism. It would be untrue of course to say that those writing within these traditions of thought have not been concerned with time. But the general tendency, especially within functionalist thought, has been to identify time with the diachronic or dynamic; synchronic analysis represents a ‘timeless snapshot’ of society. The result is that time is identified with social change.