Topic
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.
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TL;DR: This paper revisited the role of structure and agency in post-communist transformation during the 1990s and early 2000s, and used evidence from the emergence of new regimes to support the post-Communist transformation.
Abstract: Now is a good time to revisit the role of structure and agency in the post-communist transformation During the 1990s and early 2000s, scholars exploited evidence from the emergence of new regimes
3 citations
01 Feb 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the interplay of agency and structure in the film Shawsank Redemption through the characters of Andy, Red, Brooks, Captain Hadley, and Warden Norton.
Abstract: A social phenomenon in society as represented in a film can be analyzed from many different perspectives. One of the theories that can be applied to do that is Giddens’ structuration theory. It emphasizes on the duality of structure meaning that agency is inseparable from structure and both affect each other. It consists of three-tiered dimensions, namely the structure of signification, domination, and legitimation, and the interaction that agents carry out in the form of communication, power and sanction mediated by the modality of interpretive scheme, facility, and norm. This paper will analyze the interplay of agency and structure in the film Shawsank Redemption through the characters of Andy, Red, Brooks, Captain Hadley, and Warden Norton. The analysis result shows that the agents in the film indeed can make some changes on the structure, by only reproducing or transforming it.
3 citations
TL;DR: For instance, money has been a topic for sociology since Georg Simmel's daunting and formidable The Philosophy of Money as discussed by the authors, but mostly the profession has been more interested in who has it and why (e.g., studies of income and wealth inequality), than in money per se.
Abstract: Money is one of the hallmarks of a modern economy, but a somewhat overlooked social science puzzle for noneconomists. Mostly, money has been left to the economists even though as an interdisciplinary topic "it has it all," covering history, power, politics, economy, culture, base and superstructure, center and periphery, structure and agency, and just about any other conceptual dichotomy one cares to name. Monetary institutions span the social spectrum from the individual and mundane (e.g., activities like purchasing groceries with cash) to the very apex of social and political power (e.g., international monetary diplomacy among sovereign states). Money consists of general, immediate, transferable and legitimate claims on value (Carruthers, 2005). Fully developed money also allows for the quantitative measurement of value and facilitates commensuration (Espeland and Stevens, 1998). As such, money can vary dramatically from one historical situation, or one society, to the next, and it has a deep connection with processes of rationalization and quantification. Money has been a topic for sociology since Georg Simmel's daunting and formidable The Philosophy of Money, but mostly the profession has been more interested in who has it and why (e.g., studies of income and wealth inequality), than in money per se. The topic was reinvigorated some 10 years ago by Viviana Zelizer's work The Social Meaning of Money. The
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper , the influence of agency on the practice of cultural capital is examined, and the results show that mothers' qualifications and fathers' occupations consistently contribute to students' academic achievements.
3 citations
06 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors outline concepts in critical realism and relate them to research reports about children from around the world, in order to show how the concepts help to resolve these problems.
Abstract: There are several complications in the geographies of children and young people and in all social science, including the following three questions:
How can we resolve disagreements and even contradictions between empirical, evidence-based, factual, statistical research versus interpretive and social constructionist research into contingent beliefs, behaviors, and values?
How can we understand and respect each local culture and yet not fall into mere description and cultural relativism?
Limited micro-observational studies of children can be superficial and misleading if they ignore powerful macro-causes that shape children’s lives. How can short studies, without the time and resources of international longitudinal research such as Young Lives, take due well-grounded account of such macro-causal powers as global politics and economics?
The chapter will outline concepts in critical realism and relate them to research reports about children from around the world, in order to show how the concepts help to resolve these problems. The concepts are especially relevant at the stages of designing research projects and later of analyzing and interpreting data. The concepts include being and knowing; intransitive and transitive; theory/practice contradictions; social science and philosophy; the epistemic fallacy; the possibility of naturalism; closed and open systems; polyvalence; depth realism; structure and agency; natural necessity; power; predicting the future; absence, change, and emergence; macro- and micro-levels in research; four planar social being; and a four-stage process of analysis that will be discussed later.
3 citations