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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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01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore decentralized rural electrification (RE) processes in Tanzania from a socio-technical system perspective and develop conceptual tools for studying relations of power in energy transitions, and use these to explain the interplay between power relations and sociotechnical change.
Abstract: In rich as well as in poor countries, the energy sectors are in transition from strongly centralised governance and production systems to increasing diversity in governance arrangements and modes of production. In Tanzania, barely 7% of the rural inhabitants have access to electricity services from the national grid. In many rural communities, local generation and micro-grid distribution based on renewable energy sources is being introduced for the first time, complementing the existing use of kerosene, candles, batteries and small diesel generators. This paper explores decentralized rural electrification (RE) processes in Tanzania from a socio-technical system perspective. The aim is to: (1) develop conceptual tools for studying relations of power in energy transitions, and (2) to use these to explain the interplay between power relations and sociotechnical change in a case of decentralized rural electrification in Tanzania. Previous research shows that electrification processes primarily benefit the better-off minority and, thus, serve to reproduce existing social hierarchies. Here, RE processes are conceptualized as fundamentally political processes in which struggles for control and access over various resources are taking place. They are also processes where the productive and creative abilities of humans can be enhanced and people can work together for mutual benefit. In order to make analytical sense of empirical observations in a case study in Tanzania, I undertake an explorative analysis of the multiple workings of power in RE processes. Starting from a review of innovation system literature, I conclude that existing conceptual frameworks do not allow me to fully capture the political dimensions of RE, which leads to the argument that the theoretical conceptualizations of (and not just the empirical attention to) political dimensions of energy transitions are still at an early stage. Engagements with the rich philosophical debate on human power can assist us in improving the clarity and precision of analysis and use of concepts. The paper takes a few tentative steps in that direction by integrating and developing theories on human power in relation to electrification and applying these to a case of small-scale hydropower development. The case study is based on data collected in Tanzania in 2012 and 2013, during a period of around three months. The material includes a total of 104 interviews with actors in the geographical area of the hydropower plant, participant observation and document analysis. The findings indicate that income gaps have grown as a consequence of larger economic benefits for the connected households. There is a sense of exclusion among villagers who cannot afford to connect to the grid. However, the introduction of electricity also has destabilized existing social relations and created a moment of expanding space for individual and collective agency in tension with existing societal structures, manifesting in women and men improving their social positions and women breaking traditional gender roles. Arguably, the tensions between agency and structure, between human capacity and system behaviours beyond the control of individual actors make electrification processes highly interesting and important objects of study. They can provide insights into the social and material base of political economies, and relationships between human and non-human system elements in processes of co-evolution between system and context. The use of socio-technical approaches in the Tanzanian context, and the engagement with theories of human power, open up to new areas of research and theoretical development in the field of energy transitions.

3 citations

Dissertation
01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: In this article, a theory of journalism as "cultural agency" is developed in which the structural conditions of news work are seen to both mediate and emerge from the daily activities of news workers.
Abstract: News and current affairs work at the Canadian all-news television service CBC Newsworld is used as a case study of agency and structure in cultural production. Drawing on participant-observation work at Canada's all-news television service, and on secondary research outside the field of news sociology concerning the nature of cultural practice, a theory of journalism as "cultural agency" is developed in which the structural conditions of news work are seen to both mediate and emerge from the daily activities of news workers. News work is thus seen to truly generate culture in a recursive sense. This view of news work is argued to be significant both as a social theory: as an alternative model of cultural practice; and as a potential intervention in the production process: as a way to begin thinking about changing the way news is produced.

3 citations

01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: Paschel et al. as discussed by the authors analyzed the role of black social movements in the adoption of racist policies in Colombia and Brazil, two countries where the state adopted the most comprehensive reforms for black populations in the region.
Abstract: Author(s): Paschel, Tianna Shonta | Advisor(s): Evans, Peter B. | Abstract: The 1990s marked a dramatic shift throughout Latin America from constitutions and state policies that hinged on ideas of colorblindness and mestizaje to targeted policies for black and indigenous peoples. This study analyzes the role black social movements played in this shift in Colombia and Brazil, two countries where the state adopted the most comprehensive reforms for black populations in the region. It also analyzes the impact of achieving such reforms on black movements' trajectories in the two countries. In so doing, I not only examine how black movements are shaped by the political context in which they emerge, but how they are able to reconfigure that political context in ways that ultimately reshape black movements themselves. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork including in-depth interviews, archival analysis, and ethnographic methods, this study reveals new ways of understanding ethno-racial politics in these countries and offers insights about the relationship between movements and the state, as well as contestation within movements. Further, in examining how black movements seize upon changes in the global political field, appropriate global discourses into local struggles, and build transnational alliances, this work also challenges us to integrate the constant interplay between global and local processes into our analyses, especially when our aim is to understand social movement dynamics in the Global South. In the first part of the dissertation, I show how the rise of global policy norms around multiculturalism, and the Durban World Conference against Racism, provided political openings for black movements in Colombia and Brazil, respectively. However, I maintain that it was the interplay between such global factors and national political developments paired with strategic action by black movements that best explains states' adoption of these historic reforms. Even so, while both countries adopted policies for black populations beginning in the 1990s, the dominant discourse around black rights in Brazil centers on notions of "the right to equality" and inclusion, whereas black issues in Colombia are largely framed in terms of the "right to difference", culture, territory and autonomy. I suggest that these discursive differences have as much to do with how black populations were historically imagined by the state in the two cases, as they do with the different discursive tactics used by black movements when making demands on the state. The second part examines the consequences of the shift to ethno-racial legislation on internal black movement dynamics in the two countries. More specifically, I analyze the nature of formal structures of political participation set up for black populations in response to movement pressure. I do this by examining how movement actors negotiate, inhabit and contest such spaces, revealing a reality of social movement institutionalization that is much more complex than the literature suggests. Whereas black movements in Brazil have been absorbed into mainstream politics within a relatively democratic state, black movements in Colombia have either been repressed violently or institutionalized into precarious alternative political structures leading to unique internal movement dynamics. In order to understand the relationship between structure and agency as well as ntional and international political processes in these two cases, I propose the conceptual framework of national and global political fields which I argue contributes both to the literature on race in Latin America and social movements.

3 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use the philosophy of Deletaneze and Guattari to offer an alternative understanding of how embedded agency can be circumvented, by promoting the exploitation of breaches through creative assemblages.

3 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202335
202288
202148
202039
201954
201859