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.

Maternal ambivalence in contemporary Australia : navigating equity and care

Abstract: The thesis argues that an important step in an agenda calling for change is a resignification of the mother–infant connection from a role to a relationship so as to embed the subject position of the woman-as-mother and enhance her reflexive stance. It identifies intersections between structure and agency as played out in the lives of a small group of women in the early years after the birth of their first child. It contributes to a call for transformational change so as to accommodate dependency while attending to gender equal outcomes. The study is multidisciplinary, bringing together gender, sociology, psychoanalysis and health through a conceptual framework informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Cornelius Castoriadis, Jessica Benjamin and Lois McNay. It locates the work of care through the dependency theory of Eva Feder Kittay and Martha Fineman and the proposition that both the state and the market rely on the family for care. Data are drawn from in-depth and semi-structured interviews with sixteen first-time mothers from Sydney and Canberra. The participants self identified from posters circulated through playgroups and childcare centres from northern, southern, eastern and western suburbs to ensure a diverse sample. What has generally been thought of as a paradox between the rights of women and an assertion of gender difference associated with the maternal body can be recast in terms of tensions. The family as a social unit in the early twenty-first century is marked by tension and change evidenced through the experience of women when they first become mothers. Research that focuses on the early years after the birth of an infant under the banner of the Transition to Parenthood brings to light gendered economic outcomes, maternal stress, depression and a decline in marital satisfaction; in essence a mismatch between expectations and experience that is played out through the sense of self. This is a consequence of a divergence between cultural trends and social structuring with a lack of recognition of both intersubjective dynamics between women-as-mothers and their infants and intrapsychic processes of the self. I cast this dissonance in terms of tensions between macrosocial and microsocial factors. A disjuncture is evident through the ambivalences of these new mothers. In the interview data there is a sense of displaced self, difficulties reconnecting with former lives through the workplace, and often disruptions within families arising from unfulfilled expectations. There is nevertheless a strong and abiding connection with their infants. Motherhood is often characterized as selfless. The needs and interests of the infant/child became paramount and this is seen as a good thing, a moral imperative. Identifications with one’s mother and/or the projected interests of the child or family promote continuity while everyday expectations and practices within families point to change. Women have historically promoted both social and cultural capital through asserting the interests of their families and child/ren. However, attending to these related tasks generally comes at an economic cost and at a cost to their health. There is a significant body of both academic and popular texts reflecting on the experience of being a mother at the microsocial level which is accompanied by a common experience of ambivalence in locating the maternal self. There is evidence of movement for change at the macrosocial level through a rethinking of welfare economics, feminist proponents calling for a public ethic of care, trends towards a gender equal or egalitarian family form, a feminist mothers’ movement, and the emergence of a concept of social care.

How local is urban governance in fragile states? Theory and practice of capital city politics in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.

Abstract: Historically capital cities in less developed countries such as Sierra Leone and Afghanistan have served as sites of deliberate attempts to bring about change in both local and national political systems. Ranging from modernist agendas to contemporary donor-driven 'reconstruction' efforts, strategies to build effective state structures, including local governance institutions, have been at the core of such politics. Drawing on a multidisciplinary methodology that combines historical analysis with micro- and meso-level field research, the thesis explores the dynamics of agency and structure in an investigation of the function of capital cities as political arenas. It reviews key strands of urban political theory for their applicability to developing country contexts and situations of state fragility. The thesis finds existing approaches to be insufficiently suited to explaining political processes operating in and on war-affected capital cities. Current theoretical treatments present cities as distinct or contained political spaces, which in these contexts they are not. They also fail to account for radical changes in the polities in which they are embedded and underestimate the degree of coercion exercised towards local stakeholders by supra-local actors, highlighting the need for a revised interpretative framework. The study juxtaposes policies and programmes targeted at urban and national level institutional change with urban political trajectories in war-affected Freetown and Kabul. The thesis examines how external resources and lines of control create political axes that intersect and transcend urban spaces. The research finds that these axes work to the detriment of local political deliberation and explains why institutional reforms aimed at strengthening local political agency have given rise to the opposite outcome. The research thus illustrates the importance of political economy factors related to international intervention and shows how these have served to influence the nature of capital city politics in least developed countries. Empirically the study establishes why the two capital cities function as linchpins of international assistance yet fail to benefit from local political empowerment and equitable urban recovery. It is concluded that local politics in these two cities are overdetermined by national and international interests and agendas. Theoretically the thesis offers the concept of 'tri-axial urban governance,' which combines historically informed political economy analysis with an explicitly spatial framework for analysing politics in and on war- affected cities. This reconfigured conceptual scaffolding exposes power relations operative in city politics in fragile states and explains their impact on dynamics of structure and agency.

Re/structuring science education : reuniting sociological and psychological perspectives

Abstract: Preface 1. ReUniting Sociological and Psychological Perspectives in/for Science Education: An Introduction Wolff-Michael Roth 2. Tuning in to Others' Voices: Beyond the Hegemony of Mono-Logical Narratives Kenneth Tobin A. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS Editor's Introduction 3. Activity, Discourse, & Meaning: Some Directions for Science Education Gregory J. Kelly, Asli Sezen 4. Been There, Done That, or Have We? Yew Jin Lee 5. History, Culture, Emergence: Informing Learning Designs Donna DeGennaro 6. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Balancing Act of Dialectically Theorizing Conceptual Understanding on the Grounds of Vygotsky's Project Anna Stetsenko 7. A Sociological Response to Stetsenko Regina Smardon 8. Turbulence, Risk, and Radical Listening: A Context for Teaching and Learning Science Wesley Pitts 9. Thinking and Speaking: A Dynamic Approach Wolff-Michael Roth 10. Thinking and Speaking: On Units of Analysis and their Role in Meaning Making Eduardo Mortimer 11. Thinking Dialogically about Thought and Language Pei-Ling Hsu B. POSITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES Editor's Introduction 12. Re-Visioning Conceptual Change from Feminist Research Perspectives Kathryn Scantlebury, Sonya Martin 13. Conceptions and Characterization: An Explanation for the Theory-Practice Gap in Conceptual Change Theory Michiel van Eijck 14. Looking at the Observer: Challenges to the Study of Conceptions and Conceptual Change Jean-Francois Maheux, Wolff-Michael Roth, Jennifer Thom 15. It Doesn't Matter What You Think, This is Real: Expanding Conceptions about Urban Students inScience Classrooms Chris Emdin 16. Making Science Relevant: Conceptual Change and the Politics of Science Education Giuliano Reis C. SCIENCE AGENCY ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN Editor's Introduction 17. Glocalizing Artifact and Agency: An Argument for the Practical Relevance of Economic Injustice and Transformation in Science Education of Mexican Newcomers Katherine Richardson Bruna 18. Concept Development in Urban Classroom Spaces: Dialectical Relationships, Power, and Identity Maria Varelas, Justine M. Kane, Christine C. Pappas 19. Science as a Context and Tool: The Role of Place in Science Learning among Urban Middle School Youth Edna Tan, Angela Calabrese Barton, Miyoun Lim 20. Becoming an Urban Science Teacher: Teacher Learning as the Collective Performance of Conceptions Maria S. Rivera Maulucci 21. Science Agency and Structure across the Lifespan: A Dialogical Response Jennifer D. Adams, Christina Siry, Koshi Dhingra, Gillian U. Bayne D. EPILOGUE 22. Sociology | Psychology: Toward a Science of Phenomena Wolff-Michael Roth Index

Between Structure and Agency: Contextualizing School Leaders’ Strategic Responses to Market Pressures

Abstract: School choice is expected to place pressure on schools to improve to attract and retain students. However, little research has examined how competition for students actually operates in socially embedded education markets. Economic approaches tend to emphasize individual actors’ choices and agency, an undersocialized perspective, whereas sociological approaches emphasize social structures such as race, class, and institutions over agency, an oversocialized view. In this study, I examine the interplay between structure and agency in education markets to (a) examine how a school’s position in the market hierarchy influences how it is represented and viewed as a rival by network competitors and to (b) explore how a school’s position in the network of competitors influences the possible and actual strategic actions that schools adopt in response to market pressures. Using case studies from New Orleans, I find that school leaders’ positions in the socially constructed market hierarchy and in a social network o...