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.

Sociolinguistic (Re)constructions of Diaspora portugueseness: Portuguese-Canadian Youth in Toronto

Abstract: This dissertation demonstrates that notions of language and identity are not entirely about personal characteristics (what a person is born with, what is "in his blood"), nor are they entirely about agency (how a person chooses to present herself). Instead, they are largely about markets and about the multiple positionings of social actors within markets that are structured by ideologies of the nation state, immigration and the globalized new economy. This critical perspective challenges the normalized view that immigrant (diasporic) communities are simply natural social groupings or depoliticized transplantations of distinct ethnolinguistic units from their "homeland". They are, like language and identity, carefully constructed and managed social projects that are shaped by forces from within and from without. In Canada, the conditions for the institutionalization and (re)production of ethnolinguistic differences, which also make and mark class relations, are strengthened by the state’s multiculturalist policy. The Portuguese-Canadian community is one such ethnolinguistic market and the goal of this research is to examine which forms of portugueseness dominate the market, why and with what consequences for whom. Building from an ethnographic and critical sociolinguistic approach (Bourdieu 1977, Heller 2002), the qualitative data behind this research was produced through a two-year ethnography, participant observations and semi-structured interviews drawing primarily from six second-generation Portuguese-Canadians and members of their social networks. The findings suggest that the kind of portugueseness that dominates the Portuguese-Canadian market is one from Mainland Portugal; one that is folklorized, patriarchal, and that promotes (Mainland) Portuguese monolingualism and false cultural homogeneity. A consequence of this sociolinguistic structuration is a division between Azoreans and Mainlanders who make up two parts of the same Portuguese market; partners in conflict over the legitimacy and value of their linguistic and social capital. Furthermore, the inheritors of this market, the second and subsequent generations, navigate discursive spaces filled with contradictions that often marginalize them. Their experiences highlight strategic mobilizations of Portuguese language and identity, as well as the consequences of having delegitimized cultural and linguistic capital. In short, this dissertation highlights the productive tensions between structure and agency, between uniformity and variability, and between exclusion and inclusion.

The Social Construction of Organised Political Violence: An Analytical Framework

Abstract: This article proposes a general analytical framework for how we might better understand intrastate war and related forms of organised political violence. It begins by setting out our understanding of agency and structure, before outlining the key structures and agents central to the social construction of political violence. This is followed by a discussion of some of the common discursive practices frequently observed in the lead-up to the outbreak of organised violence, such as the widespread articulation of threat and victimhood narratives, the demonisation and dehumanisation of an enemy other, the renegotiation of norms of violence and the suppression of counter-hegemonic and anti-violence voices. The article argues that organised and sustained political violence is contingent on two key facilitating conditions. First, the presence of a particular set of material and discursive structures, including the military instruments for sustained violence, an economic basis for prosecuting war and a set of soc...

A Field Analysis of Journalism in the Automation Age: Understanding Journalistic Transformations and Struggles Through Structure and Agency

Abstract: As an unprecedented amount of information circulates, contemporary newsrooms are turning to automation to manage the data deluge. Amid claims of journalism in crisis, with falling revenues ...

Accounting for the hero: A critical psycho-discursive approach to children's experience of domestic violence and the construction of masculinities

Abstract: This article employs a critical psycho-discursive approach to social identity processes and subjectivity in an important and under-researched area; the psychological impact of domestic violence on children. We use a case study of interview interaction with two teenage brothers talking about their father's past violent behaviour to show that a highly idealised, dominant form of hegemonic masculinity--'heroic protection discourse' (HPD)--was a major organising principle framing both brothers' understandings of events. However, significant differences occurred in how each boy identified and made sense of self and others within this discourse. We discuss our findings in terms of (1) the destructive power of HPD to position sons as responsible for a father's violent behaviour and (2) the utility of our approach for developing a better understanding of when, if or why psychological and behavioural problems associated with domestic violence are likely to develop in a particular child. In so doing, we hope to contribute to theoretical debates in social psychology on identity and subjectivity by showing how it is possible to make sense of the 'collision' between structure and agency through the study of social interaction.

Reconceptualising the Mundane and the Extraordinary: A Lens through Which to Explore Transformation within Women’s Everyday Footwear Practices

Abstract: This article explores the transformatory potential of the lived realities of people’s everyday social lives, seen here to be patterned by a dynamic interplay between the ‘mundane’ and the ‘extraordinary’. Their interaction acts as an interpretive device that can generate new, empirically grounded theoretical insights. Thus, I argue for greater recognition and focus on relationality and connectedness, or rather, that is to say, a meso-level in between structure and agency that individuals both contribute to and are influenced by within everyday life. Using data from a qualitative three year ESRC-funded study of identity, transition and footwear, the article weaves these concerns together with a focus on women’s agency, as seen through the interpretive capacity of the mundane and the extraordinary. In so doing, the boundaries and relationship of the mundane and the extraordinary are reconceptualised.