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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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Dissertation
01 Mar 2013
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide an analysis of the experiences of female business owners in the development and management of micro and small handicraft businesses in Jordan, which is an Arab Islamic country.
Abstract: The aim of this research was to provide an analysis of the experiences of female business owners in the development and management of micro and small handicraft businesses in Jordan, which is an Arab Islamic country. The study adopted a critical realism and critical theory/feminism stance with the focus being on the inter-action between structure and agency. The Structuration Theory was the main theory underpinning interpretation of the findings for this thesis; it is concerned with structure and agency and the duality between the two. Structure refers to the environment within which the women live and work: the socio-cultural-religious environment and the external business-related environment. Agency refers to the nature and extent of the freedom demonstrated by women business owners when choosing their course of action within these environments. The study used a sequential, mixed method research approach, which was chosen as the most effective and appropriate approach to explore these phenomena. The primary data was collected through a drop and collect quantitative self-completion questionnaire in the first phase, followed by face-to-face in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews in the second phase. The samples consisted of 264 women, who completed the questionnaire during the quantitative phase of the research, and 12 women, who were interviewed in-depth in the qualitative phase of the research. The quantitative data analysis was conducted using SPSS, whilst the qualitative data was analysed using thematic analysis. Most of the published research on the experiences of, and influences on, female owners of micro and small businesses is based on Western countries (He 2011). This research adds to that knowledge by focusing on female business owners of handicraft businesses in the patriarchal, collective, Islamic society of Jordan. The quantitative research provides a profile of the women business owners, along with details of their businesses and their experiences during the start-up and operational stages. The qualitative research identifies the power of the socio-cultural-religious and business environment factors on the behaviour and attitudes of the women business owners. Together, these research findings reveal the influence of the socio-cultural-religious factors and business environment factors on the behaviour and attitudes of female owners of micro and small handicraft businesses, as well as the ability of these women to choose their own courses of action. The findings of the quantitative and qualitative research were synthesised into a conceptual framework.

22 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
24 May 2010-Polity
TL;DR: In this article, an alternative realist conceptualization of power is proposed to avoid or minimize the weaknesses and tensions identified in their work, which can help inform radical strategies that aim at freedom by transforming and transcending, rather than merely ameliorating, existing power relations and states of affairs.
Abstract: Steven Lukes and Clarissa Hayward have been at the forefront of the debate surrounding the relationship between power, structure, and agency. Yet certain weaknesses beset their conceptualization of power and its relationship to structure and agency. Both Lukes’s and Hayward's conceptualization of structure is problematic, and neither theorist shows fully how power is instantiated in both structure and agency. Consequently, there are empirical instances that cannot be explained satisfactorily within one or the other framework. This article offers an in-depth critique of Lukes’s and Hayward's conceptualizations of power, especially their understandings of its relationship with structure and agency, and sets out an alternative realist conceptualization of power that offers a way to avoid or minimize the weaknesses and tensions identified in their work. This approach, I argue, can help inform radical strategies that aim at freedom by transforming and transcending, rather than merely ameliorating, existing power relations and states of affairs.

22 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Mar 2015
TL;DR: Marzo et al. as discussed by the authors explored, with data from Belgium (Flanders, Limburg) on Citétaal and Norway on so-called kebabnorsk, the ways structure and agency are omnipresent in the enregisterment of these semiotic registers.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the sociolinguistic discussion about the need for a unified sociological theory, by applying realist social theory (RST) (Carter and Sealey, this volume) to the total linguistic fact (TLF) (Silverstein 1985) or to the semiotics of ‘new’ speech styles in heterogeneous urban spaces. We explore, with data from Belgium (Flanders, Limburg) on Citétaal and Norway on so-called kebabnorsk, the ways structure and agency are omnipresent in the enregisterment of these semiotic registers. Through media discourse analyses, we investigate essential parts of this enregisterment process, in particular the invention and diffusion of labels and the assignment of stereotypical indexical values to these speech styles and to their alleged speakers. We demonstrate, in line with other studies, that media in interplay with scholars is a key force in the enregisterment of these speech styles. In the analysed media discourse, kebabnorsk and Citétaal are constructed as a ‘mixed language’, as a countable and uniform entity, the use of which inevitably results in unemployment. The alleged language users are constructed as a homogeneous group, namely ‘young people with migrant backgrounds’. It is shown that social structure, including asymmetric power relations and language hegemonies, are omnipresent in the valorisation of these registers and that media discourses rely on language ideologies of unity and purity, ideologies central to amonolingual orientation. We advocate a translingual orientation towards language and communication in which communication transcends languages and involves negotiation of mobile resources. This orientation captures the ontology of language and communication and has, as such, the potential to empower the language users’ individual agencies. Bente A. Svendsen: Professor of Norwegian as a second language and Scandinavian linguistics and the Deputy Director of MultiLing Centre for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, a Centre of Excellence at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo, E ˗ mail: b.a.svendsen@iln.uio.no Stefania Marzo: Assistant Professor at the Department of Linguistics at the KU Leuven, Belgium, E ˗ mail: Stefania.Marzo@arts.kuleuven.be EuJAL 2015; 3(1): 47–85 MOUTON

22 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2001

21 citations

Book
06 Dec 2012
TL;DR: In this paper, the opposition of structure and agency is discussed in the context of structure-and-action controversies in social science, and the structure problem is investigated in terms of the production and reproduction of social order.
Abstract: 1. Introduction: the opposition of structure and agency - Peter J. Martin and Alex Dennis PART ONE 2. The structure problem in the context of structure and agency controversies - Wes Sharrock and Graham Button 3. On the retreat from collective concepts in sociology - Peter J. Martin 4. Structure and agency as the products of dynamic social processes: Marx and modern social theory - Alex Dennis PART TWO 5. The two Habermases - Anthony King 6. Pierre Bourdieu: from the model of reality to the reality of the model - Richard Jenkins 7. The production and reproduction of social order: is structuration a solution? - Wes Sharrock 8. On the reception of Foucault - Allison Cavanagh and Alex Dennis PART THREE 9. Beyond social structure - Richard Jenkins 10. Two kinds of social theory: the myth and reality of social existence - Anthony King Bibliography Index

21 citations


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