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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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the identity of ethnic minority women in managerial and professional roles can be shaped in organizations and by organizations, and that women make choices based on their ethical self and ethical subject.
Abstract: This thesis begins with an intellectual puzzle (Mason, 2002): why are there so few British Pakistani women (BPw) in managerial and professional positions in organizations in the UK? (EOC, 2007:9). A literature review based on the context: gender, ethnicity, religion and nationality, as well as the social phenomenon: career experiences, revealed a number of blind spots. These blind spots were theoretical, methodological and empirical. I theorize for an approach that links structures that create intersecting identit(y)ies to organizations, and then further. I posit that as identities are under construction, the identity of ethnic minority women in managerial and professional roles can be shaped in organizations and by organizations. However, being a woman is still an area of concern (Calas et al., 2014). Thus, gender needs to be in the forefront among all social categories (Broadbridge and Simpson, 2011). The research findings reveal three insights. The first is linked to the discussion on choices that women make with respect to careers and employment (Hakim, 2002). The participants’ in this research make choices based on ethical selves, borrowing on Foucault’s technologies of self and ethical subject. Ethical selves focus on both structure and agency as playing a role in choices. The second insight is linked to the notion of free choice. Underpinning ethical selves is the insight of glass chains. The glass chain is a metaphor I am using to elucidate invisible links to a moral code. I posit the individual is never free from Discourse because she is linked to moral codes (Foucault, 1991a). While disciplinary power gives no room for manoeuvring, I propose that glass chains do. It is self-exercised by an individual to keep herself within her moral codes, yet allows her freedom, although limited. Glass chains allow individuals to see themselves as ethical subjects and transform their lives ethically. The third insight is linked to the literature that postulates that identity is in process and the argument of Ely and Padavic (2007) that identity work continues in organizations. I demonstrate the identity of an individual is affected by organizations and their “inequality regimes” (Acker, 2006a). In addition, intersecting identities and glass chains working simultaneously within inequality regimes result in invisible barriers (the inability to fit in or merge and become invisible), further re-producing feelings of being the other. This creates a situation that perpetuates and reproduces inequalities.
19 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the development of the social work assistant role in the service economy has been explored and the analytical value of the structure-agency dualism in studying occupations has been established.
Abstract: This article re-connects with structure-agency debates to explore the development of the social work assistant role. Drawing upon an analytical framework based on the tenets of critical realism, it seeks to explain the evolution of this role across three local authorities by looking at the interaction of structure and agency at different societal levels: the sub-sector, the organization and the workplace. In doing so, it establishes the analytical value of the structure-agency dualism in studying occupations and, at the same time, provides data on what employees do in the type of role increasingly likely to characterize the modern service economy.
19 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a theoretical analysis of the concept of locality is presented, and it is concluded that locality does have conceptual status in social science and that it is to be distinguished from community by the active, interventionary capacity that it affords to citizens pursuing diverse social projects.
Abstract: This contribution is a theoretical analysis of the concept of "locality." The argument proceeds in three stages. In the first part attention is paid to the concept of "community," which is often, erroneously, used as a synonym for locality. It is proposed that community has a particular history as a concept and meaning in everyday life which differentiates it in key ways from locality. Second, there is a discussion of the concept of "nation" that, clearly, operates at a supralocal level but contains important dimensions of social power that have implications for our understanding of the nature of locality too. Finally, using a realist epistemology, an attempt is made to derive the concept of "locality" from a consideration of the theoretical relations that the "national" and the "local" imply for each other in modem society. It is concluded that locality does have conceptual status in social science and that it is to be distinguished, in particular, from community by the active, interventionary capacity that it affords to citizens pursuing diverse social projects.
19 citations
TL;DR: This paper discussed the applicability of Giddens' sociological theory as agent, agency, structure, system and structuration in terms of their applicability to translation in the context of news production at the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to discuss the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens with regard to its applicability to translation studies. Key concepts of Giddens’ sociological theory as agent, agency, structure, system and structuration will be explored in terms of their applicability to translation. In this article, structuration theory will be examined on the basis of the author's observation of news production at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It is argued that Giddens’ structuration theory helps us see the complexity of the interaction between translation structure and translators as agents. It also helps us problematise the vision of translation and brings it back to its real-life practice when, in the newsroom, it functions not as a hermetically insulated activity, but in cooperation with editing, among other things. The role of translation in the developing context of South Africa is shown in terms of Giddens’ notions of ‘time’ and ‘space’ with the emphasis on how translation,...
19 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that while the research supports a "both-and" rather than "either-or" approach to understand agency and structure, a ''bothand'' approach still does not fully capture the experience of interviewees.
Abstract: This article contributes to debates about agency (meaning the behaviour of individuals) and structure, by drawing on empirical research into personal debt. Consideration of debt allows for debate about agency and structure beyond the narrow confines of welfare, and for the examination of agency in relation to citizens at different points in the broader socio-economic structure, not solely poor people. Based on the research findings, themselves grounded in interviewees' experience, the question of why two people in the same material circumstances will have different experiences becomes reframed as why two people whose exercise of agency is the same, face very different outcomes? It is argued that while the research supports a ‘both-and’ rather than ‘either-or’ approach to understanding agency and structure, a ‘both-and’ approach still does not fully capture the experience of interviewees. The key point is that the exercise of agency is overlaid onto structural inequality, and it is understanding the exercise of ‘agency within structure’ that is critical.
19 citations