The debate concerning the primacy of
structure and
agency on human thought and behaviour is one of the
central issues in
sociology,
anthropology, and the other
social sciences. In this context, "
agency" refers to the capacity of an
individual to act independently and to make their own free choices.
"
Structure", by contrast, refers to
the recurrent patterned arrangements which seem to influence or
limit the choices and opportunities that individuals possess. The
term "
reflexivity" is
commonly used by social scientists to refer to the ability of an
agent to consciously alter his or her place in the social
structure; thus
globalization and the
emergence of the 'post-traditional' society might be said to allow
for greater "social reflexivity".
Agency in a Diverse Society
The debate over the primacy of structure or agency relates to an
issue at the heart of both classical and contemporary sociological
theory: the question of
social
ontology: "What is the social world made of?", "What is a cause
of the social world, and what is an effect?", "Do social structures
determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?"
Some theorists put forward that what we know as our social
existence is largely determined by the overall
structure of society. The perceived agency
of individuals can also mostly be explained by the operation of
this structure. Theoretical systems aligned with this view include:
structuralism, and some forms of
functionalism and
Marxism (all of which in this context can be seen as
forms of
holism -- the notion that "the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts").In the reverse of the first
position, other theorists stress the capacity of individual
"agents" to construct and reconstruct their worlds. Theoretical
systems aligned with this view include:
methodological individualism,
social phenomenology,
interactionism and
ethnomethodology.
Lastly, a third option, taken by many modern social theorists
{Bourdieu, 1977, 1990}, is to attempt to find a point of balance
between the two previous positions. They see structure and agency
as complementary forces - structure influences human behaviour, and
humans are capable of changing the social structures they inhabit.
Structuration is one prominent example
of this view.
The first approach (emphasizing the importance of societal
structure) was dominant in classical sociology . Theorists saw
unique aspects of the social world that could not be explained
simply by the sum of the individuals present.
Emile Durkheim strongly believed that the
collective had
emergent properties of its
own and that there was a need for a science which would deal with
this emergence.The second approach (methodological individualism,
etc.), however, also has a well-established position in social
science. Many theorists still follow this course (e.g., economists
are very prone to disregarding any kind of
holism).
The central debate, therefore, is between theorists committed to
the notions of methodological holism and those committed to
methodological individualism . The first notion, methodological
holism, is the idea that actors are
socialised and embedded into social structures
and institutions that constrain, or enable, and generally shape the
individuals' dispositions towards, and capacities for, action, and
that this social structure should be taken as primary and most
significant. The second notion, methodological individualism, is
the idea that actors are the central theoretical and ontological
elements in social systems, and social structure is an
epiphenomenon, a result and consequence of the
actions and activities of interacting individuals.
Major theorists
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel (March 1, 1858 – September
28, 1918, Berlin, Germany) was one of the first generation of
German sociologists. His studies pioneered the concept of social
structure. His most famous work today is probably
The
Philosophy of Money.
Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias (June 22, 1897 — August
1, 1990) was a German sociologist of Jewish descent, who later
became a British citizen. His work focused on the relationship
between power, behavior, emotion, and knowledge over time. He
significantly shaped what is called "process sociology" or
"figurational sociology."
Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons was the main theorist of
action theory (misleadingly called
"structural functionalism") in sociology from the 1930s in the
United
States
. His works analyze social structure but in
terms of voluntary action and through pattern of normative
institutionalization by codifying its theoretical gestalt into a
system-theoretical framework based on the idea of living systems
and
cybernetic hierarchy. For Parsons there is no
"structure"- "agency" problem. It is a pseudo-problem.
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu presented his
theory of practice on the dichotomical understanding of
the relation between agency and structure in a great number of
published articles, beginning with
An Outline of the Theory of Practice in 1972, where he
presented the concept of
habitus. His book
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement
of Taste (1979), was named as one of the 20th century's 10
most important works of sociology by the
International
Sociological Association.
The key concepts in Bourdieu's work are habitus, field, and
capital. The agent is socialized in a "field" (an evolving set of
roles and relationships in a social domain, where various forms of
"capital" such as prestige or financial resources are at stake). As
the agent accommodates to his or her roles and relationships in the
context of his or her position in the field, the agent internalises
relationships and expectations for operating in that domain. These
internalised relationships and habitual expectations and
relationships form, over time, the
habitus.
Bourdieu's work attempts to reconcile structure and agency, as
external structures are internalised into the habitus while the
actions of the agent externalise interactions between actors into
the social relationships in the field. Bourdieu's theory,
therefore, is a dialectic between "externalising the internal", and
"internalising the external."
Berger and Luckmann
Peter L. Berger and
Thomas
Luckmann in their
Social Construction of Reality
(1966) saw the relationships between structure and agency as a
dialectical one. Society forms the
individuals who create society - forming a continuous loop.
Roy Bhaskar
Roy Bhaskar developed the
"Transformational Model of Social Activity (TMSA)" in his
The
Possibility of Naturalism (1979) and
Reclaiming
Reality (1989). He put forward a
critical realist approach. Going further
than Berger and Luckmann he focused on the "relational" and
"transformational" view of the individual and society: "society is
both the ever present
condition and the continually
reproduced
outcome of human agency."
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens's developed
"Structuration Theory" in such works as
The Constitution of Society (1984). He presents a
developed attempt to move beyond the
dualism
of structure and agency and argues for the "duality of structure" -
where social structure is both the medium and the outcome of social
action.
Recent developments
The critical realist structure/agency perspective embodied in the
TMSA has been further advocated and applied in other social science
fields by additional authors, for example in
economics by
Tony
Lawson and in
sociology by
Margaret Archer.
Kenneth Wilkinson in the
Community in Rural America took an interactional/field
theoretical perspective focusing on the role of community agency in
contributing to the emergence of community.
The structure/agency debate continues to evolve, with contributions
such as
Nicos Mouzelis's
Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong? and Margaret
Archer's
Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach
continuing to push the ongoing development of structure/agency
theory.
A European problem?
While the structure/agency debate has been a central issue in
social theory, and recent theoretical reconciliation attempts have
been made, it should be noted that structure/agency theory has
tended to develop more in European countries by European theorists,
while American social theorists have tended to focus instead on the
issue of integration between
macrosociological and
microsociological perspectives.
George Ritzer examines these issues (and
surveys the structure agency debate) in greater detail in his book
Modern Sociological Theory (2000).
See also
Notes
References
- Archer, M. (1995), Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic
Approach, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
- Berger, P. L.; T. Luckmann (1966), The Social Construction
of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Anchor
Books: Garden City, NY.
- Bhaskar, R. (1979/1998), The Possibility of Naturalism
(3rd edition) Harvester Wheatsheaf: Hemel Hampstead.
- Bhaskar, R. (1989), Reclaiming Reality, Verso:
London.
- Bourdieu, P. (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice,
Cambridge University Press: London.
- Bourdieu, P. (1990), The Logic of Practice, Polity
Press: Cambridge.
- Bourdieu, P. and L. J. D. Wacquant (1992), An Invitation to
Reflexive Sociology, University of Chicago Press:
Chicago.
- Elias, N. (1978), What is Sociology?, Hutchinson:
London.
- Giddens, A. (1976 New Rules of Sociological
Method.
- Giddens, A. (1984), The Constitution of Society,
Polity Press: Cambridge.
- Lawson, T. (1997), Economics and Reality, Routledge:
London and New York.
- Mouzelis, N. (1995), Sociological Theory: What Went
Wrong?, Routledge: London and New York.
- Ritzer, G. (2000), Modern Sociological Theory (5th
ed.), McGraw-Hill.
- Ritzer, G.; P. Gindoff (1992) "Methodological relationism:
lessons for and from social psychology", Social Psychology
Quarterly, 55(2), pp. 128-140.
- Turner, J. H. (1991), The Structure of Sociological
Theory (5th edn.), Wadsworth Publishing Company: Belmont
CA.
- Wilkinson, K. (1991)., The Community in Rural America.
Greenwood Press: New York, NY
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