Talk:Structure and agency/Archives/2012

Theory?

This whole page is all wrong, tough it contains a lot of correct informations. The main flaw of the article is the notion of structure/agency theory. There is no such thing!! I've been dealing with this issue for over two years now, and have read a lot of literature pertaining to it - and I never saw the term structure/agency theory - not once. There is a lot of talk on the structure/agency debate, also known as the social ontology debate; there are different theories that try to resolve it (such as structuration, Mouzelis' anti-transendence approach and so on) but that's all - not one of these theorists calls his theory structure/agency theory. Anyway, I plan to rewrite this article pretty much completely (there are other things that are inconsistent with the scientific literature, but I will not go into them now) so if the previous authors have arguments against it please reply ASAP. --Boszko2 18:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Boskco,

1. You object to the name structure/agency theory even though it is frequently called structure/agency theory. For example, do a Google search on structure/agency and look through the results, e.g. http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=structure%2Fagency&btnG=Google+Search&meta= (returned 50,800 hits for me when I ran it). It will become pretty obvious pretty quickly that quite a few people do refer to it in those terms.

2. Even if this was not the case, you are in essence objecting to the name, not the content. You yourself point out that the page contains correct information. I fail to see the need to rewrite the whole page as you wish to do.

3. It is not a *scientific* literature. It is an extensive literature in *social theory*, which I am familiar with because I recently completed my Ph.D thesis with an extensive interest in this area.

4. There are essentially no earlier authors. The full text of the page when I first encountered it was:

Theories of structure and agency attempt to answer the question of action and context: "How is it that I can do what I want with others when their goals are different, and often incompatible with mine?" 

Early theories relied on a conception of free will. Recent work has accepted that agency is a matter of social organization, not of the ultimate causes of motivation. What motivates a person to act in a particular way is not as important as how the action was accomplished, what contextual factors led up to it and what followed it.

Talcott Parsons was a primary figure in action theory in sociology in the 1950s. His work has fallen out of favor after being criticized as tautological and value-laden.

Pierre Bourdieu presented his theory of practice on the superation of the dichotomical understanding of the relation between agency and structure on a great number of published researches, 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 Judgment of Taste (1979), was named as one of the 20th century's 10 most important works of sociology by the International Sociological Association.

Anthony Giddens gave shape to the structure and agency debate with his 'Constitution of Society' in which he developed his theory of structuration.

All in all, I'm not very impressed with your call to arms, and aren't inclined to be particularly supportive of your proposition to trash the page and start again.

I'm all for constructively improving pages, but don't you think you'd be better off talking through your proposed changes first? LMackinnon 12:06, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi L! My post is more of a call to discussion then to arms;) and I'm very happy to see you're ready and willing. At the moment I'm quite busy with work and studies, so I probably won't be contributing anything substantial for another two weeks - and then I'll make sure to discuss any changes with you before proceeding.

I'm busy as well.

I'm very new to the community so maybe my wiki communication skills aren't so good yet.

To give you some kind of reply at least: 1. Try gogling "structure and agency theory" and you want get 58,000 results but only 43: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=%22structure+and+agency+theory%22&btnG=Search&meta= Grant you, one of the results refers to a OUP book on social theory. Curiously, if you go to that page ( http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199255702 ) you may notice that the description refers to "structure and agency theory", but the title of the coresponding chapter is only "structure and agency". When I say that I never saw the term "s & a theory" I refer to the relevant literature: books and (CC) articles written by relevant authors in the field (most of whom you refer to yourslef) - Giddens, Mouzelis, Archer and others (we could excange our references on the subject later if you want to). Try searching for "structure and agency theory" in any of the scientific journals databases (like SAGE, Blackwell, Oxford, Springer, Sciencedirect, and so on) and see what you get - I'm pretty sure you'll get 0 results (I'll check next week when I'm at the university). So, I think it makes more sense to talk of general social theory, or theory of social action (and structure), or social ontology - in which the question of the relation of structure and agency is the central issue.

<shrug> I have several papers filed somewhere that refer to it as that, but even if this were not so - all you seem to have an objection to is the name. Is the name a big issue for you?

If you find the time please send me one of those articles - not a matter of trust, I'm just curious to see what's the whole text like, when it was published and so on. regarding the importance of name see 2.

2. When I say I plan to rewrite it pretty much completely I don't mean changing the entire content (that's why I stressed the fact it is in big part correct). It's just that if we come to agree on my central point, then the whole text needs to be realigned.

if I understand you, your central point is that you don't like the name 'structure/agency theory' or 'structure-agency debate'.

I'm totally OK with 's-a debate' instead of 's-a theory'. now, why is this is important? or better yet, what is the issue? the issue is what is theory, and what is being theorized here. it seems to me that speaking of 's-a theory' is in fact renameing 'general social thory' beacuse what we are dealing with here is social ontology and society as a whole (what we mean by a 'whole' is also very important, but still somewhat besides the issue at hand - s&a) In the past GST was very one-sided: either structure is ephemeral to agency, or the other way around; but ALL of them always involved notions of both structure and agency; in a way, the issue was always social action, it's unpredictability and stability, even in systems theory. Now we try to close the gap, again with different theories: structuration, critical realism and so on. In other words, we're dealing with the same thing in new way. New way, hm? - again, there are different (in my view many valid) claims that structuration theory remains voluntaristic and that CR remains very structuralist - after all, M. Archer openly speaks against attempts to form a theory based on duality instead of dualism (while Mouzelis wants to keep both)... so, it's questionable whether these theories really represent 's-a theories', if by that you mean theories that deal with s&a in a balanced way.. again, if you mean only theories that deal with s&a simultaneously, then you're not leaving much out of this.. maybe I'm straying a bit;) but I think you get my point... on a more general level, I think how do we name things is very important (this is how we create things, bring them to being - for us or eith us), and even more so in science, where we lay our 'claims to the truth', as Foucault says...

3. Well, this is an issue that can be discussed extensively, 'cause it refers to the most general issues in science. This is my view in short: the term science is a general term which encompases both natural science and social science. Since this is quite irrelevant for our main discussion I think it's best to leave this issue for a later point.

4. There is one earlier author - you:) and again, my criticism doesn't say that your contribution is no good - on the contrary, it seems to me you've put some effort into it and I think you did a pretty good job. Again, I only think that the article should be realigned in order with my main objection and not that it should be discarded.

So, I'm looking forward to your answer and hope our discussion will lead to a result neither of us could achieve on his own (but that's why we're here, right;)) All the best, --Boszko2 13:17, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

what's your study in (what subjects, what degree level, and if postgraduate, what topic(s))? LMackinnon 11:19, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm a sociology graduate at the Univ of Zagreb, Croatia - I'm currently working on my graduation thesis (the title is Biopower & democracy)... hopefully, I'll start my PhD studies in the fall, if not then in the spring for sure (depending on availability of programs), maybe even somewhere abroad (I'd prefer to stay in Cro for now but who knows)... what about you?

I submitted my Ph.D thesis this year and have just been advised recently that it has been passed with minor textual corrections. The thesis contains a chapter on Berger & Luckmann, Bourdieu, and Bhaskar's structure/agency theories and looks at the way in which economic ideas enter into the process of social construction of the economic/political/social system. I'll put the thesis online after I finish my minor textual corrections.

sounds very interesting - hope you'll send me the link when you're done. do you maybe have a del.icio.us account? mine is d.../b_2 - still needs a lot of work but maybe you'll find something of interest.

Good luck with your thesis - my advice is choose a small topic, not a huge topic as I did! <g>

looks like we have the same problem;) better that then trying to theorise this and that without having a solid grip on these basic issues...

can I expect your reply to my previous post soon? --Boszko2 15:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

What specifically are you waiting for? It's hard to tell with this format . . . LMackinnon 10:32, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

if by 'what are you waiting for' you mean why don't I prepare the new article it's like I said: I'm just too busy right now - I'm having my last exam on Monday and I gotta prepare a solid thesis text in the next 15-20 days - so I really can't spare a day or two work on an article about s&a. +I'd like to check out the articles on GST, social ontology and others I mentioned - I should be able to do this in the meantime.. also, we can continue discussing this (point 2.) a bit in the meantime if you feel like it. --Boszko2 19:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

why is there mention of Niklas Luhmann on this page? His work on social systems is of critical importance to this debate, and I recommend adding a bit about him. Interesting article, though. Well done. ----

Conclusion of theory debate?

I'm new to editing this page but having read through the discussion above (and looking at when it took place) I'm reckoning we are all happy that references to 'structure-agency theory' are removed and replaced with 'structure-agency debate' or 'the debate between the influence of structure and agency' or the like depending on what the sentence structure calls for. I'm going to change this now. My two cents: I agree with this and the other discussions on page which underline the fact that the debate between the influence of structure vs agency on human behvaioru is a problem at the heart of social theory; not a 'theory' in itself. Madmedea 12:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Leading Paragraph

Hi guys, you need a leading paragraph something that introduces the page. JenLouise 00:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

introduction

hi you all. Interesting subject, the structure-agency problem. An exemple may be of help to introduce the subject to an uninformed audience, and this example can be rather straightforward:

Lets start with a truism. People need to eat, and therefore, in our complex monetised capitalist societies wherein people do not produce their own food, they have to earn money with which they can buy subsequently the food they need. Within sociological theory, this raises an interesting question: when the alarm clock rings and people wake up, dress themselves and go to work, do they do so out of free will, or simply because in our society they are required to do so because this is the only way they are able to acquire the means to feed themselves. The so-called individualist theories estimate that the action of going to work, like all human behaviour, is induced by the individual himself. He or she goes to work by his/her own initiative and without this act, he/ she would never show up at the working place. In this sense, every human activity requires an agent doing this action. The so-called structural theories, on the other hand, estimate that the individual does not have much choice. If one desires to eat, one needs money and therefor has to go out to earn it. The act of going to work, subsequently, is not a conscient act induced by his/her free will but rather an act imposed on that individual by the way society is organised, or 'structured'. This structure, the individual follows its requirements without giving it much thought as he has learned (by its environment -e.g. parents, school etc.). Now, the problem is that in reality, human behaviour is determined by a combination of the two. Without the willingness of the individual to get up and go to work, the individual would never arrive at his/ her working place. But if the individual was not living in a, determined by a certain historical evolutions and handed down from one generation to another, system in which he/ she is required to work in order to earn the money through hich he/ she can buy food, he/ she would not need to go to work. This 'chicken and egg' dillema is known as the structure/ agent problem: individuals are the agents performing actions but they are not doing it intirely out of conscient and self-induced motivations, and subsequently the question arises: who or what does what, and how free are humans in their actions? TCMR

Merge

It has been proposed since August to merge "Structure-agency debate" into this article, but there doesn't appear to have been any discussion or action on this. It seems that this article already contains everything that "Structure-agency debate" contained, except that it didn't mention symbolic interactionism. I broadened this to interactionism and added that as another example of theoretical systems aligned with the view stressing agency. Perhaps someone who knows more about the subject should check whether that makes sense. I then replaced the entire text in "Structure-agency debate" with a redirect to this article and removed the merge tag on this one. Joriki (talk) 18:37, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

well done everybody.

Seems like we arrived at a reasonably sensible intro to the whole issue. This should be of help to biginners looking for guidance.--195.194.85.3 (talk) 14:47, 17 October 2008 (UTC)Joshua Rutere

Theology

I'm not sure to what extent this is accurate, but there have been very similar debates within theology, notably on the topic of free will and the capacity for man to act justly. Saint Augustine was the first major theologian to fully address the issue, and his views, which have been officially adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, are in effect of some interest for modern sociologists, who will often attempt to secularize and scientize what are really some very ancient questions within the human intellect. ADM (talk) 22:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Gender debates

An interesting thing to look at would be to find information on structure and agency as related to gender debates on men and women. For instance, an ancient idea was that women were less independent than men for sociological reasons. The earliest sociologists, such as Durkheim, were known to be very sexist, and it may be surprising today that anti-sexist sociologists are denouncing those venerated sexist sociologists of the past. ADM (talk) 17:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

TMSA?

Someone needs to define what this acronym stands for. Lukeorama (talk) 03:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)Luke

help!

the first sentence of this article is bad. I am going to take first crack at it. all smart people concerned should read that first sentence out loud to a lay [non-sociology] person and ask them to repeat back if they understood what it meant. think about what this issue/debate really is in sociology and then REALLY start this article off with an intelligible... grrrr..,.,.

All I'm saying is "x has some primacy.. on y" is bad english. a little further down it seems to be restated as a question about an individual: "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?".

I think to ask question using 'determine' undercuts the careful use of the word 'primacy'. I'd like to ask which is prime or primary in "influencing" behavior, but still, we mean to talk about humans broadly; we are not asking about one individual. help! S*K*A*K*K 15:21, 22 January 2011 (UTC)