Agency structure integration

1. AGENCY-STRUCTURE
INTEGRATION
Contemporary Sociological Theories (SOC 201)
Mariel Denerie B. Colance

2. OUTLINE:
01
OVERVIEW
03
MARGARET ARCHER
02
ANTHONY GIDDENS
Structuration Theory
Agency-Structure
Integration
Theory on Culture &
Agency

3. OVERVIEW
01
Agency-Structure Integration

4. AGENCY-STRUCTURE
INTEGRATION
 standing debate on the primacy of
structure or agency in shaping
human behavior
 one of the most important
developments in recent European
social theory

5. AGENCY
 is usually referring to the micro-level,
where individuals can make their own
choices, act independently and with
autonomy
 it also refers to macro collectivities
(macro-level) which includes a group
of individuals who act collectively and
are organized groups, organizations
and nations.

6. STRUCTURE
 usually refers to large-scale social
structures and with a macro-level
perspective
 It is how the social structure can
influence or limit choices and
opportunities for the individual
 it can also refer to as micro-level
structures such as those involved in
human interaction.

7. Therefore, AGENCY and
STRUCTURE can refer micro-
level or macro-level or both.

8. ANTHONY
GIDDENS
02
Structuration Theory

9. ANTHONY GIDDENS
 born Jan. 18, 1938, London, Eng.
 British political adviser and
educator
 trained as a sociologist and social
theorist, he lectured at universities
in Europe, North America, and
Australia
 famous of his Structuration theory

10. HIGHLIGHTS OF GIDDENS’ LIFE
1985
Cofounder of an
academic publishing
house, Polity Press
1997-2003
Director of the
London School of
Economics and
Political Science
2004
Member of the
House of Lords and
received a life
peerage in the
London Borough of
Enfield

12. STRUCTURATION
THEORY

13. ● attempts to understand human social behaviour by
resolving the competing views of structure-agency and
macro-micro perspectives
● studying the processes that take place at the interface
between the actor and the structure
STRUCTURATION THEORY

14. ● takes the position that social action cannot be fully
explained by the structure or agency theories alone
● it recognizes that actors operate within the context of
rules produced by social structures, and only by acting
in a compliant manner are these structures reinforced
STRUCTURATION THEORY

15. ● As a result, social structures have no inherent stability
outside human action because they are socially
constructed.
● Alternatively, through the exercise of reflexivity, agents
modify social structures by acting outside the
constraints the structures place on them.
STRUCTURATION THEORY

16. The concept of structuration underscores the duality of
structure and agency. There can be no agency without
structures that shape motives into practices, but there
can be no structures independent of the routine
practices that create them.

17. BASIC CONCEPTS IN
STRUCTURATION
THEORY

18. 1. Structuration
2. Agency
3. Structure
4. Rules
5. Resources
6. Duality of structure
BASIC CONCEPTS IN ST

19. • It is premised on the idea that “the constitution of
agents and structures are not two independently given
sets of phenomena, a dualism, but represent a duality…
the structural properties of social systems are both
medium and outcome of the practices they recursively
organize,” or “the moment of the production in the
contexts of the day-to-day enactment of social life
(Ritzer 2000).
1. STRUCTURATION

20. • is the capacity of individuals to act independently of
social structures in making their own decisions and
choices (Giddens 1979)
• refers not to the intentions people have in doing things
but to their capability of doing those things in the first
place which is why agency implies power (Giddens
1984).
2. AGENCY

21. • is defined as “the structuring properties [rules and
resources], the properties which make it possible for
discernibly similar social practices to exist across varying
spans of time and space and which lend them
systematic form” Giddens,1984:17 cited by Ritzer,
George. 2000.
3. STRUCTURE

22. • are “generalizable procedures” and “methodologies"
that reflexive agents possess in their implicit “stock of
knowledge” and that they employ as formulas for action
in social systems (specific empirical contexts of
interaction (Turner 1984)
4. RULES

23. • - (focused via signification and legitimation) are
structured properties of social systems, drawn upon
and reproduced by knowledgeable agents in the course
of interaction (Giddens 1984)
5. RESOURCES

24. • is one of Anthony Giddens' coined phrases and main
propositions in his explanation of structuration theory.
The basis of the duality lies in the relationship the
Agency has with the Structure
6. DUALITY OF STRUCTURE

25. • denotes a structure which is both constraining and
enabling to the actions of people. Structure is to be
understood as the social rules and resources which
influence situational action and it is a property of social
systems. A system is a recognizable, reproduced pattern
of relations between people which are organized as
social practice
6. DUALITY OF STRUCTURE

26. 3 FUNDAMENTAL
CONCEPTS OF DUALITY
OF STRUCTURE

27. • the production and reproduction of social life is a skilled
accomplishment on the part of knowledgeable and
capable human subjects.
• understood not merely as 'self-consciousness' but as
the monitored character of the ongoing flow of social
life.
1. REFLEXIVITY

28. • social life goes forward under conditions that are
neither fully comprehended nor wholly intended by
social actors but which nonetheless enter directly into
the production and reproduction of the stream of social
practices in which actors are involved.
2. RECURSIVENESS

29. • the continuity of social life depends on both on
interactions between actors who are co-present in time
and/or space and on relations that reach beyond the
“here and now” to constitute interactions with others
who are absent in time and/or space
3. REGIONALIZATION

30. 3 TYPES OF
STRUCTURES
Mukunda 2012

31. • produces meaning through organized webs of language
(semantic codes, interpretative schemes of discursive
practices)
1. SIGNIFICATION

32. • produces a moral order via naturalization in societal
norms, values and standards. When individual agents
interact, they exhibit consciously, subconsciously,or
unconsciously meanings
2. LEGITIMATION

33. • produces power originating the control of resources.
Giddens' goal is to understand the power relationship as
a form of interaction between the actor and the
structure
3. DOMINATION

35. CRITIQUES ON
GIDDENS’
STRUCTURATION
THEORY

36. • methodological writings
• failure to properly elucidate the relationship between
agency and structure.
• Giddens’s refusal to accept a role for structural causation
has been the primary concern in these methodological
appraisals as the upshot is a conception of social
relations without any efficacy.
MARXIST CRITICISM OF ANTHONY
GIDDENS’ SOCIOLOGY

37. • On the other side have been the numerous critiques of
Giddens’s purported renewal of social democracy.
• Here the criticism tends to focus on Giddens’s shift to
the political right, but it is rarely noticed that there is also
a methodological critique waiting to be developed.
• Giddens’s early work is nothing if not a celebration of
the agent with structure demoted to little more than an
epiphenomenon (Boyle 2013).

38. MARGARET
ARCHER
03
Theory on Culture and Agency

39. MARGARET SCOTFORD
ARCHER
• (born 20 January 1943) is a British
sociologist
• spent most of her academic career
at the University of Warwick, UK,
where she was for many years
Professor of Sociology

40. HIGHLIGHTS OF ARCHER’S LIFE
1995
best known for
coining the term
elisionism “Realist
Social Theory: The
Morphogenetic
Approach”
2014
Professor Archer
was named by Pope
Francis to succeed
former Harvard law
professor and U.S.
Ambassador
2019
Retired from being
President of the
Pontifical Academy
of Social Sciences

41. ● She is one of the most influential theorists in the
critical realist tradition. At the 12th World Congress of
Sociology, she was elected as the first woman
President of the International Sociological Association,
is a founder member of both the Pontifical Academy
of Social Sciences and the Academy of Learned
Societies in the Social Sciences. She is a Trustee of the
Centre for Critical Realism.

42. CRITIQUES ON
GIDDENS’
STRUCTURATION
THEORY

43. • has criticized the concept of structuration as
analytically insufficient
• She thinks it is useful for social scientists to understand
structure and agency as independent, because it
makes it possible to analyze the interrelations between
the two sides
• also thinks that Giddens gives short shrift to the
relative autonomy of culture from both structure and
agency

44. THEORY ON CULTURE
AND AGENCY

45. ● Archer's focus is on morphogenesis, the process by
which complex interchanges lead not only to changes
in the structure of the system but also to an end
product—structural elaboration.
● The theory emphasizes that there are emergent
properties of social interaction that are separable
from the actions and interactions that produce them.
Once these structures have emerged, they react upon
and alter action and interaction.

46. ● Archer reserves the term "structure" for material
phenomena and interests.
● Morphogenetic theory focuses on how structural
conditioning affects social interaction and how this
interaction, in turn, leads to structural elaboration.
● Archer sees culture—nonmaterial phenomena and
ideas—as autonomous from structure.

47. ● In the cultural domain, morphogenetic theory focuses
on how cultural conditioning affects socio-cultural
interaction and how this interaction leads to cultural
elaboration.
● Compared to structure and agency, Archer asserts
that the nexus between culture and agency has been
neglected.
● She suggests that in order to understand agency, one
must understand the context of innumerable
interrelated theories, beliefs, and ideas that have had
an influence over it.

48. ● Agents have the ability either to reinforce or resist the
influence of the cultural system

49. BASIC CONCEPTS OF
ARCHER’S THEORY

50. 1. Morphogenesis
2. Analytical dualism
3. Cultural Elaboration
4. Social Change
BASIC CONCEPTS OF
ARCHER’S THEORY

51. • this is the process by which complex interchanges lead
not only to changes in the structure of the system but
also to an end product – structural elaboration (Ritzer
2000)
1. MORPHOGENESIS

52. (1) structural or cultural conditioning
(2) social or sociocultural interaction
(3) social or cultural elaboration
MORPHOGENESIS HAS THE
CHARACTER OF A CYCLE
WHICH INVOLVES THREE
PHASES

53. • leads to the demand that structure and agency have to
be kept separate and analyzed separately if an
understanding of their mutual interplay is to be obtained
(Zeuner 2015)
2. ANALYTICAL DUALISM

54. • is the future which is forged in the present, hammered
out of past inheritance by current innovation (Ritzer
2000).
3. CULTURAL ELABORATION

55. • for the morphogenesis approach, it involve dialectical
relation between human agency and the context in
which those agents find themselves, context that include
culture, structure and physical things (Porpora 2013).
4. SOCIAL CHANGE

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57. REFERENCES
https://www.coursehero.com/file/p6estqe/Agency-Structure-Integration-There-is-a-
growing-interest-in-American/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/structuration-theory
https://basreus.nl/2009/10/07/an-introduction-to-the-structuration-theory-of-giddens/
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2015-02.dir/pdfVNZ3UGS9Kk.pdf
http://novella.mhhe.com/sites/0072825782/student_view0/chapter11/chapter_summary.h
tml