1) An unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014. A grand jury decided not to indict Wilson, sparking widespread protests. 2) The author will analyze the situation using structuration theory, which examines both micro (individual) interactions and macro (social structures) influences. 3) Structuration theory views agency and structure as mutually dependent rather than determinants of each other. Individual actions both shape and are shaped by social rules and resources over time.

1. Structuration and Ferguson
Jennie Pilong
Contemporary Sociological Theory
Fall 2014
Eastern University

2. 1
“Hands up, don't shoot.” The now-familiar chant continues to ring from east coast to west coast across
America. On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, an unarmed Black man was shot and killed by a police officer.
The man's name was Michael Brown, the officer, Darren Wilson. Testimony depicts a struggle between Brown and
the police officer, in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day. The struggle ended in numerous gun shots
and a dead body. Recently, a Grand Jury moved to not indict the officer for any crime. Since the night of the
shooting, and escalated by the Grand Jury decision, protests have raged throughout the United States.
There are many situations at work during the aftermath of the Brown-Wilson confrontation. Merely
examining the big-picture aspects of the situation will not bring about total understanding. As a structuration
theorist, I believe that every situation is comprised of both micro (interactions between individuals) and macro
(changes taking place in the social structure) level processes. In order to gain a full understanding of the situation,
both sides of the coin must be studied. In other words, one must study what happens between actors and how those
interactions influence the structure. Anthony Giddens developed the theory of structuration; a theory that studies
both structure (macro) and agency (micro).
According to George Ritzer in Modern Sociological Theory (2008), Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory
is one of the best known theories that attempts to blend agency and structure. Giddens theorizes that action and
structure are related, not determinants of one or the other. Giddens analyses multiple theories, such as symbolic
interactionism and structural functionalism, and rejects all of them. Instead, he states that “the basic domain of the
study of the social sciences, according to the theory of structuration, is neither the experience of the individual actor,
nor the existence of any form of social totality, but social practices ordered across time and space” (Giddens,
1984:2). The theory of structuration sees a duality between agency and structure. Essentially, agency and structure
cannot be understood apart from each other, “all social action involves structure, and all structure involves social
action” (Ritzer, 2008:396). Structure is created through inventing, sustaining, and transforming rules and resources.
Social interactions then work to enforce, reinforce, or change the structure. Thus, structure can both constrain and
enable people.
Giddens theorizes that individuals do not create activities, but recreate them to achieve situations that make
the activities possible. This production through activity produces consciousness and structure, not the other way
around. Structures, or rules and regulations, are constantly changing. Giddens also focuses on the consciousness, or

3. 2
reflexivity, of the individual. Through being reflexive, the individual is conscious of self, while at the same time
monitoring activities and structures occurring around him- or herself. Giddens’ theory is concerned with “the
dialectical process in which practice, structure, and consciousness are produced” (p. 396). Not only are individuals
monitoring their own activities, but they expect others to do the same. This agreement to carry out action together,
through individual monitoring, is the main factor in collective action.
On the basis of the understanding that individuals constantly monitor their world, Giddens theorizes that
they are always in search of security through rationalization. Rationalization, in this case, reflects an individual’s
evolution of routines that generate stability and scripts for how to deal with society. Along with rationalization,
individuals have motivations, or desires, that lead to action. Although Giddens does not believe that most actions are
directly motivated.
Giddens differentiates between two types of consciousness, discursive consciousness, the ability to
describe actions in words, and practical consciousness, taken-for-granted actions that are unable to be expressed in
words. His primary focus is on the practical consciousness of individuals. The things that individuals actually do, he
terms agency. He sees agency as extremely important because without the actions of the individual, the events the
individual finds him- or herself in would not exist. Agency does not always indicate intention, actions are often
unintended and thus result in unintended consequences.
Not only is there great power in agency, but Giddens also gives great power to the individual, or agent. He
theorizes that agents have the power and capacity to create change in the social world. Thus, “an actor ceases to be
an agent if he or she loses the capacity to make a difference” (p. 397). Although he recognizes that there are
constraints on actors, he argues that these constraints do not prevent the actor from making some difference. Thus,
structuration puts the power in the hands of the individual, unlike phenomenology (which puts the power in the
hands of an actor’s intent) or structural functionalism (which puts the power in the hands of external structures).
As mentioned previously, the power of an individual and the power of agency may be either enabled or
constrained by structure. In The Constitution of Society (1984), Giddens calls these enabling and constraining
factors modalities.These modalities, or interpreting schemes, facilities, and the norms/values of a society define the
duality of structure. Essentially, modalities are the rules and resources in a structure.
Giddens mapped the duality of structure, as seen in Figure 1. All of the levels feed into each other. The

4. 3
macro level (structure) is comprised of signification (the things we use in order to act), domination (the forces in
control), and legitimation (justification as to why some processes are deemed okay and others are not). The micro
level (interaction) is comprised of communication (the exchange of ideas), power (the unequal distribution of it),
and sanction (the laws of the land). All of these processes work together through the modalities.
Figure 1
Neither the structure, nor the interaction, would be able to exist without the other. As
individuals interact, they engage in reflexive, recursive, and discursive processes that influence
rules and resources. Action is thus embedded in the social process and the social structure. We
can use Giddens' duality of structure to better understand the interaction between Wilson and
Brown and the protests of the public.
The interaction between Wilson and Brown involved communication, power, and
sanction. According to McLaughlin (2014), the altercation began with Darren Wilson telling
Michael Brown to get out of the street. Within this interaction, Wilson had more power than
Brown because he was a police officer. American society has sanctioned the authority of law
enforcement to be above that of other citizens. The climate within Ferguson then comes into play
in the modalities of their interaction.

5. 4
Lowery, Leonnig, and Berman (2014) explain that even before the incident, Ferguson police were two
times more likely to arrest an African American at a traffic stop than a Caucasian. The population of Ferguson has
changed over the years. Currently, two-thirds of the residents are Black, yet 50 of the 53 police officers in the city
are White. According to the authors, the relationship between the police and residents has been hostile for years.
According to Lindsey Cook (2014), Blacks in Ferguson are searched and arrested more often than Whites, even
though “Whites are more likely to be caught with contraband if searched” (p. 1).
The city of Ferguson was dominated by police power. This authority was then legitimated through the
number of arrests made. Since more Black individuals were being arrested than White individuals, the ideology that
the Black residents were more criminally inclined was justified. Thus, the structure of Ferguson influenced the
actions of both residents (lack of respect for police) and police (belief that the majority of residents were criminal).
Working and living in a society where Blacks are treated much differently than Whites most likely
influenced the interaction between Wilson and Brown. Based on the pattern of Black arrests in Ferguson, it is no
surprise that Wilson confronted Brown. It would also be safe to assume that Wilson's previous interactions with
Black residents predisposed him to believe Brown was doing something illegal. The interpretive scheme in
Ferguson created the environment that made Wilson's attention to Brown a norm.
In evaluating the Wilson-Brown situation, it is impossible to get the full story by just looking at the micro-
level interaction. The two men interacted, but they did not do so in a vacuum. Instead, they interacted within the
structure of Ferguson. At the same time, the incident cannot be understood by just looking at the structure of the
city. The legitimation of police and resident interactions did not occur on its own. Instead, individual actors engaged
in reflexive, recursive, and discursive actions that created the rules and regulations of the structure.
The protests that began in Ferguson after the shooting also did not occur within the vacuum of the structure
of Ferguson. The same events that influenced Wilson's interaction with Brown, also influenced the public opinion of
the police. The public engaged in reflexive action after the incident. Their outcry then became recursive (repeating
until a certain point is reached). Protest continued to occur night after night and spread across the country. Residents
in other cities monitored the protests and then engaged in activities of their own. In this way, the protests became
discursive processes.
The culmination of actions at the interaction, or micro, level brought light to the forces at work in the

6. 5
structure, or macro level. Police profiling, excessive use of force, and racism all came to the open across the United
States. The actions at the micro level did not create these structures, nor did the structures create the actions at the
micro level. Instead, both fed on each other to create a legitimated structure that produced superordinate and
subordinate individuals.
The beauty of structuration theory is that it combines the best aspects of other theories into one
understanding. Giddens' theory of duality of structure involves processes much like Ralf Dahrendorf's power
conflict theory. Dahrendorof theorizes that society is made up of superordinate and subordinate groups. The
superordinate group dominates the subordinate group, but their power is not static. As the latent interests of the
subordinate group become manifest, conflict occurs, and the subordinate group has the opportunity to change the
structure and become the superordinate group.
In the case of Ferguson, to use the terms of Dahrendorf in Giddens' theory, the interaction of Wilson and
Brown caused the manifestation of the latent interests of the Black community in the United States. The micro level
actions engaged in after the incident (conflict in Dahrendorf's theory) affected the macro level structures within the
States. Giddens' theory of structuration takes Dahrendorf's theory a step further by indicating that the actions, or
conflict, two groups engage in occurs at both the macro and the micro level at the same time.
We may never know the exact details of what occurred that day in Ferguson, but we can understand the
forces that came together to create the climate the incident occurred in. We can also begin to understand the spread
of country-wide protests. Both interaction and structure played a role in the incident that sparked world-wide
interest. Giddens was correct when he theorized that the actor had much power. Interactions by actors led to
revelations regarding the structure, and continued interactions of other actors increases the probability that structural
rules and regulations will change. For that alone, we can be thankful.

7. 6
Bibliography
Cook, Lindsey. 2014. “Racial Tensions in Ferguson Started Long Before #DontShoot.” U.S. News. Retrieved
December 11, 2014 (http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/08/14/racial-tensions-in-ferguson-
started-long-before-dontshoot).
Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1958. “Out of Utopia: Toward a Reorientation of Sociological Analysis.” American Journal
of Sociology 64 (2): 115-127.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
Lowery, Wesley. Carol D. Leonnig. Mark Berman. 2014. “Even Before Michael Brown's Slaying in Ferguson,
Racial Questions Hung Over Police.” The Washington Post. Retreived December 11, 2014
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/even-before-teen-michael-browns-slaying-in-mo-racial-questions-
have-hung-over-police/2014/08/13/78b3c5c6-2307-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html).
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11, 2014 (http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/11/us/missouri-ferguson-michael-brown-what-we-know/index.html).
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