Theorising Social Constraint

The Concept of Supervenience

Bibliographic Data

ID2111437
AuthorsShaun Le Boutillier (0000-0001-9618-1333, Department of Sociology and Politics Anglia Polytechnic University, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume35
Issue1
Pages159-175
Publication date2001-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0385 • E-ISSN: 1469-8684
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0038038501035001010
OpenAlexW2141788468
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited19

This paper evaluates Kieran Healy's recent contribution to the structure-agency debate. Supervenience, I argue, has multiple uses, it entails different ontological perspectives depending on which entities it is applied to and which conditions are placed upon subvening and supervening entities. Healy's use of supervenience is unclear. On the one hand, applied to individual-society relations it does nothing more than restate the trivial truth: no people - no society. On the other hand, if supervenience is to be applied to structure-agent relations the consequence is extreme voluntarism. In either case it simply fails to address Healy's key concern: conceptualising social constraint. I then argue that an alternative way of grasping structural constraint in the present might be to view past-tense `activity dependence' as `Cambridge events'

Agency (philosophy · Constraint (computer-aided design · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Nothing · Sociology · Structure and agency · Supervenience · Voluntarism (philosophy · Business Strategy and Innovation · Critical Realism in Sociology · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science

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