Social structures and human agency

This chapter presents the importance analytically making a difference between social structures and human action, and to study the interaction between them. Social structures must exist for human actions to be possible and actions must exist for social structures to be possible. In the fact paradigm, the analysis is reduced to objective social structures quite regardless of people’s agency, while the action paradigm reduces the analysis to individuals’ subjectivity irrespective of social structures. The objects of social science are relational and a social structure is made up of internally related objects or practices. The interplay between social structure and agency takes place over time; emergence is a process. Social reality swarms, it flows, and rushes, it is rich in levels and complexity, consisting of many powers and influences, events and experiences. Social facts have an existence of their own that can be compared to that among material things.

Agency (philosophy) · Social science · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Critical Realism in Sociology · Social Power and Status Dynamics

• Culture and agency

  Melanie S Archer, Margaret Scotford Archer•Culture and agency•1996

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