Human agents and social structures PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Human agents and social structures PDF full book. Access full book title Human agents and social structures by Peter J. Martin. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Peter J. Martin
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847794998
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book
Book Description
The structure/agency debate has been among the central issues in recent discussions of social theory. It has been widely assumed that the key theoretical task is to find a link between social structures and acting human beings – to reconcile the macro with the micro, society and the individual. The contributors to this book reject this solution to the problem. For them, both the concept of ‘society’ as an entity and the freely-acting ‘individual’ are theoretical fiction. Rather, the immediate task of the social sciences is to take the social world seriously, to understand the ways in which that world emerges dynamically from, and exerts influence on, the interactions of real people in real situations. This timely collection is not intended as an even-handed review of the debate, but as a deliberately polemical intervention which aims to highlight some of the ways in which its central terms have been misconceived.
Author: Peter J. Martin
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847794998
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book
Book Description
The structure/agency debate has been among the central issues in recent discussions of social theory. It has been widely assumed that the key theoretical task is to find a link between social structures and acting human beings – to reconcile the macro with the micro, society and the individual. The contributors to this book reject this solution to the problem. For them, both the concept of ‘society’ as an entity and the freely-acting ‘individual’ are theoretical fiction. Rather, the immediate task of the social sciences is to take the social world seriously, to understand the ways in which that world emerges dynamically from, and exerts influence on, the interactions of real people in real situations. This timely collection is not intended as an even-handed review of the debate, but as a deliberately polemical intervention which aims to highlight some of the ways in which its central terms have been misconceived.
Author: Piotr Sztompka
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317652592
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Get Book
Book Description
A striking feature of the human condition is its dual, contradictory, inherently split character; on the one hand, autonomy and freedom; on the other, constraint and dependence on social structure. This volume addresses this central problem of the linkage between human action and social structure in sociological and social science theory. Contributions cover several different approaches to the agency-structure problematic, and represent the work of a number of leading international sociologists. Their efforts point to a reorientation of social theory, both on philosophical and methodological levels.
Author: Peter J. Martin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book
Book Description
5. The two Habermases: Anthony King -- 6. Pierre Bourdieu: from the model of reality to the reality of the model: Richard Jenkins -- 7. The production and reproduction of social order: is structuration a solution?: Wes Sharrock -- 8. On the reception of Foucault: Allison Cavanagh and Alex Dennis -- PART THREE: After the debate -- 9. Beyond social structure: Richard Jenkins -- 10. Two kinds of social theory: the myth and reality of social existence: Anthony King -- Bibliography -- Index
Author: Gil Richard Musolf
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781853852992
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Get Book
Book Description
Author: Margaret Scotford Archer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521535977
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Get Book
Book Description
Explores the relationship between structure and agency through human reflexivity and the internal conversation.
Author: Anthony Giddens
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745665284
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 585
Get Book
Book Description
Anthony Giddens has been in the forefront of developments in social theory for the past decade. In The Constitution of Society he outlines the distinctive position he has evolved during that period and offers a full statement of a major new perspective in social thought, a synthesis and elaboration of ideas touched on in previous works but described here for the first time in an integrated and comprehensive form. A particular feature is Giddens's concern to connect abstract problems of theory to an interpretation of the nature of empirical method in the social sciences. In presenting his own ideas, Giddens mounts a critical attack on some of the more orthodox sociological views. The Constitution of Society is an invaluable reference book for all those concerned with the basic issues in contemporary social theory.
Author: Alex Callinicos
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047404769
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Get Book
Book Description
This republication gives a new generation of readers access to an important intervention in Marxism and social theory. Making History is about the question of how human agents draw their powers from the social structures they are involved in.
Author: Tom Brock
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317392493
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Get Book
Book Description
Professor Margaret Archer is a leading critical realist and major contemporary social theorist. This edited collection seeks to celebrate the scope and accomplishments of her work, distilling her theoretical and empirical contributions into four sections which capture the essence and trajectory of her research over almost four decades. Long fascinated with the problem of structure and agency, Archer’s work has constituted a decade-long engagement with this perennial issue of social thought. However, in spite of the deep interconnections that unify her body of work, it is rarely treated as a coherent whole. This is doubtless in part due to the unforgiving rigour of her arguments and prose, but also a byproduct of sociology’s ongoing compartmentalisation. This edited collection seeks to address this relative neglect by collating a selection of papers, spanning Archer’s career, which collectively elucidate both the development of her thought and the value that can be found in it as a systematic whole. This book illustrates the empirical origins of her social ontology in her early work on the sociology of education, as well as foregrounding the diverse range of influences that have conditioned her intellectual trajectory: the systems theory of Walter Buckley, the neo-Weberian analysis of Lockwood, the critical realist philosophy of Roy Bhaskar and, more recently, her engagement with American pragmatism and the Italian school of relational sociology. What emerges is a series of important contributions to our understanding of the relationship between structure, culture and agency. Acting to introduce and guide readers through these contributions, this book carries the potential to inform exciting and innovative sociological research.
Author: David Rubinstein
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761919285
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Get Book
Book Description
This book addresses two key issues in sociological theory: the debate between structural and cultural approaches and the problem of agency. It does this through looking at the work of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim and the ideas of modern theorists like Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and Talcott Parsons. The book examines economics, rational choice theory, network theory, ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism.
Author: Pierre Bourdieu
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745681654
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Get Book
Book Description
Much orthodox economic theory is based on assumptions which are treated as self-evident: supply and demand are regarded as independent entities, the individual is assumed to be a rational agent who knows his interests and how to make decisions corresponding to them, and so on. But one has only to examine an economic transaction closely, as Pierre Bourdieu does here for the buying and selling of houses, to see that these abstract assumptions cannot explain what happens in reality. As Bourdieu shows, the market is constructed by the state, which can decide, for example, whether to promote private housing or collective provision. And the individuals involved in the transaction are immersed in symbolic constructions which constitute, in a strong sense, the value of houses, neighbourhoods and towns. The abstract and illusory nature of the assumptions of orthodox economic theory has been criticised by some economists, but Bourdieu argues that we must go further. Supply, demand, the market and even the buyer and seller are products of a process of social construction, and so-called ‘economic' processes can be adequately described only by calling on sociological methods. Instead of seeing the two disciplines in antagonistic terms, it is time to recognize that sociology and economics are in fact part of a single discipline, the object of which is the analysis of social facts, of which economic transactions are in the end merely one aspect. This brilliant study by the most original sociologist of post-war France will be essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, economics, anthropology and related disciplines.
