Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation

Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation PDF Author: Margaret Scotford Archer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521535977
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Explores the relationship between structure and agency through human reflexivity and the internal conversation.

Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation

Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation PDF Author: Margaret Scotford Archer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521535977
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Explores the relationship between structure and agency through human reflexivity and the internal conversation.

Structure, Culture and Agency

Structure, Culture and Agency PDF Author: Tom Brock
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317392493
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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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.

Reflexions in the Flesh

Reflexions in the Flesh PDF Author: Nick Crossley
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 033522962X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
In this book, Nick Crossley explores the concept of reflexive embodiment – how we, as embodied beings, reflect upon our own embodiment. He considers the ways in which we modify and maintain our bodies, from brushing our teeth and washing our faces through to tattooing and bodybuilding. Some forms of ‘body work’ are demanded by social conventions; others represent legitimate choices, and others still deviate from or resist the norm. He argues that a proper understanding of reflexive embodiment must be alert to these differences, and that we must appreciate that our bodies are not passive or inert substances that we can mould as we like. They change in ways that we do not intend and of which we are not aware, and they may prove difficult to change in the ways we do intend. Many theorists in sociology offer perspectives on the link between society and body modification, mostly focused in one way or another upon ‘modernity’. Reflexive Embodiment in Contemporary Society reviews this literature, evaluates competing claims and suggests an alternative approach. Nick Crossley contends that existing perspectives are very selective in the range of modification practices they focus upon and in their conception of both modernity and its effects upon the body. While various theories identify clusters of modification practices and link them to aspects of modernity, there has been no systematic attempt to combine these partial accounts into a coherent vision. This book provides such a vision and offers a major contribution to the sociology of the body.

The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity

The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity PDF Author: Margaret S. Archer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107020956
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
What do young people want from life? This book shows how the 'internal conversation' guides individual choices.

Making our Way through the World

Making our Way through the World PDF Author: Margaret S. Archer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139464963
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
How do we reflect upon ourselves and our concerns in relation to society, and vice versa? Human reflexivity works through 'internal conversations' using language, but also emotions, sensations and images. Most people acknowledge this 'inner-dialogue' and can report upon it. However, little research has been conducted on 'internal conversations' and how they mediate between our ultimate concerns and the social contexts we confront. In this book, Margaret Archer argues that reflexivity is progressively replacing routine action in late modernity, shaping how ordinary people make their way through the world. Using interviewees' life and work histories, she shows how 'internal conversations' guide the occupations people seek, keep or quit; their stances towards structural constraints and enablements; and their resulting patterns of social mobility.

Realist Social Theory

Realist Social Theory PDF Author: Margaret Scotford Archer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521484428
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Building on her seminal contribution to social theory in Culture and agency, Margaret Archer develops here her morphogenetic approach, applying it to the problem of structure and agency. Since structure and agency constitute different levels of stratified social reality, each possesses distinctive emergent properties which are real and causally efficacious but irreducible to one another. The problem, therefore, is shown to be how to link the two rather than conflate them, as has been common practice - whether in upwards conflation (by the aggregation of individual acts) downwards conflation (through the structural orchestration of agents), or, more recently, in central conflation which holds the two to be mutually constitutive and thus precludes any examination of their interplay by eliding them. Realist social theory: the morphogenetic approach thus not only rejects methodological individualism and collectivism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one between elisionary theorizing (such as Giddens' structuration theory) and the emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world. The morphogenetic approach is the sociological complement of transcendental realism, and together they provide a basis for non-conflationary theorizing which is also of direct utility to the practising social analyst.

Going to University

Going to University PDF Author: Case, Jennifer
Publisher: African Minds
ISBN: 1928331696
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Around the world, more young people than ever before are attending university. Student numbers in South Africa have doubled since democracy and for many families, higher education is a route to a better future for their children. But alongside the overwhelming demand for higher education, questions about its purposes have intensified. Deliberations about the curriculum, culture and costing of public higher education abound from student activists, academics, parents, civil society and policy-makers. We know, from macro research, that South African graduates generally have good employment prospects. But little is known at a detailed level about how young people actually make use of their university experiences to craft their life courses. And even less is known about what happens to those who drop out. This accessible book brings together the rich life stories of 73 young people, six years after they began their university studies. It traces how going to university influences not only their employment options, but also nurtures the agency needed to chart their own way and to engage critically with the world around them. The book offers deep insights into the ways in which public higher education is both a private and public good, and it provides significant conclusions pertinent to anyone who works in – and cares about – universities.

Media/Society

Media/Society PDF Author: David Croteau
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1506315321
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Providing a framework for understanding the relationship between media and society, this updated Sixth Edition of Media/Society helps you develop the skills you need to critically evaluate both conventional wisdom and your own assumptions about the social role of the media. Authors David Croteau and William Hoynes retain the book’s basic sociological framework but now include additional discussions of new studies and up-to-date material on today’s rapidly changing media landscape. Now featuring streamlined content and a more engaging narrative, this edition offers expanded discussions of the “new media” world, including digitization, the internet, the spread of mobile media devices, the role of user-generated content, the potential social impact of new media on society, and new media’s effect on traditional media outlets

Strategy as Practice

Strategy as Practice PDF Author: Gerry Johnson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521862930
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This is an analysis of what managers actually do in relation to the development of strategy in organisations.

The Social Construction of Reality

The Social Construction of Reality PDF Author: Peter L. Berger
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453215468
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced “a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally” (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.