Structure and Agency

Four Volume Set

Edited by:

Mike O'Donnell

Other Titles in:
Social Theory

May 2010 | 1 672 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

The relationship of social structure to individual and collective agency has been central to sociology from the outset. It remains so in period in which poststructuralists have challenged the idea of stable social structures and even the usefulness in social science of the concept of structure itself. The historical trajectory of the debate about the respective importance of structure and agency and the relationship between the two provides the narrative context of this collection of articles.

The point of arranging this collection of articles predominantly in historical sequence is not simply a matter of convenience. Historical context has a major impact on forming the concerns of sociologists and, equally significantly, on the way they perceive and theorise the social world.

Volume One: Modernity, Sociology and the Structure/Agency Debate

Volume Two: Postmodernity - An End to the Structure /Agency Dichotomy?

Volume Three: Structure/Agency Theories Applied

Volume Four: Network Theory - Transcending the Traditional Limits of Structure/Agency

Part 1: Modernity, Sociology and the Structure/Agency Debate

Seminal Sources: Marx, Weber and Durkheim

On Class

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Definitions of Sociology and Social

Max Weber

The Conflict between Methodology and Rationalisation in the Work of Max Weber

Lars Udehn

From "Suicide: A study in sociology

Emile Durkheim

American Structural-Functionalism

Parson's Action-System Requisite Model and Weber's Elective Affinity: A convergence of convenience

Javier Trevino

Overcoming Structure and Agency: Talcott Parsons, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the theory of social action

Anthony King

Structure and Anomie

Robert K. Merton

The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology

Denis H. Wrong

Symbolic Interactionism

From "Mind, Mind Self and Society: From the standpoint of a social behaviourist"

George Mead

Goffman on Organizations

Peter K. Manning

The Sociology of Self

Peter L. Callero

Alfred Schutz and the 'Objectifying Attitude'

Austin Harrington

The Two Sociologies

Alan Dawe

Structuralism, Poststructuralism and the Cultural Turn

Desire and Drive in Researcher Subjectivity: The broken mirror of Lacan

Tony Brown

The Power of the Imaginary in Disciplinary Processes

John Roberts

Agency: The internal split of structure

Yong Wang

Born-Again Functionalism: a reconsideration of Althusser's structuralism

Richard P. Appelbaum

Structures, Strategies and the Habitus

Pierre Bourdieu

Some Implications of Pierre Bourdieu's Work for the Theory of Social Self Organizations

Christian Fuchs

Epistemology and Method: Althusser, Foucault, Derrida

P.L. Brown

Agency and Change: Re-evaluating Foucault's legacy

Raymond Caldwell

Bourdieu, Critic of Foucault: The case of rmpirical social science against double-game-philosophy

Staf Callwaert

Part 2: Critical Theory; Structuration Theory; Critical Realism; and Indentity Theory

Critical Theory: Adorno, Habermas, Marcuse

Reading Bourdieu with Adorno: The limits of critical theory and reflexive sociology

Nedim Karakayali

Pragmatism and Critical Theory

Larry Ray

The self-empowered subject: Habermas, Foucault and hermeneutic reflexivity

Hans Herbert Kogler

Structuration Theory: The Dualism/Duality Debate

From "The Constitution of Society: Outline of the theory of structuration"

Anthony Giddens

A Theory of Structure: Duality, agency and transformation

William H. Sewell

Institutional Responsibility and Hidden Meanings

Rick A. M. Iedema

Cultural Consumption Analysis: Beyond structure and agency

Volker Kirchberg

Social and System Integration: Lockwood, Habermas, Giddens

Nicos Mouzelis

Radically Reconstituting the Subject: Social theory and human nature

Mike H. O'Donnell

Critical Realism

Morphogenesis versus Structuration: On combining structure and action

Margaret S. Archer

The Archers; a Tale of Folk (Final Episode?)

Frederic Vandenberghe

Challenging Dualism: Public professionalism in 'troubled' times

Denis Gleeson and David Knight

Refusing the Realism-Structuration Divide

Rob Stones

Structure, Self, Agency and Identity

Identity as an analysis problem: who's who in 'pro ana' websites

Martin Hammersley and Peggy Treseder

What is Identity?

Stuart Hall

Performativity Identified

Alecia Youngblood Jackson

Narrating Human Actions: The subjective experience of agency, structure, communion and serendipity

Amia Leiblich and Tammar B. Zilber

Contingency, contestation and hegemony: The possibility of a non-essentialist politics of the left

Eduard Grebe

Part 3: Structure/Agency Theories Applied

Class

Structure, agency and Marx's analysis of the labour process

Stephen Pratten

With a little class: A critique of identity politics

Martha E. Gimenez

Violence and Revolutionary Subjectivity: Marx to Zizek

Christopher J. Finlay

The Promising Future of Class Analysis: A response to recent critiques

John H. Goldthorpe and Gordon Marshall

Organizations and Employment

Implications of Self-Reference: Niklas Luhmann's autopoiesis and organization theory

Tor Hernes and Tore Bakken

The New Structuralism in Organizational Theory

Michael Lounsbury and Marc Ventresca

Gender

Theorising Patriarchy

Sylvia Walby

Structure and Agency in Socialist-Feminist Thought

Amy S. Wharton

Agency, Anticipation and Determinacy in Feminist Theory

Lois McNay

Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the concept

R. W. Connell and James Messersmidt

'Race', Ethnicity and Agency

Women, Men and Class Revisited: An assessment of the utility of a combined schema in the context of minority Ethnic educational achievement in Britain

Catherine Rothon

The Social Geographies of White Masculitinites

Stephen D. Farough

The Life Course

Identity and Agency in Emerging Adulthood: Two developmental routes in the individuation process

Seth J. Schwartz, James E. Cote and Jeffrey Jensen Arnett

Women Growing Older: Agency, ethnicity and culture

Sharon Wray

Disability

Agency, Structure, and the Transition to Disability: A case study with implications for life history research

Ronald J. Berger

Love's Labour Lost? Feminism, the disabled people's movement and an ethic of care

Bill Hughes, Linda McKie, Debra Hopkins and Nick Watson

The Body: Embodiment

The Undersocialised Conception of the Embodied Agent In Modern Sociology

Chris Shilling

'Sex' and the Problem of the Body: Reconstructing Judith Butler's theory of sex/gender

Samuel A. Chambers

Part 4: Network Theory, Globalisation Theory, Hegemony

Networks

The Network Society: From knowledge to policy

Manuel Castells

Reflexivity as Non-linearity

Scott Lash

Internet and self-regulation in China: The cultural logic of controlled commodification

Ian Weber and Lu Jia

Globalisation, Social Movements

Simmel to Rokkan and Beyond: Towards a network theory of (new) social movements

Mario Diani

The Gordian Knot of Agency-Structure in International Relations: A neo-Gramscian perspective

Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton

Culture, Identity and Hegemony: The body in a global age

Lauren Langman

Human Well-Being and Social Structures: Relating the universal and the local

Ian Gough

The Crisis of Identity in High Modernity

Mervyn F. Bendle

Part 5: Conclusion/Continuation

Conclusion/Continuation

The Paradox of the Two Sociologies: Hobbes, Latour and the constitution of modern social theory

Robert van Krieken

Alexander and the Cultural Refounding of American Sociology

Fuyuki Kurasawa

'Agency' as a Red Herring in Social Theory

Steven Loyal and Barry Barnes

Beyond Reform: Agency after theory

John Schlueter

From Factors to Actors: Computational sociology and agent-based modeling

Michael W. Macey and Robert Willer

What is Agency?

Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische

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