Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation
Title | Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation PDF eBook |
Author | Margaret Scotford Archer |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 384 |
Release | 2003-08-28 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 9780521535977 |
Explores the relationship between structure and agency through human reflexivity and the internal conversation.
Structure, Culture and Agency
Title | Structure, Culture and Agency PDF eBook |
Author | Tom Brock |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Pages | 343 |
Release | 2016-11-10 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1317392493 |
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
Title | Reflexions in the Flesh PDF eBook |
Author | Nick Crossley |
Publisher | McGraw-Hill Education (UK) |
Pages | 173 |
Release | 2006-09-16 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 033522962X |
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
Title | The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity PDF eBook |
Author | Margaret S. Archer |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 353 |
Release | 2012-05-03 |
Genre | Psychology |
ISBN | 1107020956 |
What do young people want from life? This book shows how the 'internal conversation' guides individual choices.
The Social Construction of Reality
Title | The Social Construction of Reality PDF eBook |
Author | Peter L. Berger |
Publisher | Open Road Media |
Pages | 313 |
Release | 2011-04-26 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1453215468 |
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.
Realist Social Theory
Title | Realist Social Theory PDF eBook |
Author | Margaret Scotford Archer |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 370 |
Release | 1995-10-19 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 9780521484428 |
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.
Making our Way through the World
Title | Making our Way through the World PDF eBook |
Author | Margaret S. Archer |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 353 |
Release | 2007-06-14 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1139464965 |
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.