Structures and Agency
What is structure and agency? How does this framework help us in political analysis?
For it is part and parcel of daily experience to feel both free and enchained, capable of shaping our own future and yet confronted by towering, seemingly impersonal constraints. Consequently in facing up to the problem of structure and agency social theorists are not just addressing crucial technical problems in the study of society, they are also confronting the most pressing social problem of the human condition.’1
Structure and agency is a key understanding mechanism within social science. The approach attempts to answer the question of action; how is it that I can do what I want with others when their goals are different, and often incompatible with mine? Prominent social scientists including Giddens and Archer have suggested that the ‘Structure-Agency’ question is the most important theoretical issue within the human sciences. This debate has been slower to make an impact on political science than on some other social science disciplines yet it has been argued that structure-agency questions should be recognised as central to the way we study politics.
It can be argued that there is no ‘escape’ from issues of structure-agency. Hay argues: “Every time we construct, however tentatively, a notion of social, political or economic causality we appeal, whether explicitly or (more likely) implicitly, to ideas about structure and agency.”2 The structure and agency can be regarded as crucial to an understanding of Social Sciences; it has at its base a fundamental question which humans have posed for a long time. This is an essentially normative question; are we free to act as we please, or are we shaped and governed by structures? Nobody would argue that structure controls us completely, but neither, in the post-modern world, are we completely free.
It is prudent to first determine examine what we can understand by the terms ‘structure’ and ‘agency’. This paper will
For it is part and parcel of daily experience to feel both free and enchained, capable of shaping our own future and yet confronted by towering, seemingly impersonal constraints. Consequently in facing up to the problem of structure and agency social theorists are not just addressing crucial technical problems in the study of society, they are also confronting the most pressing social problem of the human condition.’1
Structure and agency is a key understanding mechanism within social science. The approach attempts to answer the question of action; how is it that I can do what I want with others when their goals are different, and often incompatible with mine? Prominent social scientists including Giddens and Archer have suggested that the ‘Structure-Agency’ question is the most important theoretical issue within the human sciences. This debate has been slower to make an impact on political science than on some other social science disciplines yet it has been argued that structure-agency questions should be recognised as central to the way we study politics.
It can be argued that there is no ‘escape’ from issues of structure-agency. Hay argues: “Every time we construct, however tentatively, a notion of social, political or economic causality we appeal, whether explicitly or (more likely) implicitly, to ideas about structure and agency.”2 The structure and agency can be regarded as crucial to an understanding of Social Sciences; it has at its base a fundamental question which humans have posed for a long time. This is an essentially normative question; are we free to act as we please, or are we shaped and governed by structures? Nobody would argue that structure controls us completely, but neither, in the post-modern world, are we completely free.
It is prudent to first determine examine what we can understand by the terms ‘structure’ and ‘agency’. This paper will