Description
Book SynopsisThis is a deliberately polemical intervention into the structure/agency debate in the social sciences. It argues that central concepts in this debate such as society' and the individual' have been widely misconceived, and that progress in the social sciences will only occur if the real nature of the social world is respected. -- .
Trade Review"this book outlines structure and agency as a key to understanding the mechanisms of ontology within social science. Prominent social scientists including Giddens and Archer have suggested that the ‘Structure-Agency’ question is the most important theoretical issue within the human sciences. In dealing with the structure and agency debate, it has been argued, and in my own opinion, it should be recognised as central to the way we study politics and the social sciences in particular."
(Ciara Flynn, University College Cork, Irish Journal of Sociology, 2014)
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Table of Contents1. Introduction: the opposition of structure and agency – Peter J. Martin and Alex Dennis
PART ONE
2. The structure problem in the context of structure and agency controversies – Wes Sharrock and Graham Button
3. On the retreat from collective concepts in sociology – Peter J. Martin
4. Structure and agency as the products of dynamic social processes:
Marx and modern social theory – Alex Dennis
PART TWO
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
9. Beyond social structure – Richard Jenkins
10. Two kinds of social theory: the myth and reality of social existence – Anthony King
Bibliography
Index
