Human agents and social structures

✍ Scribed by Peter J. Martin; Alex Denis (editors)

Publisher: Manchester University Press
Year: 2016
Tongue: English
Leaves: 192
Category: Library

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis

This 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.

✦ Table of Contents

Front matter
Contents
Notes on contributors
Part I General issues
Introduction: the opposition of structure and agency
The structure problem in the context of structure and agency controversies
On the retreat from collective concepts in sociology
Structure and agency as the products of dynamic social processes: Marx and modern social theory
Part II Recent social theorists
The two Habermases
Pierre Bourdieu: from the model of reality to the reality of the model
The production and reproduction of social order: is structuration a solution?
On the reception of Foucault
PART III After the debate
Beyond social structure
Two kinds of social theory: the myth and reality of social existence
Bibliography
Index

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