Structure, Culture and Agency: Selected Papers of Margaret Archer

343 Pages·2016·15.82 MB·English

by  Tom Brock

Structure, Culture and Agency
ProfessorMargaretArcherisaleadingcriticalrealistandmajorcontemporarysocial
theorist.Thiseditedcollectionseekstocelebratethescopeandaccomplishmentsof
her work, distilling her theoretical and empirical contributions into four sections
whichcapturetheessenceandtrajectoryofherresearchoveralmostfourdecades.
Long fascinated with the problem of structure and agency, Archer’s work has
constitutedadecade-longengagementwiththisperennialissueofsocialthought.
However, in spite of the deep interconnections that unify her body of work, it is
rarelytreatedasacoherentwhole.Thisisdoubtlessinpartduetotheunforgiving
rigourofherargumentsandprose,butisalsoabyproductofsociology’songoing
compartmentalisation.
Thiseditedcollectionseekstoaddressthisrelativeneglectbycollatingaselection
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.Thisbookillustratestheempiricaloriginsofhersocialontologyinherearly
workonthesociologyofeducation,aswellasforegroundingthediverserangeof
influences that have conditioned her intellectual trajectory: the systems theory of
WalterBuckley,theneo-WeberiananalysisofLockwood,thecritical realist phil-
osophyofRoyBhaskarand,morerecently,herengagementwithAmericanprag-
matismandtheItalianschoolofrelationalsociology.Whatemergesisaseriesof
importantcontributionstoourunderstandingoftherelationshipbetweenstructure,
culture and agency. Acting to introduce and guide readers through these contri-
butions, this book carries the potential to inform exciting and innovative socio-
logicalresearch.
TomBrockisLecturerinthedepartmentofSociologyatManchesterMetropolitan
University,UK.
Mark Carrigan is Research Fellow in the Centre for Social Ontology at the
UniversityofWarwick,UK.
GrahamScamblerisEmeritusProfessorofSociologyatUCL,UK,andVisiting
ProfessorofSociologyatSurreyUniversity,UK.
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Structure,CultureandAgency
SelectedPapersofMargaretArcher
EditedbyTomBrock,MarkCarriganandGrahamScambler
Structure, Culture and Agency
Selected Papers of Margaret Archer
Edited by Tom Brock, Mark Carrigan and
Graham Scambler
Firstpublished2017
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Contents
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction xiii
Morphogenesis: realism’s explanatory framework 1
1 Thinking and theorizing about educational systems 36
2 On predicting the behaviour of the educational system 50
3 The myth of cultural integration 59
4 The vexatious fact of society 77
5 Morphogenesis versus structuration: on combining
structure and action 102
6 For structure: its reality, properties and powers: a reply
to Anthony King 128
7 The private life of the social agent: what difference
does it make? 138
8 The ontological status of subjectivity: the missing link
between structure and agency 151
9 Reflexivity as the unacknowledged condition of social life 165
10 A brief history of how reflexivity becomes imperative 184
vi Contents
11 Morphogenic society: self-government and self-organization
as misleading metaphors 215
12 The generative mechanism reconfiguring Late Modernity 235
13 How agency is transformed in the course of social
transformation: don’t forget the double morphogenesis 259
The trajectory of the morphogenetic approach: an account
in the first person 282
Interview with Maggie 293
Structure, Culture and Agency: selected papers of
Margaret Archer: annotated bibliography 306
Index 314
Foreword
ItismyhonorandgreatpleasuretohavebeeninvitedtowritethisForewordtothe
collected work of Margaret (or Maggie, as she prefers) Archer. In one sense, of
course, the collection is a deserved tribute that expresses how the collectors feel
abouther.Thecollection,however,isprimarilymeantasaservicetothefield.The
factisthat,althoughcriticalrealistsspanmultipledisciplines–philosophy,theo-
logy, education, business organization and more – among sociologists, Maggie
Archerstandsfirst.Herwork,mostwell-knownandmostdrawn-upon,represents
whatIhaveelsewherecalledthecanonicalpositionsofcriticalrealisminsociology.
Itthusisaservicetoscholarsconcernedwithcriticalrealismthatencapsulatedhere
inthiscollectionareArcher’smostseminalstatements.
InthisbriefForeword,IwanttoidentifywhatIconsiderthecruxofArcher’s
work.ButfirstIwouldliketotaketheopportunitytosaysomethingaboutherasa
person. In his Sacred Project of American Sociology, Christian Smith describes
meetingsoftheAmericanSociologyAssociation(ASA)as“tediouslystratified,”
where“the‘best’sociologistslargelycirculateandtalkwiththeirownkind ::: In
fact,mostofeveryone’seyemovementsattheASAmeetingsinvolvechecking
out other people’s name tags, hung unceremoniously from lanyards around
theirnecks,toseeiftheirnamesarerecognizableandatwhatcollegeoruniversity
theywork.”1
AllIcansayisthat,bothasapersonandasasociologist,MaggieArcherdisplays
no such status-orientation. As the biblical passage puts it, she is no “respecter of
persons,”meaningthatsheisnotonetodifferentiatebysocialclass.Instead,Archer
always,inmyexperience,distinguishesratherbycogencyofthought,findingit,if
anything,moreamongtheobscurethanamongtheprominent.Incomparison,then,
withwhatcharacterizesASAmeetings,Archer’spersonalandprofessionalopen-
nessisveryrefreshing.
Butletmeturntothework.Clearly,Archer’sworkspansdecadesanddevelops
overtime.Thepresentcollectionmarksthatdevelopment.Clearly,Icannotcom-
mentonitall.WhatIcandoisidentifywhatIbelieveiskeytoitall,namelytwo
relatedpositions:AnalyticalDualismandtheMorphogenetic/Morphostatic(MM)
approach.Asthelatterdependsontheformer,Iwillbeginwiththat.
Contemporarysociologyislargelyuncomfortablewithbinarydistinctions.Itis
uncomfortable with the realist distinction between subject and object; it is
viii Foreword
uncomfortable with the distinction between culture and agency; equally uncom-
fortablewiththedistinctionbetweenstructureandagency;anduncomfortableeven
withthedistinctionbetweencultureandstructure.
Thatdiscomforthasledtoallkindsofcollapseor,inArcher’sword,conflation.
For pragmatist and Bourdieusean perspectives, both widespread, the distinction
betweensubjectandobjectandothersuchputativelyCartesianoppositionsaretobe
overcomeeitherbysomesortofnon-realistdialecticorbytheconceptofhabitus.
Withtheso-calledculturalturn,socialororganizationalstructurewasswallowedby
culture(i.e.,reducedtorulesorschema),and,then,withtheso-calledpracticeturn,
culture(andwithitnowstructure)hasbeenconflatedwithpractice(agency).The
end is Hegel’s “night in which all cows are black.” Lost, that is, are the distinct
conceptsthroughwhichtounraveldifferentkindsofsocialcausality.
Against this conflationist tendency stands Archer’s analytical dualism. The
designationmaynowbesomewhatmisleadingasthereareseveraldualismsArcher
seeks to preserve. In Culture and Agency Archer sought to defend an analytical
distinction between culture and agency. In Realist Social Theory she similarly
arguedforananalyticaldistinctionbetweenstructureandagency.And, certainly,
Archer affirms a distinction between culture and social structure. Thus, after
Archer’s (2013) “Social Morphogenesis and the Prospects of Morphogenetic
Society,”themoreencompassingstatementofpositionmaybewhatArchercalls
SAC, the defense of structure, agency, and culture as three distinct ontological
featuresofsocialreality,which,howeverintertwinedempirically,needtobesorted
outanalyticallyinsocialexplanation.
How the three get sorted out leads to the MM approach. The words morpho-
genesisandmorphostasislookmoreimposingthantheyactuallyare.Theyreferto
changeorconstancyofsocialform,andthatchangeorconstancyinvolvedialectical
(i.e.,interactive)relationshipsovertimebetweensocialform(structureandculture)
andagency.IpersonallyrelatethepointtoMarx’sdictum thatpeoplemaketheir
own history but not under circumstances of their own making. The analytical
dualism here distinguishes both the original and resulting circumstances or con-
ditionsfromtheagentialmakingordoingpeopleperforminbetween.
The circumstances in which people find themselves – and which they either
reproduce or change – are both cultural and structural. Thus, there are distinct
cultural and structural MM cycles that themselves intertwine, complicating the
empirical analysis of actual processes. But unless the analytical distinctions
associated with SAC are maintained, explanation will lapse, as it often does in
sociology, into subjectivism, interactionism, or positivistic sociological holism.
Together, SAC and the MM approach are the more abstract, meta-theoretical
principlesthatwardagainstsuchadverseanalyticaltendencies.
I call Archer’s SAC, the MM approach, and the associated conceptions of
structure and culture the canonical positions among critical realist sociologists
mainlytoregistertheirlackofuniversalembraceamongus.Therearecriticalrealist
sociologistswhodisagreewithsomeelements.ButitwasArcherwhoconvinced
Roy Bhaskar that his original Transformational Model of Social Action (TMSA)
was too beholden to the conflations of Giddens’s structuration theory; and it is
Foreword ix
Archer whose views remain dominant among critical realist sociologists. And,
together,SACandtheMMapproacharekeytoArcher’sviews.
DougPorpora
Note
1 ChristianSmith,TheSacredProjectofAmericanSociology(Oxford,NewYork:Oxford
UniversityPress,2014),pp.136–7.
Reference
1 Archer, M.S. (2013) “Social Morphogenesis and the Prospects of Morphogenetic
Society,”inArcher,M.S.(ed.),SocialMorphogenesis.NewYork:Springer,pp.1–22.