Dave Elder-Vass (Website)
Birkbeck College, University of London, 2006
Abstract
The question of structure and agency has long been regarded as a central problem in sociological theory. In addition to the traditional approaches offered by methodological individualism and methodological collectivism, recent decades have seen a number of attempts to transcend these two positions, most prominently by Giddens and Archer. However, this remains a highly contested subject, and none of these proposed resolutions has yet prevailed.
This thesis investigates whether a more satisfactory understanding of structure and agency can be developed by applying the theory of emergence. It engages with several branches of the literature on emergence, including the early twentieth century emergentists, complexity theory, critical realism, and the philosophy of mind, in order to clarify the theory of emergence itself and to show how it provides a viable alternative to extreme varieties of reductionism and dualism. Having done so, it examines whether human agency and social structure can be understood in emergentist terms, and whether theorising them in this way enables us to produce a more satisfactory account of their relationship to each other and to social events. This thesis seeks to complement and extend Archer’s existing analysis of structure and action in terms of emergence. While it is critical of the sociological ontology of Giddens and others, it also seeks to demonstrate that a wide range of sociological theory, including much of theirs, is not only compatible with but also complementary to an emergentist account of structure and agency. Thus, for example, Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus is one-sided both ontologically and theoretically, yet can become part of a more balanced theory of human action by integrating it within an emergentist framework.
Emergence, the thesis concludes, provides a strong foundation for clarifying, and indeed transcending, previous sociological understandings of social structure and human agency.
Methods
Theoretical