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Anthony Giddens
Structuration
Structuration is a concept thought up by and used by Giddens. Structuration Theory is a social ontology.
Ontology means - What is? what exists?
It is primarily concerned with what exists rather than trying to set out laws of development.
Structuration tells us what we are looking at.
He rejects functionalism and evolutionary theory because he sees them as closed theories, rather than viewing human action as open-
ended.
Giddens is trying to transcend the traditional division of structure and action, by focusing on ?social practices?.
Social practices produce and are produced by structures.
Rules and regulations are not external to actors but are produced and reproduced by actors in their practices.
Time and space are also important in his theory, and his historical sociology discusses how different societies bind time and space together.
Uniting Structural and Social Action Approaches.
Giddens is arguing that structure and action are two sides of the same coin.
Neither can exist independently.
Action produces structure and structure creates action, so that they persist over time.
He says, ?structure has no existence independent of the knowledge that agents have about what they do in their day-today activity.? (Giddens cited, Haralambos and Holborn, 2000)
He calls this relationship between action and structure the ?duality of structure?.
E.g. Language and speech. The English language is a structure, it is a set of rules about how to communicate, which seems independent of any individual. People must speak English for it to exist.
So ? when I utter a grammatical English sentence I contribute to the reproduction of the English language as a whole.? (Giddens)
Language does change over time and so agents transform as well as reproduce the structures.
Rules and Resources
Rules and resources are two aspects of social life.
Rules are procedures that people follow in their social life. Such rules can be changed by new patterns of interaction.
Resources also come into being, or existence through human action. Allocative and authoritative.
Allocative resources,
include raw materials, land, technology, production instruments, goods. Land is of no use until someone turns it into a farm.
Authoritative resources are non-
material resources. These resources result from some individuals being able to dominate others.
Humans become resources when you can get them to do what you want. Based again on human interaction.
Authority is not something you have unless you are using it.
Social Systems
A social system is a pattern of social relations that persists over a period of time and space.
1970?s Singapore was a social system because it was a geographically defined space, over a particular period of time.
Social relations and patterns would have been constantly changing from 1971 until 1979. Also institutions would have displayed some level of continuity over time,
while constantly changing.
Anthony Giddens continued...
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