The Constitution of Society
... Rules constitute the available patterns of behaviour and practices, which individuals draw upon to realise desired outcomes. Through individual action, social structures are reproduced, which assume the foundations for further actions ( Giddens, 1984). Social structures are properties that exist only over the time and space that they are used and reproduced by agents. ...
... Public healthcare practice and global health systems, then, only exist as systems of recurrent relations and practices, across the time and space, that they are produced and prolonged. Giddens' ( 1984; articulation of time and space has enabled further analyses of social relations in a modern globalised world, whereby global technology and communication creates ' time-space distantiation', as traditional modernity recedes. For instance, individuals do not need to be physically present to communicate with others globally, for example, telemedicine, and can construct and negotiate relations beyond immediate vicinities. ...
... Language is central to how societal gendered expectations are formed, reformed, and performed, to uphold structural inequalities in public health ( Pearce et al., 2020). Giddens' ( 1984) theory of ' Structuration' is useful in this context. As was mentioned in Chapter 2, social structures are both the medium and outcome of the practices they organise and perform. ...
Approaching global health through a social justice lens, this text explores both estab�lished and emerging issues for contemporary health and wellbeing.
Divided into two parts, the book introduces key concepts in relation to global public
health, such as ethics, economics, health disparities, and globalisation. The second part
comprises chapters exploring specific challenges, such as designing and implementing
public health interventions, the role of social enterprise, climate change, sustainability
and health, oral health, violence, palliative care, mental health, loneliness, nutrition,
and embracing diverse genders. These chapters build on, and apply, the theoretical
frameworks laid out in part one, linking the substantive content to broader contexts.
Taking an inclusive, global approach, this is a key text for both undergraduate and
postgraduate students of global health, public health, and medical sociology.
... The purpose of this book is to present an analytical framework that enables the reader to interpret the phenomenon of global dissemination of distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic as a missed opportunity for a potential qualitative change in education due to culturally instilled (and reproduced) perceptions of the role of the teacher and the pupil, which -at the same time -provide the ontological security (Giddens, 1984) necessary to recreate the order and continuity of the social world, including the micro-world of the school. Furthermore, the aim is to investigate the impact of distance education on school culture. ...
... In a blink of an eye, classrooms had become spaces with no walls and timeframe, where routines and rituals faded, and hierarchy and power dynamics were flattened (Castells, 2000: 15-16). This very decompression of time and space, which unequivocally has been one the main distinctive features of distance education, could rightly be seen as a chance to reimagine the definition of the school situation (Goffman, 1990) as it drastically changes the regionalisation and routinisation of schooling (Giddens, 1984), in other words, the where and when of learning . For those reasons, it truly was an opportunity for a profound change in how we think about education and schooling. ...
... Habits played an important role in classical sociological theory (see Camic 1986;Gross 2009;Lizardo 2021) but were excised from American sociology by the mid-twentieth century in favor of more "reflective" (purposive, voluntaristic, and rational) explanations of action (e.g., Parsons 1937;see Camic 1986). Over the past few decades, North American sociologists have increasingly turned toward theories of "practice" that emphasize the skillful, embodied, and pre-reflective nature of human conduct (Bourdieu 1977(Bourdieu , 1990Giddens 1984;Gross 2009;Schatzki, Cetina, and von Savigny 2001), but these in turn have been challenged as insufficiently attentive to the features of modern society that prompt regular internal deliberation (Archer 2007(Archer , 2010(Archer , 2012. This theoretical back-and-forth has not reached consensus, nor does it have clear avenues for resolution. ...
... Second, developing the capacity to rigorously test cognitive theories will help sociologists contribute to interdisciplinary conversations, something that arguably we have not always done well but that has great potential to advance research on culture, cognition, and action (Lizardo 2014;Vaisey 2021;Vaisey and Valentino 2018; but see Lamont et al. 2017). Finally, it is worth reminding ourselves that although sociological work on cognition and action currently draws heavily on work from the cognitive sciences, questions about automatic and deliberate cognition have been a part of sociological thought from the foundations of our discipline (Dewey 1922;Weber 1920), and our commitment to answering them is reaffirmed every time we invoke concepts like habit, agency, schemas, habitus, embodiment, reflection, imagination, reflexivity, or implicit bias (Archer 2010;Bourdieu 1990;Giddens 1984;Gross 2009;Hitlin and Johnson 2015;Hunzaker and Valentino 2019;Lizardo and Strand 2010;Quillian 2008). In short, these are our questions too, and we should be willing to take ownership for answering them. ...
... Hook (1939) distinguished between two generic conceptions of dialectic: a pattern of existential change in nature and/or society or a special method for analysing these changes. Dialectics has also been used in sociology, for example, as a way of reconciling the dualism between theories of human agency and structure (Giddens, 1979(Giddens, , 1984. In their classic text on the social construction of reality, Berger and Luckmann (1967) examined the social dialectic through which humans construct reality and reproduce themselves in a mutually formative relationship with society. ...
... A power theme is perhaps the most obvious observation of Table 39.1 since 13 papers examine control-resistance as a dialectic. Some of these studies draw from Giddens' (1979Giddens' ( , 1984 dialectic of control, which suggests that while leaders' power may be extensive, it also depends on followers who thus retain a degree of autonomy and discretion. More broadly, Giddens' arguments suggest the importance of follower-related questions of conformity, consent, disguised dissent and overt resistance (Collinson, 2020). ...
This chapter reviews the recent work on leadership dialectics of the last 20+ years. It argues that rethinking deeply embedded dichotomies in dialectical terms can enrich and deepen the study of leadership, open new approaches to theory and practice, and address important ontological, epistemological and methodological implications for research and analysis.
... 1080/2158379X.2023.2178126 distinction between the exercise of power and power resources introduced by Dahl (1957) and the Giddens (1984) theory of structuration, according to which the constraints are strictly connected to the enabling of social structures. The general framework recently proposed in Haugaard (2021) is also a broad term of reference. ...
... Instead of debts typically reported in the business balance sheet, the liability side of the political balance sheet hosts two kinds of political constraints. This is consistent with the recalled theory by Giddens (1984), according to which the existence of social structures that constrain action, is at the basis of social and political empowerment. In a similar way 'institutions', defined by North (1990) as humanly devised constraints that structure economic and social interactions, determine the performance of economies. ...
These notes offer an unusual perspective on democracy by interpreting key categories of political science through the lens of economics, specifically drawing from the ‘theory of the firm’ literature. Due to incomplete contracts, political power is conceptualized as a variable quantum that balances power resources with constitutional and electoral constraints. Accordingly, the proposed model is used to explain how the amount of power can vary over time, what its determinants are, and what mechanisms can lead to political regime change in an era of world polarized by democracies and autocracies.
... With this notion they want to show how organizational members help shape the temporal structures that shape them. Their notion builds on Giddens' (1984) structuration theory. With his structuration theory, Giddens wanted to bridge the dualism between structure and agency. ...
... With his structuration theory, Giddens wanted to bridge the dualism between structure and agency. According to Giddens, the concept of agency presupposes a notion of structure rather than being its opposite, and the concept of structure presupposes a notion of agency (Giddens, 1984). Perlow (1999) applied Giddens' theory of structuration to her research on a software engineering team and based her "sociology of work time" on it. ...
In 2019, Femma Wereldvrouwen, a Belgian women's organization experimented with a 30-hour workweek on organizational level. All full-time employees reduced their weekly working hours from 36, 34, or 32 (depending on their age) to 30. The experiment lasted one calendar year. By integrating a sociological temporal lens and considering the different levels in the organization, this study investigates how the organization has adapted their work to a shorter workweek based on 20 in-depth interviews and 4 focus-group interviews with employees. We find that Femma Wereldvrouwen combined structural changes on organizational and team level in a formalized way, with room for individual employees to find their own new temporal strategies in a shorter workweek. These strategies relate to focused work and consciousness of time. Although this combined responsibility of making a shorter workweek work was fairly successful, Femma Wereldvrouwen also faced some challenges, such as the lack of "fun" interaction through breaks, and time for "white space" in work.
... The debate between structuralism and human agency propagated a new scholarly movement to bridge the gaps between the two camps by proposing to view structure and agency as dialectical and relational. Anthony Giddens (1984) proposed that individuals as social agents actively produce and reproduce their social structures. This view of structure and human agency is commonly referred to as the duality of structure-where social structures are seen as both enabling and constraining human agency. ...
... As Eckhardt and Miha (2004) argued, agency is a "socially-mediated capacity to act" (p. 137), but the extent to which consumers are free to make consumption choices is largely decreed by institutional forces (Kirillova et al., 2020), which enable or constrain agency (Giddens, 1984). Notably, Yang's (2020) work, on how the interplay of three-level institutions (regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive) precipitate the emergence of outbound reproductive travel by Japanese couples, provides an important direction and evidence that such multi-level institutional analysis can help us to understand travel motivations (beyond the scope of psychology theories) and how agency is possessed and negotiated by tourists to engage in different forms of tourism activities. ...
In the age of global pandemics, increasing geopolitical conflicts, and subsequent restrictions on human mobilities (including tourism), the question of consumer agency in tourism is particularly pressing. Previous scholarship has largely assumed that tourists are free agents in the pursuit of authenticity through increasing mobility. This conceptual research problematizes the lack of conceptualization of agency in tourism. Based on various streams of tourism literature that demonstrated-although did not explicitly discuss-tourist agency in action, we theorize tourist agency as a product of intersectional and institutional forces, accentuated by spatiality and temporality. We further built a parsimonious typology of tourist agency consisting of Unconstrained, Stigmatized, Constrained, and Negotiated agencies. We hope that this conceptual paper fuels further research and acknowledgment of agency.
... The main entry point documentation for this survey is the Research infrastructure Catalogue. 13 This catalogue can be searched via metadata that provide a high level description of the datasets. This catalogue contains one entry point for each of the download packages listed in Section 11.4. ...
... No code availability. 13 WeNet Research Infrastructure; https:ri.internetofus.eu. University of Trento, Data-Scientia: http://wenet/datascientia.disi.unitn.it. ...
This paper describes a dataset collected at the end of 2020 and in the summer of 2021 as part of the WeNet project, a Horizon 2020 funded project that aims at developing a diversity-aware, machinemediated paradigm for social interactions. The aim of the survey was to measure aspects of diversity based on social practices and related daily behaviours. The data collection was organized in two phases. The first involved a large sample of university students from eight universities, located in Denmark, Italy, Mongolia, Paraguay, the United Kingdom, China, Mexico and India. The respondents had to fill out a survey aimed at investigating their social practices and specific socio-demographic, cultural and psychological elements. In the second phase, a sub-sample of the respondents participated to a four-week data collection in which they were asked to fill in a self-reported time diary. This was done via a smartphone application, called iLog, which was also collecting data from thirty-four smartphone sensors, twenty-four hours a day. This dataset allows investigating the diversity and daily routines of university students in a multi-layered perspective, both within and across countries, in a synchronic and diachronic way.
... Adding to Bourdieu's work are the concepts the English sociologist Anthony Giddens provided with his structuration theory [5]. Giddens argued that while individuals and structure are engaged in a dynamic relation of influencing and creating each other, intentionality does not matter. ...
... Their participation might have unintentional consequences, either in the short term or the long term, and bring change to the social structure, such as new rulings or law enforcement. In this vision, Giddens suggests that individuals can be defined by how much power they hold, where power is described as the ability to make a difference [5]. ...
Shipbuilding is inherently a social process involving numerous craftsmen utilizing their knowledge and skills while working together to produce a complex machine. The construction of a ship traditionally relies on a stratified apprenticeship system that entails a master teaching apprentices their trade. In this type of setting, the shipyard becomes the classroom where the younger generations learn and mimic mannerisms from their instructors. The development of this technique is considered an individual practice, which, with other construction methodologies and shared interactions, becomes social structures within a specific society. Repetition of this type of practice may reaffirm the existing structure, which in this article relates to various communities of shipbuilders. This paper addresses shipbuilding’s social perspective through an operational process based on surviving shipwreck timbers. Two case studies are addressed: Mediterranean shipbuilding between the Medieval and Modern periods and a case study of late 17th-century French shipbuilding social organization.
... Institutions constitute the framework for human communication and action in a given sphere of human life at a given time and place; they offer the reproduction of society within the certain sphere, giving it a certain degree of autonomy and a distinct identity in relation to other spheres (Hjarvard, 2008: 116). Consequently, according to Giddens (1984), institutions are characterized by two central features: rules and allocations of resources; where media, like other institutions, are steered by rules or logics. ...
This study interprets Mediatization of politics based on Jesper Stromback (2008) conceptualization, where mediatization should be perceived as a concept possessing many traits and aspects made of four different interconnected dimensions, and where each dimension constitutes a “continuum”. This article examines the manifestation of media logic in the content of Investigative Journalism Programs in Lebanon, as political news interrelated to public interest and political communication. The Mediatization and Media Logic hypotheses presume that journalists are predominantly guided by news values, and their own format requirement in determining their selection, presentation, and personalization notch of political news, as first scholars of media logic Altheide and Snow (1979) argue. In this study, the Four Phases of Mediatization, are empirically exanimated and demonstrated through a mixed methodology, and the available data reveals that the Investigative Journalism Programs broadcasted on NewTV (2013-2016-2020) are an execution of a specific media logic that is causing changes and transformations in the political communication process; at least in the internal political fray.
... Archer highlights the limits of structural determinism of action when individual action is mainly the result of structural forces (downwards conflation), as she suggests would be the case in Bourdieu's practice theory. 2 This contrasts with individualist determinism of structure, such as in the case of rational choice theory, when structure results from the sum of individual activities (upwards conflation). She also argues that middle conflation, the mutual constitution of structure and agency as posited in Giddens' (1984) structuration theory, fails to acknowledge that social structures as well as individuals follow their own rationales (analytical dualism). She therefore suggests an approach which takes both into account. ...
Even though risk-taking is a common and widespread social experience sociological theorizing on the concept is scarce. This contribution aims to systematize and advance understanding of risk-taking and its different forms and how these connect to social inequalities and the social machinery. It considers risk-taking in the context of the debate about Bourdieu's theory of practice and Archer's theory of morphogenesis before suggesting a conceptual framework that outlines different rationales, dimensions, and the role of agency for understanding risk-taking as an individual and as a collective activity. The concept highlights the ambivalent character of risk-taking as an expression and mode of reproducing inequalities and a crucial resource to overcome disadvantage and foster social change.
... The anthropological theory of human action acquired a new dimension with the introduction of an actor-based approach and the development of the decision-making and Rational Choice Theory (RCT), as well as the agency/structure distinction explained and formalised by Giddens (1984). The decision-making theory (later developed into RCT) was incorporated into anthropology from microeconomics (e.g. ...
Nomadic pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry characterised by movement. Herders and their animals move across the tundra and taiga displaying a curious dichotomous relationship of control by and response to each other. This field based research - carried out among Komi nomadic reindeer herders of the Russian far north - examines how Komi pastoral nomads choose a particular time, route and length of migration. This was explored by using anthropological as well as ecological methods to (i) identify how social and political change and environmental variability influence the reindeers’ and herders’ movements alike and (ii) examine how nomadic movements occur in relation to nonecological and ecological factors. It was found that there were essentially two types of human / animal movements; individual movements (made by the duty herder and his herd) and collective movements (made by the brigade). Both types of movement, in time and space, were fundamentally dependent upon herding skill and knowledge, and herd control: (a) the duty herder’s ability to maintain herd cohesion and (b) the general aim of preventing harm befalling the herd (by avoiding dangerous terrain). The duty herder’s selection of pastures was, therefore, made mainly according to where reindeer were the easiest to control. It was also found that individual movements could best be understood as emanating from the interplay between reindeer behaviour and the duty herder’s actions. This interplay is best described as being the duty herder’s skilful perception of and response to ethological changes, as advocated by Tim Ingold. Its main principle is based on the duty herder’s maintenance of herd cohesion, within a restricted territory, which has minimal impact upon reindeer behaviour, and which is achieved through skilful manoeuvring. Collective movements could best be described as a means of providing duty herders with the necessary space in which to manoeuvre their herds with the minimum recourse to herding techniques (such as grouping and re-grouping, stopping and turning the herd), and the avoidance of undesirable pasturing areas. Consequently, it is not by analysing the impact that individual factors have upon the nomadic collective (i.e., nomads and animals) as a whole, that nomadic pastoralist movement will be understood. A new model for analysing nomadic pastoralist movement - focusing on the interrelations between nomads and their animals and the impacts that individual factors have upon it - is proposed.
... Anthropological studies of the Manchester School in the mid-twentieth century have paid much attention to the relations between actors in disputing processes. Bourdieu's (1977) and Giddens' (1984) structuration theories in which social relations are a prominent theme has been very influential in the study of law and legal pluralism. ...
Recent sociological, anthropological, and psychological research points at a shared problem: Are humans separate and autonomous entities, or must they be seen through the lens of extended, permeable, fractured notions of personhood? This paper discusses some crucial implications for the study of law and legal pluralism. Legal orders may differ in the degrees to which personhood is taken as embedded. At the same time, notions of personhood may also be more or less bounded, with particular fields within legal orders also espousing different degrees of personal autonomy. That depends on how political preferences shape specific issues at the time legislation is enacted. All this has implications for conceptualizing and studying legal pluralism. Examples from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Netherlands bring to light some thorny issues that arise when personhood is viewed through the lens of more or less autonomy and social embeddedness. The examples suggest that a relational approach that accounts for varying degrees to which persons are perceived as extended beings deepens the analysis of plural legal orders.
... Askenäs [4] mengusulkan peran eksplorasi dari sistem informasi dapat digunakan untuk mengambil tindakan dalam sebuah organisasi. Sistem informasi yang digunakan dan mempengaruhi kelancaran pekerjaan secara organisasi serta dimodifikasi terus menerus [5], banyak organisasi mengetahui pentingya sistem informasi tetapi tidak banyak yang melakukan tindakan, karena takut adanya perubahan [6]. Risiko dari pengembangan teknologi berbasis computer berdampak pada kehidupan kerja yang selalu memotivasi untuk selalu menambah pengetahuan organisasi, yang memberi makna tertentu pada teknologi dan kelancaran kerja. ...
Scheduling is a routine job that is carried out every semester in the college academic system. There are two schedules that are often found in universities, namely the scheduling of lectures and exams, both theoretical and practical. The scheduling process is a process for implementing events that contain components of courses, lecturers, classes and semesters in time slots that contain time and space components. Many aspects must be considered in order to process optimal class schedules and exams. The problem that occurs at this time is the process of making teaching decrees for lecturers which is automatic from the existing system. Research begins with planning, designing, coding, and testing. With the improvement of the scheduling information system using extreme programming, it is hoped that it can help make teaching decrees in the Polines Accounting department.
... Una segunda consecuencia relevante a este respecto, y esto es crucial para que la anterior consecuencia sea correcta, es que la regla no se refiere al sentido consciente de las acciones. Requerimos que los actores hagan distinciones, no que den cuenta reflexivamente de ellas o que tenga un discurso sobre las reglas de su acción: las distinciones que el sujeto reconoce conceptualmente no necesariamente son aquellas que operan en su práctica (Bourdieu,1990;Giddens, 1984). Un ejemplo de ello es un análisis de Bearman (1997) nos muestra que las normas sobre matrimonios planteadas explícitamente por los miembros de una tribu aborigen australiana no dan cuenta de las dinámicas reales existentes, es más bien el carácter gerontocrático de esta tribu el que produce esos resultados. ...
La genialidad del término DERROTERO se aposta en
que, desde lo general a lo específico, como desde lo complejo
a lo simple, constituye un indicativo, una fuerza de dirección
que marca caminos, itinerarios, senderos no sólo por donde
transitar, sino hacia espacios en que poder escudriñar. No
refleja una tendencia, como tampoco una línea recta, sino
que insinúa posibilidades, abre miradas y sentidos para ir
hilvanando propósitos de acción, siempre, avizorando un
telos, una finalidad mayor históricamente configurada.
Los derroteros del Trabajo Social Contemporáneo no
han de asumirse como un conjunto de respuestas ante
avatares en los tiempos que corren, sino como un horizonte
para pensarnos, una y otra vez, en relación con las épocas,
con las complejidades de lo social y con la idea de porvenir.
Su foco no es armar el enladrillado que nos lleve a un punto
predeterminado de llegada, más bien es una invitación a
redescubrir el saber, en tanto aprendizajes móviles que nos
permiten habitar las deudas del pasado, las turbulencias del
presente y las incertidumbres del futuro.
Entonces, los derroteros nos acompañan en las luchas
y las resistencias ante las contradicciones, controversias y
desafíos que deja la cuestión social, donde los y las
profesionales asumimos el compromiso con nuestras
misiones sociopolíticas.
Esto es lo que inspira la presente obra, que nace
como un esfuerzo mancomunado de académicos e investigadores pertenecientes a destacadas Universidades de
Argentina, Chile y Colombia, en el marco de una red de
colaboración promovida por la Dirección de Desarrollo y
Postgrado, así como por la Red Internacional de Investigación
en Trabajo Social (RIITS), dependientes de la Universidad
Autónoma de Chile.
... In the legitimacy dimension, the norm is used as a modality in the area of interaction manifested using sanctions. When the agent applies sanctions, it uses norms that, at the level of the structure, become a source of legitimacy (Giddens, 1984 practice of deradicalization in pesantren. The first principle to be a reference is that the pesantren must continue to teach the books turast / Kitab Kuning (previous ulama's works), still retain the NKRI, based on Pancasila and the Constitution 1945. ...
This study seeks to uncover the structure of the practice of deradicalization of pesantren education carried out by Rabithah Ma'ahid Islamiyyah (RMI) in Indonesia. This study is critical because Indonesia's increasing radicalism encourages several institutions' intensification of deradicalization. RMI is an autonomous body of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), one of Indonesia's largest community organizations, with interest in eliminating radicalism. This research is field research with a qualitative approach and uses data collection by interview, observation, and documentation. The researchers analyzed the data using the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens. The practice of pesantren education deradicalization of RMI was constructed by three structures, namely the significance of the basic principles of RMI and the pesantren principles established by NU, dominance in the form of political and cultural facilities, and legitimacy in the form of norms and sanctions based on the basic principles of RMI and the tenets of Pesantren established by Nahdlatul Ulama.
... Reflexivity was thereby the norm, which was not only conceptually but above all methodologically considered. A general assumption of research methods in consumer studies is that consumers/respondents are reflexive, that is, knowledgeable in the sense that they can verbalize (Giddens, 1984), articulate, realize and signify (Haraway, 1997)-'to put things together, scary things, risky things, contingent things' (Haraway, 1992, p. 318)-and that they 'talk to themselves about their relationships to others and about how they can sustain, transform, improve, eradicate, establish or reinforce those relations through the acquisition and use of consumption objects, be they goods, services or experiences' (Garcia-Ruiz & Rodriguez-Lluesma, 2010, p. 238). At the end of their study of reflexive consumers, Garcia-Ruiz and Rodriguez-Lluesma verified their hypothesis that 'the influence of the socio-cultural context allowed for the exercise of human reflexivity in the realm of consumption' (p. ...
In interpretive research accounts, reflexivity has been understood primarily in terms of the researcher's reflexivity, while the respondent's reflexivity has been considered only marginally. We regard this gap as critical and therefore introduce a research design for the gradual stimulation of respondents’ reflexivity, which we propose as a methodological tool for strengthening research validity. First, to frame our argumentation in the contemporary socio‐technological context, we emphasise the need to focus on the respondent's reflexivity in the onto‐epistemological conditions of the hybrid space and posthuman consumer culture, which unprecedentedly eliminate actors’ abilities to monitor their actions reflexively. Second, we present and methodologically examine the Gradual stimulation of respondents’ reflexivity (GSRR) as a 3‐phase sequential mixed‐method research design for stimulating respondents’ reflexivity. GSRR's logic is as follows: the questionnaire captures what respondents think they are doing; the digital self‐tracking diary captures what they are doing and what they often do not acknowledge (unreflexivity); the interviews use the previous phases’ data to elicit respondents’ reflexivity. Third, we present examples from our research practice to demonstrate the strengthening of data validity elicited from respondents by stimulating their reflexivity. We conclude by outlining the GSRR's possible future applications and directions.
... Critics of modernism argue that contrary to what the archetypical modernist would suggest, research findings are not objective in the sense that they speak for themselves, nor do they provide us with meaningful control over our environment. The world is constructed through interpretation and social action, is the famous constructivist claim (Berger & Luckmann, 1966;Giddens, 1984), meaning that there is no such thing as an objectively observable world existing independent of peoples' interpretation of it. Even if we are not consciously aware of it, our interpretations of the world around us are governed by moral codes (Foucault, 2011). ...
Modernism is the belief in a world that can be understood in objective terms and controlled as such. Even though it is commonly understood to be a naïve worldview, public administration theorists believe it to still aptly describe the modus operandi of modern states—albeit in more subtle forms. This raises the question whether that makes civil servants naïve modernists, or whether theories of the modernist state are oversimplifying government practice. This study explores this question by means of interviews with civil servants involved in decision making processes on infrastructure investments. It finds that modernist norms do not describe an actual practice, but reflect the language used to legitimize a practice in which policy makers are driven by a desire to act rather than objective knowledge about the world. Consequently, the study argues that the question we should be asking ourselves is not why states still operate according to modernist principles, but why civil servants legitimize their practice with a set of norms that does not seem to describe it.
... Here, "actual" does not refer to tangible material existence. Rather, to say resources are "actual" means they only exist in concrete time-space (Giddens, 1984). For example, a mother's love is not tangible to a large extent, but it is a form of actual resource. ...
This thesis examines the mediated emotional experiences of rural elderly grandparents born before the 1960s. Against the backdrop of state-led neoliberal modernisation since the 1980s, it asks how the rural elderly experience their family life emotionally, whether and how the media culture has structured such experiences, and what is the significance of such emotions for the elderly, their families and, more widely, for China’s uneven modernity. To answer these questions, I conducted a 10-month ethnography in two rural villages in Enshi, China between 2019 and 2020, including live-in studies with selected families. This study found that the rural elderly’s willing sacrifice and sense of inferiority in the family are connected to the feeling of (eating) bitterness. Such a bitter structure of feeling has historical significance for this generation and has been reinterpreted through the media content they engage with, allowing them to live life meaningfully in deprived conditions. Moreover, under persistent patriarchal and increasingly neoliberal structures that systemically disadvantage rural households, the media that perpetuates new norms, scripts, and expectations has been actively appropriated by different genders and generations within the family. Such mediated processes play a crucial role in structuring the family dynamics within the three-generational household. These processes tend to engender highly classed and gendered intimacy, distance, and tension between the elderly and the younger generations, often leaving the elderly with grievances, guilt, isolation, disappointment, and a faint sense of hope. By examining the politics and formation of the elderly’s structure of feelings in relation to media, I argue that China’s modernization is largely enabled by and at the expense of rural elderly’s ‘cruel optimism’. In this regard, this study contests and contributes to the largely depoliticalised realm of Chinese family sociology by reintroducing power. It also contributes to media scholarship from the vantage point of the less (but increasingly) media-saturated region of the Global South. By the same token, it advances current theorisations of modernity, particularly individualisation. Through attention to a marginalised and understudied group – the rural elderly in China – this study advances the idea of an ‘imagination of modernity from below’.
... In addition to the structural, functional and cultural dimensions, we address here the social dimension and the social mechanisms that are important for understanding human actionoriented towards the action of other people -in organizations (Giddens 1986;Campbell 1998;Hedström and Swedberg 1998). Social mechanisms can be seen as mediators, in terms of the integration of risk management and intelligence management. ...
This paper concerns intelligence and risk management in a customs and border control context. Intelligence here refers to the collection, sharing, processing, analysis and dissemination of information on threats, related to cross-border movements of goods, travellers, illegal activities, and serious organized crime. The main aim of the paper is to present a new perspective for the integration of intelligence and risk management for this context. The perspective, which builds on contemporary risk and safety science knowledge, as well as studies on intelligence, organizations, management, and social mechanisms, provides concepts, principles, and a unified framework for this integration. The paper gives customs and border control management new insights and instruments on how to organize and handle risk and intelligence issues and studies.
... To provide an explanation of the inter-action and intra-action of constraints and enablers of mobility, I also draw upon structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) and morphogenesis analysis (Archer, 1982), which redirect the focus towards a methodological and an analytical dualism respectively. The critical realist approach to migration studies (Bakewell, 2010) and the theorisation of agency and structure as phenomena that are interrelated and mutually informing (Sewell, 1992) endorse the possibilities of an integrative response in a specific area of studies such as migration. ...
... När det handlar om tillit till organisationen blir det mer komplicerat. Organisationen är ju inte en person eller en funktion som kan tillskrivas dessa egenskaper, det är snarare så att olika funktioner får representera organisationen och verka som organisationens »ansikten« (Giddens, 1984;Kroeger, 2017). Vad dessa funktioner gör och säger förmedlar sammantaget vilka normer och regler som är förhärskande i organisationen. ...
Boken handlar om styrning och organisering för en tillförlitlig välfärdsverksamhet. Mitt bidrag tar fasta på betydelsen av tydlighet i uppdrag och ansvar, mellan centralt och lokalt mellan ledning och medarbetare. Det finns inga genvägar. Jag är också kritisk ill välpaketerade lösningar som inte håller vad de lovar.
... Los estudios sociológicos de Bourdieu (1977) y Giddens (1984) son más asertivos en colocar tanto al individuo como al medio ambiente en una relación dinámica. Bourdieu (1977) establece que la arquitectura es una fuerza autónoma que estructura las prácticas sociales y se enfoca en la dimensión simbólica y en los significados adscritos por los usuarios (Müller, A. y Reichmann, 2015). ...
En los últimos cincuenta años, el Estado mexicano ha considerado a la vivienda como un fin en sí mismo enfocándose en su dotación, soslayando que es un medio para otros fines privados, como el desarrollo y la realización personal. Las apropiaciones de estos conjuntos habitacionales en el tiempo son evidencia de lo que los habitantes han considerado necesario para compensarlo. Esta investigación se pregunta la relación que existe entre la apropiación de la vivienda y la identidad, el apego y el sentido comunitario de sus habitantes. Se utilizó un enfoque cualitativo de aproximación ecológica que considera al habitante y su casa en una relación de co-constitución. Se tomaron seis colonias como casos de estudios, tres financiadas por el estado y tres producidas socialmente (autoconstruidas) – porque en ellas la apropiación es inherente – y se contrastaron. Se encontró que los habitantes de las viviendas producidas socialmente muestran mayor orgullo y satisfacción por su casa, muestran más autoestima y autoeficacia junto con mayor confianza en sus vecinos. Finalmente, a raíz de lo recogido en campo, se construyó un modelo de un habitar apropiando, que recoge las prácticas que conducen a este estilo de vida y que abren la posibilidad de un tejido urbano y social más solidario y robusto.
... Integrative endeavours emerged within a wide range of disciplines, so that now we have very elaborate and very influential expositions from as different authors as sociologist Anthony Giddens, social theorist Margaret Archer, also from philosopher Jiirgen Habermas, communication scientist Klaus Bruhn Jensen, George Ritzer, John Baldwin, and in a way even from authors of British cultural studies, but also from many others (see Giddens 1986, 1987, Archer 1988, 1969, Jensen 1995, Habermas 1984, 1987, Ritzer 1996, Baldwin 1987, Splichal 1988 etc.). No matter how important these ideas are, none is conclusive or immune to profound criticism. ...
... Los agentes empezaron a cristalizarse como humanos y la agencia como acción humana, conceptos que nacieron como un correctivo a la supremacía académica sobre los sistemas y estructuras dominantes de gran parte del siglo XX. El concepto de agencia no se refiere a los motivos que tienen las personas para hacer cosas, sino a la capacidad de hacerlas, es decir, la agencia implica el poder de hacer algo y el agente es alguien que ejerce poder o produce un efecto (Giddens, 1984). Si bien los arqueólogos entienden a la agencia de esta manera, surgió una discrepancia en las últimas décadas producto de la insatisfacción teórica, por lo que se sostuvo que su definición no debía basarse en premisas antropocéntricas insostenibles que impidan aceptar la materialidad como componente causal de la cultura humana. ...
El estudio aborda la naturaleza de objetos importantes para la historia andina como conopas (esculturas fitomorfas) y mazorcas de maíz extraordinarias, cuyo papel extendido a lo largo del territorio andino fue durante mucho tiempo un tema sin relevancia. Para hacerlo iniciamos primero una discusión académica en relación al concepto de agencia (que surge en Los Andes impulsado por el animismo y el giro ontológico) como elemento clave para entender (a partir de este caso específico) las relaciones entre humanos (personas) y objetos animados (wak’a-personas sociales). En cualquier discusión sobre “wak’a” está presente la naturaleza de su agencia y como se incrusta en los sistemas ontológicos nativos, a la vez que desafía los supuestos ontológicos occidentales. Este análisis ayuda a comprender cómo estos objetos animados llegaron a poseer identidades sociales y convertirse en agentes durante el ciclo agrícola, revela los procesos de cambio a lo largo del tiempo, las circunstancias que determinaron su continuidad en la práctica social y ayuda a repensar la etiqueta de “ofrenda” que muchas veces conservan, lo que limita su naturaleza y no permite que los arqueólogos puedan entender su rol en los entramados sociales, simplificando complejos procesos históricos.
... The author tries to dissect this study through Antony Giddens' theory of agency and structure. Agents and structures cannot be separated in practice and human activity; agents and structures are a duality (Giddens, 1976(Giddens, , 1984Ritzer, 2014). Human activity is carried out continuously by agents who are reproduced so that they declare themselves to be actors or agents. ...
This article examines why the Keujruen Blang, as a traditional institution, has continued to experience crises since the New Order Reformation to post-peace in Aceh. This study aimed to reveal and provide an overview of how the Acehnese people's local wisdom, or local knowledge, has been experiencing a crisis, particularly a recent issue with paddy field management. This study was conducted in Aceh Jaya and used qualitative research. Observations and direct interviews were conducted with 17 informants. The technique for determining informants used a purposive technique. In addition to the interview, data were collected through a review of the literature and other documents on the crisis agency of local actors (keujruen blang). These related documents and articles were identified, reviewed, and analyzed. The data analysis techniques used was data reduction, data display, and verification. Reproduction of the keujruen blang authority had yet to bring the expected results. Even though laws, government regulations, and Aceh Qanun had been issued, Keujruen Blang still needed to be strengthened. This fact occurred because there were overlapping roles and functions between the customary institution of keujruen blang and the formal P3A institution.
... This approach creates an awareness that the use of technology will always be formed by social and contextual factors (Wajcman, 2008). Formal education has a social structure (Giddens, 1984) that the top-down implementation of technology in education did not manage to change. The article points out the alternative could consist in local bottom-up initiatives, where teachers and students create a larger space of action, with more use of ICT in education. ...
... Entrepreneuring is a breaking out of the norms for women (Berg 1997), and in breaking out, a "successful" woman entrepreneur through her endeavors opens the doors for others to follow. Giddens (1984) explains this as structuration, where, in the interplay of the agency (individuals) and the structure (institutions), the agent (the successful woman entrepreneur) alters the structure for the next interaction. ...
This paper addresses the following questions: Are women entrepreneurs empowered by entrepreneurship, and critically, does entrepreneurship offer emancipation? Our theoretical position is that entrepreneurship is socially embedded and must be recognized as a social process with economic outcomes. Accordingly, questions of empowerment must take full account of the context in which entrepreneurship takes place. We argue that institutions—formal and informal, cultural, social, and political—create gendered contexts in the Global South, where women’s entrepreneurship is subjugated and treated as inferior and second class. Our thematic review of a broad scope of the literature demonstrates that in different regions of the Global South, women entrepreneurs confront many impediments and that this shapes their practices. We show how the interplay of tradition, culture, and patriarchy seem to conspire to subordinate their efforts. Yet, we also recognize how entrepreneurial agency chips away and is beginning to erode these bastions, in particular, how role models establish examples that undermine patriarchy. We conclude that entrepreneurship can empower but modestly and slowly. Some independence is achieved, but emancipation is a long, slow game.
... Practice theory (cf. Giddens, 1984;Bourdieu, 1990;Pickering, 1992;Rouse, 2007) stems from the belief that particular types of learning activities can "generate richer understanding about practice, but from and through practice, not on behalf of it" (Billet, 2010, p. 29). There has been growing interest in using practice theory in entrepreneurship research (Chalmers and Shaw, 2017;Antonacopoulou and Fuller, 2020;Thompson et al., 2020), but the emphasis thus far has been on practice concerning how entrepreneurs get things done. ...
This paper tries to investigate the ways in which American geopolitical hegemony operates through popular culture produced in the wake of 9/11. Specifically, it examines how American geopolitical anxieties and sensibilities are aesthetically, culturally and politically mediated and maintained via the cultural and politicized medium of film. It chooses The Kingdom (2007), a geographically informed and geopolitically framed film, as its primary source of analysis to interrogate the ways in which geopolitical anxieties and sensibilities manifest in the film's narrative through the use of geopoliticized rhetoric of screened landscapes and the specific narration of "Self"/"Other" identities. Drawing on literature from popular geopolitics, geocriticism, visual politics, and postmodernism, this research analyzes how the various interdependent registers of mapping intersect to geopolitically produce and
imagine the Middle East. It maintains that the rhetoric discourse of "war on terrorism" is cinematically appropriated and geopolitically manipulated in order to diffuse and reproduce American global hegemony on the global stage. In so doing, it moves beyond the mere analysis of popular culture as only an object for analysis in world politics to how cinematic texts are sites wherein specific modes of geopolitical knowledge, geo-power and world politics are communicated and understood globally.
Keywords: Hollywood cinema, popular culture, film, "war on terrorism", Middle
East, international politics, global hegemony, critical geopolitics.
This chapter develops a novel theoretical framework to analyse the relationship between the identity of states and their foreign policy. Drawing insights from poststructuralist and practice theories in International Relations, the chapter presents a framework to systematically analyse how and to what end elements of identity narratives endure across foreign policy episodes, while others fade away. The merits of this framework are discussed in relation to the conceptual shortcomings of competing perspectives in Canadian foreign policy analysis. This innovative framework is leveraged, in subsequent chapters, to enhance our understanding of how Canada became involved in the “Global War on Terror.”
This article aims to reveal the appropriation of communal sanitation facilities in an urban kampung area of Kampung Cikini, Jakarta. InIndonesia, MCK (mandi, cuci, kakus) refers to a communal facility for bathing, washing, and urinating/defecating. We argue that the urban kampung dwellers’ behaviour in using communal sanitation facilities is a form of appropriation and reappropriation of space which began with the establishment of the urban kampung area. Having conducted observations, interviews, and focus group discussions, we discovered that communal sanitation facilities have undergone continuous appropriation and reappropriation from colonial times until today in a dialectical process. Appropriation and reappropriation can be seen from the physical change of those facilities and their usages in everyday life. Standards of communal sanitation set by the government are negotiated and appropriated by different actors, while reappropriation depends on gender and labour division within the household.
Yksilöiden oikeus määrätä itse omista asioistaan on yksi moraalisen ja oikeudellisen ajattelumme kulmakivistä. Mutta mistä tämä kulmakivi on peräisin? Mitä itsemäärääminen eli autonomia oikeastaan tarkoittaa? Kuka tai mikä voi olla itseään määräävä subjekti? Millaisilla oikeudellisilla keinoilla itsemääräämistä voidaan tukea? Tässä teoksessa itsemääräämisoikeutta lähestytään monipuolisesti eri näkökulmista ja eri menetelmin. Kirjassa tarkastellaan esimerkiksi itsemääräämisoikeuden käsitettä suhteessa eri oikeudenmukaisuuden ja autonomian teorioihin, sekä sen historiallista kehitystä antiikin tasavaltalaisesta perinteestä moderniin liberalismiin ja feminismiin saakka. Kirjassa kiinnitetään erityistä huomiota sellaisiin henkilöihin, joiden autonominen toimintakyky ei ole kehittynyt tai on alentunut, kuten lapset, vammaiset ja muistisairaat ihmiset. Yksilön itsemääräämisoikeutta tarkastellaan eri yhteyksissä, kuten hoitotilanteissa, digitaalisesta yksilöllisyydestä päättämisessä, sekä suhteessa muihin ihmisiin ja valtioon. Myös eläinten ja yhteisöjen itsemääräämisoikeutta tarkastellaan omissa luvuissaan. Teoksen avulla piirtyy kuva yhtäältä itsemääräämisoikeuden käsitteen kompleksisuudesta, toisaalta sen alati kasvavasta tärkeydestä etenkin haavoittuvassa asemassa oleville ihmisille.
Wicked problems are typically social justice and social change problems, complex and messy. They mobilize opposed views about the essential nature of the issues, their relative importance and adequate responses. We assert that illegal fishing in small‐scale fisheries (SSF) can be considered a wicked problem and our aim is to test this assertion. We relied on a conceptual framework that defines wicked problems as (1) indefinable and non‐generalizable, (2) ambiguously bounded, (3) temporally exacting, (4) repercussive, (5) doubly hermeneutic and (6) morally consequential. We applied a qualitative research approach based on field data comprising three illustrative Chilean SSF, whereas secondary data complemented the analysis. The results demonstrate that illegal fishing fits most of the requirements of a wicked policy problem. It is indefinable and non‐generalizable, with different representations and uncertainty about its nature, magnitude and effects. Depictions of the nature of the problem varied from a lack of regulations' legitimacy, to a ‘combat’ to be won. It is ambiguously bounded, caused by interrelated sub‐problems (e.g. poverty, access), involving multiple policy sectors, administrative scales and actors. It is also temporally exacting and repercussive as it lacks criteria to prove that a solution has been reached and the implications of alternative solutions (e.g. self‐regulation) are unknown. As long as illegal fishing is reframed as a wicked problem, the stakeholders involved can also recognize that there are no perfect solutions and therefore promote a mix of substandard governance approaches.
Dieses Kapitel gibt einen Überblick über die wichtigsten intellektuellen Debatten und Forschungsergebnisse seit 1979 und fasst sie zusammen. Es zeichnet die verschiedenen vorgeschlagenen neuen Richtungen und ihre Herausforderungen für die etablierten Ansätze nach und zeigt, dass insgesamt eine Kontinuität in der Vielfalt zu erkennen ist. Zu den behandelten Themen gehören die Vielfalt der theoretischen Positionen, die Auseinandersetzungen über quantitative Methoden und die Forschung zu Gesundheit, Körper und Sexualität, Gesellschaftsschichten, „Rasse“ und ethnischer Zugehörigkeit, Kriminalität sowie Wissenschaft und Technologie.
The renewed engagement with Aristotle’s concept of practical wisdom in management and organization studies is reflective of the wider turn towards practice sweeping across many disciplines. In this sense, it constitutes a welcome move away from the traditional rationalist, abstract, and mechanistic modes of approaching ethical decision-making. Within the current engagement, practical wisdom is generally conceptualized, interpreted or read as a form of deliberation or deliberative judgement that is also cognizant of context, situatedness, particularity, lived experience, and so on. We argue that while this way of conceptualizing practical wisdom moves closer to practice in accounting for the concrete and particular reality within which individuals enact ethics, it does not adequately account for practice in the ontological and relational sense posited in practice theories. Practical wisdom conceptualized on the deliberative dimension still retains a higher emphasis on distinct entities (individuals/institutions), reflexive agency, conscious mental states, goal-directed action, and intentionality. In other words, it puts a higher stress on individual wisdom, as opposed to practice or the relational interaction of the individual and social inhering in practice. We offer an alternative conceptualization of practical wisdom based on the dispositional mode of being in the world which is rarely deliberate, intentional, or reflective. Our conceptualization integrates Aristotle’s original ethical framework, which is already embedded in a practice-based ontology, with insights from practice theories to show how practical wisdom is intuitively channelled in the dispositional mode in a given social configuration of virtues/ends.
This article investigates students' post-secondary education transition processes in Cameroon through the lens of agency. Situated in a country where the higher education participation rate is fairly low, our article explores how students agentically negotiate access to higher education within structural constraints of socioeconomic status and gender. Semi-structured interviews with 25 students from two secondary schools in Yaoundé, Cameroon were conducted. The findings reveal that students enacted the four modes of reflexives (Archer, 2003) dynamically and discursively, with specific manifestations of agency relevant to gendered and classed structures in Cameroonian society. In this paper, we propose a person-centred, empowering approach to supporting students in higher education participation. We further confirm the importance of non-universal, contextually-situated employment of Archer's (2003) typology of four reflexive modes.
The concept of sustainability has been recognized as a landmark of modern societies and remains the only internationally and consensually recognized global development concept (Jacobsson, 2019). It is based upon the need for a "change of course" in the social, economic, cultural and environmental policies, to bring about the necessary transformation of the existing system (Raco, 2014). At the same time, however, it is presented as an abstract concept that, instead of mapping an agenda and signalling any commitment for a structural transformation of liberal consumer capitalism, seems to be an artistic extension of its life expectancy (Swyngedoow, 2010). According to Fuchs (2017), questions about capitalism and class are largely neglected when actions are promoted that support increased sustainability in neoliberal society. Starting from this paradox, our main research question is to capture how the term "sustainability" is presented in relation to the existing neoliberal system, as well as which ideologies are expressed as neutral in the context of public information. The aim of this research is to determine the role of the Greek media in shaping the semantics of sustainable development. Specifically, after clarifying the terms and conditions through domestic and international literature, the framing analysis of four online media relevant publications is applied as a method of examination. The study aims to identify which discourses are constructed, how many and which publications refer to sustainability in relation to the frames of 'sustainable development' and 'degrowth' and which of these are presented as neutral ideological frames. The analysis reveals an interesting paradox, pointing to contradictory perceptions of problems, responsibilities and solutions in relation to sustainable development, depending on whether it relates to the private or public sector.
Participatory democracy is considered as deceiving and enough radical as initially conceived. In this communication, we argue that the evaluation of the radicalness is a matter of point of view. Thus, the participatory democracy mechanisms should not be studied as an isolated entity but as a social practice that is intertangled with other social practices. We illustrate some of the discursive relations between participatory democracy elements and their normative and performative effects. We imply that the participatory democracy use is an achievement of a dialogue between participatory and representative one.
Introduction:
Psychological security is the outcome of interaction between individuals and society, and it is an important indicator reflecting adolescent mental health and self-growth. Previous studies have paid more attention to external security, but less attention to individual's internal psychological security. In addition, few previous studies have examined the changes of psychological security over time and the influence of socio-cultural environmental factors on psychological security.
Methods:
A cross-temporal meta-analysis was performed using papers that measured the psychological security level of Chinese adolescent college students between 2004 and 2020. Moreover, a time-lag analysis was conducted to define whether the macro-social indicators can explain the changes in Chinese adolescent college students' psychological security.
Results:
(1) A total of 85 papers was included in the final sample (included 48,817 Chinese adolescent college students); (2) the scores of psychological security and its two sub-dimensions were significantly negatively correlated with the year, indicating that Chinese college students' psychological security declined significantly over time; (3) seven macro social indicators from the socioeconomic environmental, social connectedness and overall social threats can predict the changes in college students' psychological security; (4) the psychological security of male and female college students decreased over time, but the gender difference was insignificant.
Conclusions:
Evidently, social changes play an important role in predicting changes in Chinese college students' psychological security. The results can provide a research basis for the mental health education of adolescent college students, and also provide an explanation perspective for the increasingly serious "involution" phenomenon among Chinese college students.
Between 909 and 1135 AH / 1501 and 1725 CE, the Armenians of the Caucasus, as a small minority of the monarchy of Iran, have been engaged in politics and trade in an era that its major feature was the globalization of economy based on a set of absolutist governments. The fact that how policy making at such a level and such a range had been possible for such a limited population and what kind of political issues shaped their concerns is an essential question. An analysis of this problem through Anthony Giddens's construction theory and its complementary historical sociology makes it clear that the increasing movement of the Armenians social system towards authoritative sources and the new species of resource allocation with high-throughput capability in time-space, actualized such a possibility and, Armenians’ political issues were the result of these sources and were oriented towards the preservation of the sources and focused on their preservation.
Western historiography has experienced numerous developments during the 19th and 20th centuries, some of which being the departure from "literary history” toward “scientific history”, thereby toward “social sciences-oriented history” and interdisciplinary studies, and nowadays being subject to “post-modern criticism”. The result of all these developments has been the tendency of historiography of modern time to “individualism” and “culture” rather than “holism” and “economy and politics”. Western war historiography has been no exception to such evolutions. While providing a brief account of the developments of Western historiography, the present article, through an explicative-genetic approach, aims to analyze the impact of such developments on the transformation of war historiography. The analysis was performed revolving around five topics comprising of 1. Presuppositions, 2. Valuation, 3. Explicative systems, 4. Thematic organization and categorization, and 5. Reference typology. As a result of this study, one can talk about two groups of “classic historiographers of war” who, focusing on “scientific history”, sometimes allow the new developments of historical studies to influence them within the above-mentioned five topics and “new historiographers of war” who, by contrast, may sporadically have hindsight on the obsolete remnants of “scientific history”.
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