The structuration of society

Giddens provides a general theory of social structuration and change contributing to overcome the dualism between the macro and the micro by redressing the balance between individual agency and social structure (Giddens, 1979; 1984; 2005). This is achieved by means of a well-articulated critique of structuralist and functionalist paradigms on the one hand and interpretative sociologies inspired in hermeneutic traditions of thought on the other. Giddens’s initial premise is that the differences between these theoretical perspectives in

social science are not epistemological but ontological in nature. On the one hand, structuralist and functionalist approaches, which focus on the social whole at the expense of its constituent parts, tend to favour structure over human action and emphasize the constraining qualities of such structure. This results in excessively deterministic views of how social structuration operates with social actors being often treated like pawns at the mercy of “macro” structural processes that leave no room for individual action. On the other

hand, Giddens contends that interpretative sociologies, which focus on human action and meaning and neglect structural concepts and constraints in the explication of human conduct, also fail to capture the complexities of social change by making of subjectivity the “preconstituted centre of the experience of culture and history” (Giddens, 2005 p. 122): if interpretative sociologies “are founded upon an imperialism of the subject, functionalism and structuralism propose an imperialism of the social object” according to Giddens (ibid, p.

123).

Giddens rejects the idea of social structure being something external to human action, constraining the free initiative of independently constituted subjects. Instead, human agency and social structure should be understood as logically implicated in each other, not as a

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dualism but as a duality. This duality of structure which constitutes the cornerstone in Giddens’s theory is conceptualized in terms of a dialectical relationship between human

action and social structure, as illustrated in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1.

Structure(s) System(s) Structuration

Rules and resources, or sets of transformation relations, organized as properties of social systems Reproduced relations between actors or collectivities, organized as regular social practices

Conditions governing the continuity or transmutation of structures, and therefore the reproduction of social systems

The duality of structure in Giddens’ structuration theory (Giddens, 1984, p.25)

In Giddens’s view, structure (i.e. “the macro”) should be conceptualized as “recursively

organized sets of rules and resources” generally independent of time and space and “marked by the absence of the human subject” (ibid, p.25), where rules are defined as “techniques or generalizable procedures applied in the enactment/reproduction of social practices” (Giddens,

2005 p. 133) and resources as “media through which power is exercised as a routine element of the instantiation of conduct in social reproduction (ibid, p. 128). Giddens further distinguishes between “structures of signification”, associated with modes of signifying and meaning constitution, “structures of domination”, involved with the authorization and allocation of power resources, and “structures of legitimation”, connected with normative

regulation and sanctioning. At the other end of the spectrum we find the social systems which “comprise the situated activities of human agents reproduced across time and space”

(Giddens, 1984 p. 25). Social systems are not only empirically observable but also quantifiable. The relationship between structures and systems can be described as a dialectical one because on the one hand, social actors constantly draw on rules and resources

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in their day-to-day activities. On the other hand, with their actions, social actors reproduce such rules and resources. Social agency is associated with power in Giddens’s view: “to be able to act otherwise means being able to intervene in the world or to refrain from such intervention, with the effect of influencing on a specific process or State of affairs” (ibid, p. 14).

One implication derived from the idea of duality of structure is that the structural properties of social systems exist only in so far as forms of social conduct are continuously reproduced across space and time, a process Giddens calls “regionalization of action”. Furthermore,

structures are not to be equated solely with constraints, in the structural-functionalist fashion. Rather, structures can be both constraining and enabling. Therefore, for Giddens, the basic domain of study of social science is neither the experience of the individual actor nor the existence of any form of societal totality, but empirically-observable social practices ordered across space and time. This approach reconstitutes macro-sociology upon radical empirical micro-foundations.

A potential problem with Giddens’s social structuration theory is his concept of “reflexivity of action”, a natural outcome of a social theory in which the individual is said to take

center-stage and where human action is at the heart of social configuration. As stressed before, Giddens rejects the structural-functionalist idea of human behavior being the result of forces that social actors neither control nor comprehend, arguing instead that social subjects know far more about the reasons behind their actions and the consequences derived from such actions than structural-functional sociologists will ever acknowledge. Based on this premise, Giddens proposes a theory of human agency in terms of different degrees of

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consciousness: discursive consciousness, practical consciousness and the unconscious or unintended. By discursive consciousness he means “the kind of knowledge social actors are able to explain using words”, whereas practical consciousness is defined as “tacit knowledge

that is skillfully applied in the enactment of courses of conduct, but which the actor is not able to formulate discursively” (Giddens, 1979. p. 57). The unconscious is explained in

Freudian terms while the unintended refers to consequences of social action which are not foreseen by the social actors.

Leaving aside the issue of where to draw the line between these categories of consciousness, which may also result problematic, the idea of incorporating the principle of reflexivity of action into a general theory of social structuration constitutes “a necessary complication” given all the problems that this brings if one wants to postulate a model of social analysis constructed upon radical empirical foundations. For reflexivity of action ultimately belongs to the realms of cognition and individual intentionality and as such it is essentially unobservable (Teubert, 2010), unless some form of elicitation is provided in the form of what Giddens calls “discursive consciousness”. So, it is not surprising to see how the unconscious and the unintended are eventually brushed aside by Giddens as “methodological givens” together with institutionalized properties of the settings of interaction once empirical

analysis enters the scene:

Those who take institutional analysis to comprise the field of sociology in toto mistake a methodological procedure for an ontological reality […] if the study of unintended consequences and unacknowledged conditions of action is a major part of social research, we should none the less stress that such consequences and conditions are always to be interpreted within the flow of intentional conduct (Giddens, 1984. p. 285)

And he adds:

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consciousness, and to strategies of control within defined contextual boundaries. Institutionalized properties of the settings of interaction are assumed methodologically to be ‘given’. We have to take care with this, of course, for to treat structural properties as methodologically ‘given’ is not to hold that they are not produced and reproduced through human agency. It is to concentrate analysis upon the contextually situated activities of definite groups of actors (ibid, p. 288).

Drawing on the work by Giddens (1979; 1984) and Bourdieu (1997), Sewel (2005) elaborates on the concepts of structure introduced by those authors. He clarifies some of the aspects which remain excessively abstract –if not largely undefined- in the theories of the above mentioned authors. Sewel’s theoretical model also provides additional room for the

play of human agency in the constitution of our world and makes it possible to explain social change – even sudden historical shift- while overcoming the conceptual division between semiotic/linguistic and material models of structure. Sewel starts by reiterating the importance of structure as a central concept in social science. However, like Giddens, Sewel argues that structure, usually conceptualized as primary, hard and immutable reality in the structuralist and functionalist traditions, results in models of social life which are excessively rigid and deterministic, where events and processes are often considered secondary and superficial and thus, the role played by human agency in social structuration and change is often underestimated. All this rigidity derived from an excessive emphasis on the macro, makes it difficult to explain social change according to Sewel, because structure far too often implies stability- if not social stasis- and therefore change in structural discourse ends up being “located outside of structures, either as a telos of history, in notions of breakdown, or in influences exogenous to the system in question” (Sewel, 2005 p. 144). Sewel proposes a model of structure in which “knowledgeable’ and “enabled” human agents “are capable of putting their structurally formed capacities to work in creative or innovative ways” to the extent that “if enough people or even a few people who are powerful enough act in

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innovative ways, their action may have the consequence of transforming the very structures that gave them capacity to act” (ibid, p. 146).

Sewel’s critique of Giddens’s structuration theory is centered various points. On the one

hand, Sewel contends that the notion of structure in Giddens’s model remains vague and largely unexplained: for Giddens, structure is said to be rules and resources which govern social systems, the latter being defined as patterned intertwining and relatively bounded social practices linking persons across time and space. Unlike the patterned social practices that make up social systems, structure has a virtual existence for Giddens. That is as far as Giddens goes in explaining structure. He does not provide examples of rules and his definition of resources as anything that can serve as a source of power in social interactions remains uninformative and poorly theorized according to Sewel.

Sewel modifies Giddens’s notion of structure by proposing a sharper distinction between the

concepts of rules and resources which conform such structure. Inspired by cultural anthropology, Sewel conceptualizes rules as cultural schemas having only a virtual existence. Like Bourdieu’s habitus such schemas are considered to reside in the minds of human agents

and manifest themselves in the form of generalizations in the enactment and reproduction of social practices which give shape to social systems. This cognitive explanation of structure proposed by Sewel presents similar problems to those already observed in Giddens’s notion of “reflexivity of action” or in Teubert’s understanding of “intentionality”: as such they

belong to the realm of the mind and remain unobservable unless they manifest themselves as social action. All one can do is to treat them as methodological givens in a general theory of social structuration. Resources, however, are no longer considered virtual by Sewel but

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“actual media and outcomes of the operation of structure” which empower or regenerate schemas. Sewel also rephrases Giddens’s distinction between “authoritative” and “allocative” resources calling them “human” and “non-human”, a terminology he considers less arcane.

For instance, State bureaucracies or armed forces would be some key human resources employed in the discursive construction of the nation while road systems, communication networks or school curricula would constitute non-human resources in Sewel’s model. Sewel also proposes to treat the pairing of schemas and resources as a duality rather than a dualism in order to prevent what he calls the “de facto idealism that continually haunts structuralism” and save the theoretical premise of the duality of structure: “structure, then, should be

defined as composed simultaneously of schemas, which are virtual, and of resources, which are actual” (ibid, p. 152). Therefore, schemas should be understood as the effects of

resources in the same way that resources have to be considered the effects of schemas.

Another contribution by Sewel is aimed at overcoming the theoretical rigidity typical in structuralist explanations of society so that the possibility of social change can be safely built into the concept of structure and social actors can be given due credit for their action. Sewel proposes five axioms: the multiplicity of structures, the transposability of schemas, the unpredictability of resource accumulation, the polysemy of resources and the intersection of structures. By multiplicity of structures Sewel means that societies are based on practices which derive from many distinct structures which tend to vary significantly between different institutional spheres and do not necessarily operate in harmony and in unilinear fashion. Kinship structures, for instance, have different logics and dynamics than those of religious structures, productive structures or educational structures. This means that structures associated with processes like nation-building may lead to sharply conflicting

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claims and empowerments. This would explain why structures which once led to the emergence of national markets during the early stages of modernisation may now be undermining the Nation-State in an increasingly globalized world. Castells (2000a) provides another example of misalignment of structures associated with the nation, namely how economic processes are increasingly articulated at a global scale whereas identities remain tied to national and sub-national scales.

Another implication derived from this multiplicity of structures is that the practices of knowledgeable social actors employed in the constitution of society should be understood in less rigid terms than those implied in Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Social actors in Sewel’s

model are understood to be “capable of applying a wide range of different and even incompatible schemas and have access to heterogeneous arrays of resources” (ibid, p.155).

Furthermore, the schemas to which social actors have access should be understood not only as generalizable to a variety of contexts but also as transposable. The implication is that schemas are not automatically transferred from one case to another. On the contrary, the range to which certain schemas can be applied is something which cannot be determined in advance by social scientific analysts but is rather determined case by case by social actors.

Sewel also sees resource accumulation as something unpredictable, this being a natural consequence of the generalizability and transposability of schemas. History is full of examples of such unpredictability. For instance, it has been argued that one significant consequence of Franco’s aggressive españolismo has been a crisis of Spanish nationalism

and a revival of peripheral nationalisms after 1975, when Spanish identity became closely associated with Francoism (de Riquer i Permanyer, 1996; Álvarez Junco, 2002). Resources,

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on the other hand, are never entirely unambiguous. Sewel gives the example of how the physical layout of a factory embodies and therefore instills capitalist notions of property relations while at the same time can make us aware of the social and collective character of production and in doing so, undermine the capitalist notion of private property. Similarly, the display of a national flag may be considered banal in some contexts or understood as provocation in others. Finally, Sewel understands structures as intersecting with each other in both their schema and resource dimensions:

[…] not only can a given array or resources be claimed by different actors embedded in different structural complexes (or differentially claimed by the same actor embedded in different structural complexes), but schemas can be borrowed or appropriated from one structural complex and applied to another (ibid, p. 157)

In conclusion, Sewel’s elaboration of Giddens’s theory of structuration clarifies many key concepts which remain rather obscure in the latter’s account. It also refines the important

notion of structure by making it less predictable and by further reinstating the role of social agents who appear capable of exerting some degree of control over the activities in which they are involved. At the same time, it makes it less awkward to explain social change over time by avoiding the rigid causal determinism derived from the concepts of structure proposed by Giddens and Bourdieu.