Morphogenesis versus structuration: on combining structure and action1

Abstract

The fundamental problem of linking human agency and social structure stalks through the history of sociological theory. Basically it concerns how to develop an adequate theoretical account which deals simultaneously with men constituting society and the social formation of human agents. For any theorist, except the holist, social structure is ultimately a human product, but for any theorist, except advocates of psychologism, this product in turn shapes individuals and influences their interaction. However successive theoretical developments have tilted either towards structure or towards action, a slippage which has gathered in momentum over time. Initially this meant that one element became dominant and the other subordinate: human agency had become pale and ghostly in mid-century functionalism, whilst structure betook an evanescent fragility in the re-flowering of phenomenology. Eventually certain schools of thought repressed the second element almost completely. On the one hand structuralist Marxism and normative functionalism virtually snuffed-out agency-the acting subject became increasingly lifeless whilst the structural or cultural components enjoyed a life of their own, self-propelling or self-maintaining. On the other hand interpretative sociology busily banished the structural to the realm of objectification and facticity-human agency became sovereign whilst social structure was reduced to supine plasticity because of its constructed nature. Although proponents of these divergent views were extremely vociferous, they were also extensively criticized and precisely on the grounds that both structure and action were indispensable in sociological explanation.2 Moreover serious efforts to re-address the problem and to re-unite structure and action had already begun from inside 'the two Sociologies',3 when they were characterized in this manichean way. These attempts emerged after the early sixties from 'general' functionalists,4 'humanistic' marxists5 and from interactionists confronting the existence of strongly patterned conduct.6 Furthermore they were joined in the same decade by a bold attempt