Symbolic control: Issues of empirical description of agencies and agents

Abstract

This paper arose out of the empirical requirements to describe and position agents and agencies of symbolic control concerned with the regulation of social relationships, consciousness, disposition and desire. These requirements led to a differentiation of agents in terms of their function and discourse and their segmentation through their specialized fields of activity and their stratification according to hierarchical position in a given field. This model generated a sensitive differentiation and segmentation which provides the social basis for expected differences in interests, motivations and identifications of functionally similar agents operating in different fields of activity. The model raises general issues of social class allocation and the relation between theory and methods.