Social Identities in the Economy: Introduction

 

- Margaret Archer

 

Structure and Agency

a) How do structures influence agents?

Structures constrain and enable actions of agents; e.g., class system shapes economic opportunities, patriarchy defines gender roles. Structures have the following features:

i) structures and objective factors work upon agents without their awareness;

ii) structures create vested interests and motivate agents to defend them; and

iii) structures reduce agents’ aspirations by limiting their social horizons.

Constraints and enablements are potential causal powers of structures, and remain inactive until activated by agents who pursue particular projects and concerns; e.g., domestic roles within the household, though members do not aim to reproduce patriarchy, only realise and undertake household tasks.

However, the structural powers that constrain and enable agents are contingent (and not inevitable) because humans can use their reflexive abilities to withstand them or to circumvent them; e.g., women can challenge gender stereotypes.

b) Agents possess distinctive properties, such as thinking, deliberating, believing, intending, loving and so forth, which are applicable to people but never to social structures. These real personal subjective properties play a crucial role in mediating between structure and agency.

People deliberate reflexively upon what to do in the light of their personal concerns, commitments and projects. Our reflexivity defines our personal identities by reference to what is of ultimate concern to them in the world. Human beings possess several features:

i) the ontological nature of humans is that they are deliberating agents in pursuit of concerns, projects and commitments;

ii) human beings have the capacity for autonomy and are vulnerable to lack of needs (emotional and social);

iii) human beings are socially, psychologically and economically dependent on others;

iv) human beings are needy beings characterised by lack and desire for wants and needs; and

v) as human, we need recognition and seek approval from others.

In this way, structures do not determine agents (as in Marxism), or are agents to undertake any action equally with similar costs (as in liberalism and postmodernism).

c) Structures can be equated with economic institutions, such as the market system, bureaucracy, the state, households, the civil society, the informal economy and social networks.

d) Theoretical frameworks have competing ideas, and we must judge which provides best understanding and explanation of social practices:

i) New Economic Sociology

- social embeddedness (Karl Polanyi and Mark Granovetter)

ii) Political Economy

- commodification and rationality (Max Weber and Georg Simmel)

iii) Cultural Economy

- aestheticisation and culturalisation (Pierre Bourdieu and Paul du Gay)

iv) Moral Economy

- morality and ethics (Adam Smith and Andrew Sayer)

- professional identity (Alasdair MacIntyre)