Introduction
Agency refers to the power of actors to operate independently in society without interruption. Individuals are not tied to the expectations of the society in the agency-structure theory (Structuration). The society is known to put some pressure on an individual to comply with some of the rules and regulations. Agency-structure is a theory anticipated to express the purposive nature of human action rather than its restricted or resolute facets.
Agency is evident in methodological individualism, ethno methodology, and symbolic interaction. In the agency-structure theory, the individual is at the center of all social analysis. Methodological individualism is a theoretical position arguing that adequate sociological accounts emanate from reference to persons, their interpretations of circumstances, and the reasons/motives of actions that they take.
Structure entails social life, which is largely influenced by communal life. Moreover, individual behavior could be elucidated as the artifact of structure.
Agency-structure debate is a micro-macro debate and there is a continuous effort to integrate the two. Sociology scholars, including Giddens attempted to integrate the two in order to end the debate.
The attempts to integrate the two emphasizes on the complimentarily meaning that the structure influences the individual and the agent has the capability to change the structure. This paper looks at the views of Giddens regarding the two concepts. The paper also looks at the way Giddens tried to integrate the two through, by coming up with structuration theory.
Agency and Society
Giddens used the notion of temporality, capability, and knowldgeability to explain the actions of agent in society. He observed that an agent has various capabilities that enable him or her to act differently, under different circumstances. For change to take place in any given human society, an agent must exist freely.
Agency could perhaps be defined differently to mean reflective supervision of human behavior. Giddens believed that human beings have the ability to monitor their actions, including the contexts of such actions. He used the term capability to mean that agents are able to portray a number of actions at ago.
For instance, he advised that human beings behave differently under different settings and conditions. It is therefore upon an individual to monitor his or her actions because the capacity to control one’s behavior is what differentiates people. Each person tries to evaluate his or her character and expects others to assess their actions before exposing them to the public.
According to Giddens, structures are the outcomes of human actions. Through the process of reflective monitoring, people are capable of transforming human actions. Before a human being acts, he/she is usually motivated by something. Agents use their knowledge to rationalize an act implying that people act differently because they differ in terms of knowledge.
He therefore used the term knowledgeability to imply that human beings have various forms of knowledge that are used differently in society. All human beings tend to scrutinize their actions thoughtfully. Even though human beings are supposed to act in accordance with societal rules and regulations, they are also supposed to use common due to their knowledgeability. People behave differently because of their capability and knowledgeability.
Some are perceived to act morally while others are known to go against societal laws regularly. Giddens observed that two forms of consciousnesses inform the capabilities of an individual. The first one is the practical consciousness, which means the reasoning power or the expertise of the individual. This form of consciousness is not easily recognized in everyday life. Another form of consciousness is the discursive realization.
This form of consciousness helps an individual to express knowledge. Giddens suggested that individuals have philosophical and relative and knowledge, which helps them to institutionalize structures. In order to be able to institutionalize structures, agents must possess adequate knowledge.
Giddens was quick to mention that some factors could perhaps restrain the actions of an individual. He termed such factors as capability constraints. The factors may include the age of the individual, cognitive restrictions and physical health of an individual, which bars an individual from performing certain duties. Others factors include time and space. At certain ages for instance, it would be impossible for an individual to execute some tasks.
The most limiting factor is the correlation between the movement of space and the time movement. Moreover, the geographical location of an individual could perhaps affect his or her behavior in society. One of the limiting factors in this category is locale (Münch 52). Some places call for certain behaviors only. For instance, people attending a class would be required to pay attention and avoid unnecessary conversations.
Regionalization is another factor meaning that some actions are not displayed in certain regions. For instance, an individual would wish to exercise prostitution but the Islamic rules would not permit him or her. This means that the region would have played a critical role in controlling the behavior of an individual.
Presence is another factor that restrains the actions of an individual. For instance, an individual would only talk in the presence of another person. The rule of reciprocity applies in some conditions, which forces an individual to avoid the act.
However, Giddens observed that human actions are temporary and used the term temporality to imply the elusiveness of human behavior. People would be forced to act in a certain manner but they would be quick to change such actions whenever the situation demands.
In his debate regarding temporality, Giddens (1984, p. 35) observed that “the duree of daily life, it is not too fanciful to say, operates in something akin to what Levi- Strauss calls ‘reversible time.” In this view, Giddens implied that social actions are reversible. In other words, human behavior is temporary in nature.
Giddens concluded in this section by noting that an individual has the power to engage in multiple actions. In other words, an agent could perhaps be able to participate in a dialectic control. This would mean that people have the power to refrain from certain actions. Conversely, people have the capability to influence a process, particularly when it does not favor their wishes. Giddens implied that agents have the ability to act independently, even though they are also expected to behave according to societal expectations.
Structure and Society
Giddens observed that structures consist of rules and resources that regulate the behavior of agents in society. These rules and resources are supposed to be memorized by individuals whenever they relate and interact in society. Whenever faced with any situation, agents use their well to solve the issue at hand given the fact that they are knowledgeable. In this case, being knowledgeable means behaving according to societal rules and regulations.
The scholar divided the forms of knowledge into three major categories. The first form of knowledge is the dominant type, which is the powerful form. He used the term resources to denote this form of knowledge. An individual may have authoritative or distributive power (Ritzer 71). Authoritative power is exercised over individuals while distributive power means the material capability.
The second form of knowledge is the signification or the meaning knowledge. The last form of knowledge, which is the most important, is the legitimate knowledge. This refers to the rules and norms that guide human behavior. All these forms of knowledge are kept in the individual’s memory and are invoked whenever the need arises.
In society, an individual has the right to use structures (rules and regulations), as he or she wishes. In case an individual uses the structures for interactive purposes, the structures would be termed as modalities. Moreover, the three forms of knowledge are used during interactive sessions (Baert 61). When individuals interact, it is upon them to establish which form of knowledge to use.
Conception of the duality of structure
Anthony Giddens found agency-structure to be a duality, which means the two cannot be separated from one another. Agency is implicated in structure and structure is implicated in agency. Giddens refused to recognize structure as constraining the way Durkheim did. Giddens observed that structure is both an enabling and constraining factor in human life. The scholar attempted to integrate the two by developing a theory referred to as structuration.
Structuration is a theory claiming that neither the experiences of the individual actor nor the collectivity is supreme. The structure, according to Giddens, consists of rules and resources that permit the integration of time and space in social life. The existence of structure enables the existence of social practices in different times and space. People utilize the existing structures to conduct their normal businesses.
The structures are preserved in the memories of individuals implying that the structures cannot exist without the presence of individuals. Through the memory traces, an individual is able to carry out his or functions in society. The social practices enable the generation of structures.
In this view, Giddens observed that the indispensable recursive of societal life is represented in social actions. Structure is both an intermediate and a result of duplication of human actions (Turner 12). Structure penetrates concurrently into the social life of the agent.
In his theory, Giddens utilized the phrase the duality of structure to bring out clearly the power of the structure as both an intermediate and a result of an action. Within and agent, societal rules and norms exist both internally and externally. Internally, policies and sets of laws of certain people are conserved in the memoirs of agents, which are the outcomes of their tradition. Externally, the rules and norms of society are the expressions of social behaviors.
Social structures such as the customs consist of agents since they are the outcomes of past actions. In this sense, duality comes out strongly in the structuration theory implying that an agent cannot exist without structures. Agents base their behaviors on the expectations and rules of society. Similarly, structures depend on agents to preserve the rules and norms.
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it can be observed that structuration theory intends to illuminate the duality and the dialectical interplay between the two. Agency and structure cannot be conceived to be a part or separate from one another but instead they are two sides of the same coin. They are a dualism that represents duality. Agency and social rules are inextricably intertwined in all human actions.
To Giddens, sociologists have exaggerated the constraining nature of structure on agency. Structure and agency are similar to the egg and hen story. Agency and structure are a duality meaning one cannot exist without the other. From the theory, it is eminent that the changes in social rules are brought about by the changes in time and space.
Works Cited
Baert, Patrick. Social theory in the twentieth century. Cambridge; Polity press, 1998. Print
Münch, Richard. Sociological theory. Developments since the 1960s. New York: Nelson Hall, 1994. Print.
Ritzer, George. Sociological Theory. 4th ed. New York: Knopf, 1996. Print.
Turner, Jonathan. The structure of sociological theory. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1998. Print.