Agency-structure Integration
Review: Six Social Theories
• Positivism and Durkheim
• Structural functionalism and Talcott Parsons
• Karl Marx and Marxism
• Neo-Marxism
• Max Weber (Weberian)
• Symbolic interactionism
Structuration Theory by Giddens
• Anthony Giddens suggests integration of agency (≈ action) and structure under the
theory of structuration.
• Giddens says that “Every research investigation in the social sciences --- is involved
in relating action to structure… there is no sense in which structure ‘determines’
action or vice versa” (1984:219).
Figure 1: Anthony Giddens
• According to structuration theory, the study of social sciences is the study of “social
practices ordered across time and space” (1984: 2).
• Here, “social practices” means the relationship between agency and structure.