Culture and Agency

Culture and Agency
Author: Margaret Scotford Archer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 1996-09-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780521564410

Margaret Archer's Culture and Agency was first published in 1988, and proved a seminal contribution to social theory and the case for the role of culture in sociological thought. Described in Sociological Review as 'a timely and sophisticated treatment', the book showed that the 'problems' of culture and agency, on the one hand, and structure and agency, on the other, could be solved using the same analytical framework. In this revised edition of Culture and Agency, Margaret Archer contextualises her argument in 1990s cultural sociology and links it explicitly to her latest book, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Structure, Culture and Agency

Structure, Culture and Agency
Author: Tom Brock
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2016-11-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317392493

Professor Margaret Archer is a leading critical realist and major contemporary social theorist. This edited collection seeks to celebrate the scope and accomplishments of her work, distilling her theoretical and empirical contributions into four sections which capture the essence and trajectory of her research over almost four decades. Long fascinated with the problem of structure and agency, Archer’s work has constituted a decade-long engagement with this perennial issue of social thought. However, in spite of the deep interconnections that unify her body of work, it is rarely treated as a coherent whole. This is doubtless in part due to the unforgiving rigour of her arguments and prose, but also a byproduct of sociology’s ongoing compartmentalisation. This edited collection seeks to address this relative neglect by collating a selection of papers, spanning Archer’s career, which collectively elucidate both the development of her thought and the value that can be found in it as a systematic whole. This book illustrates the empirical origins of her social ontology in her early work on the sociology of education, as well as foregrounding the diverse range of influences that have conditioned her intellectual trajectory: the systems theory of Walter Buckley, the neo-Weberian analysis of Lockwood, the critical realist philosophy of Roy Bhaskar and, more recently, her engagement with American pragmatism and the Italian school of relational sociology. What emerges is a series of important contributions to our understanding of the relationship between structure, culture and agency. Acting to introduce and guide readers through these contributions, this book carries the potential to inform exciting and innovative sociological research.

Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds

Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds
Author: Dorothy Holland
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2001-03-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780674005624

This text addresses the central problem in anthropological theory of the late 1990s - the paradox that humans are both products of social discipline and creators of remarkable improvisation.

The New American Cultural Sociology

The New American Cultural Sociology
Author: Philip Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 1998-06-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780521586344

American Cultural Sociology presents a serious challenge to British Cultural Studies and European grand theory alike. This exciting volume brings together sixteen seminal papers by leading figures in what is emerging as an important intellectual tradition. It places them in the context of related work in Sociology and other disciplines, exploring the connections between cultural sociology and different approaches, such as comparative and historical research, postmodernism, and symbolic interactionism. The book is divided into three sections: Culture as Text and Code, The Production and Reception of Culture, and Culture in Action. Each section contains edited contributions, both theoretical and empirical, addressing the key debates in cultural sociology, including the autonomy of culture, power and culture, structure and agency and how to conceptualise meaning.

Agency and Embodiment

Agency and Embodiment
Author: Carrie Noland
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0674054385

In Agency and Embodiment, Carrie Noland examines the ways in which culture is both embodied and challenged through the corporeal performance of gestures. Arguing against the constructivist metaphor of bodily inscription dominant since Foucault, Noland maintains that kinesthetic experience, produced by acts of embodied gesturing, places pressure on the conditioning a body receives, encouraging variations in cultural practice that cannot otherwise be explained. Drawing on work in disciplines as diverse as dance and movement theory, phenomenology, cognitive science, and literary criticism, Noland argues that kinesthesia—feeling the body move—encourages experiment, modification, and, at times, rejection of the routine. Noland privileges corporeal performance and the sensory experience it affords in order to find a way beyond constructivist theory’s inability to produce a convincing account of agency. She observes that despite the impact of social conditioning, human beings continue to invent surprising new ways of altering the inscribed behaviors they are called on to perform. Through lucid close readings of Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Bill Viola, André Leroi-Gourhan, Henri Michaux, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Derrida, and contemporary digital artist Camille Utterback, Noland illustrates her provocative thesis, addressing issues of concern to scholars in critical theory, performance studies, anthropology, and visual studies.

Culture, Structure and Agency

Culture, Structure and Agency
Author: David Rubinstein
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2001
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780761919285

This book addresses two key issues in sociological theory: the debate between structural and cultural approaches and the problem of agency. It does this through looking at the work of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim and the ideas of modern theorists like Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and Talcott Parsons. The book examines economics, rational choice theory, network theory, ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism.

Identity, Formation, Agency, and Culture

Identity, Formation, Agency, and Culture
Author: James E. Cote
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2014-04-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135650039

The goal of Identity, Formation, Agency, and Culture is to lay the basis of a theory with which to better understand the difficulties and complexities of identity formation. It provides an extensive understanding of identity formation as it relates to human striving (agency) and social organization (culture). James E. Côté and Charles G. Levine have compiled state-of-the-art psychological and sociological theory and research into a concise synthesis. This volume utilizes a vast, interdisciplinary literature in a reader-friendly style. Playing the role of narrators, the authors take readers through the most important theories and studies of self and identity, focusing on pragmatic issues of identity formation--those things that matter most in people's lives. Identity, Formation, Agency, and Culture is intended for identity-related researchers in the behavioral and social sciences, as well as clinicians, counselors, and social workers dealing with identity-related disorders. It also serves as a main or supplemental text in advanced courses on identity, identity and human development, social development, moral development, personality, the sociology of identity, and the individual and society taught in departments of psychology, sociology, human development, and family studies.

Cultural Agency in the Americas

Cultural Agency in the Americas
Author: Doris Sommer
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2006-01-19
Genre: History
ISBN:

DIVAn exploration of how cultural agency can be used by different organizations and artists to rethink and challenge the notion of a globalized society./div

Communicating Social Change

Communicating Social Change
Author: Mohan J. Dutta
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2011-05-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1136848819

Communicating Social Change describes the social challenges that exist in current globalization politics, and examines the communicative processes, strategies and tactics through which social change interventions are constituted in response to the challenges.

Representing Agency in Popular Culture

Representing Agency in Popular Culture
Author: Ingrid E. Castro
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2018-12-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498574955

Representing Agency in Popular Culture: Children and Youth on Page, Screen and In-Between addresses the intersection of children’s and youth’s agency and popular culture. As scholars in childhood studies and beyond seek to expand understandings of agency, power, and voice in children’s lives, this book places popular culture and representation as central to this endeavor. Core themes of family, gender, temporality, politics, education, technology, disability, conflict, identity, ethnicity, and friendship traverse across the chapters, framed through various film, television, literature, and virtual media sources. Here, childhood is considered far from homogeneous and the dominance of neoliberal models of agency is questioned by intersectional and intergenerational analyses. This book posits there is vast power in popular culture representations of children’s agency, and interrogation of these themes through interdisciplinary lenses is vital to furthering knowledge and understanding about children’s lives and within childhood studies.