File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1996/96-05-20.182, message 50


Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 00:18:52 -0500
From: porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu (Doug Porpora)
Subject: Re: the ontological status of structures



        Hans's interpretation 5 is exactly the interpretation of structure
I would favor:  structures are real, distinct from agency, but not on a
different level.  All I mean by distinct is that structures and agency are
not the same things.  Agency refers to actions and structure refers to
relations.  All I mean by distinct is that actions are not the same thing
as relations.  In saying that structure and agency are on the same level, I
only mean that structures do not reside over the heads of actors as on the
Durkheimian conception but rather connect actors to one another -- in the
way Heikki's definition seems to put it. Because actors are connected by
structured relations, actors who are affected by the structures that bind
them invariably also alter those structured relations through their
actions.

        Giddens defines structure not as relations but as rules and
resources.  To me, it is perplexing why it would make sense to refer to a
resource such as a gun as a social structure.  Who has the guns may be
socially structured, a gun itself may be physically structured, but what
sense does it make to say the gun is a social structure? Generally,
structure refers to organization of some kind.  Does a gun have a social
organization?

        It is because Giddens thinks of structures largely as rules that he
describes them as virtual.  In his entire corpus, as far as I can see,
Giddens never refers to relations as anything other than as a dependent
variable -- a systemic effect of rulelike behavior.  For Giddens, systemic
relations are epiphenomenal.  It is for that reason I consider Giddens
subjectivist.  He ignores the important causality -- and, I would argue,
the emergent materiality -- of social relations.

        In Guatemala, an agricultural country, 2% of the population owns
60% of the land.  That inequality is a social relationship generated by the
constitutive rules of property ownership.  So far, I am with Giddens:  the
relation originates from the rule.  What Giddens ignores, however, is that
those emergent relations have their own causal effects.  According to
UNICEF, something like 75% of Guatemalan children are malnourished.  The
structured relation of inequality causes malnutrition, which is what I
think I.P. Wright is getting at.

        I don't know what Heikki would say about this example -- in fact, I
am not even sure of my own position, but it seems a case where a structural
relation is causally effective even if it does not enter "into certain
practices via knowledge -- again as memory traces -- of 'how things are to
be done' on
the part of certain social actors."  Malnutrition is not an action -- not
an intentional behavior.  Yet, it is a causal consequence of the Guatemalan
relations being what they are. Since malnourishment is not an action, there
is no cultural "practice" that need constitute it.

        I will admit that the structural inequality does not operate on its
own.  The Guatemalan actors must be doing something.  Among other things,
they must continue to honor the constitutive rules of property ownership
that generate the structural inequality.  And both the Guatemalan rich and
the Guatemalan poor respond to this structural inequality in culturally
conditioned ways.

        All I would want to say (in contrast with Giddens) is that none of
those culturally conditioned reponses constitutes the structural relation
of inequality itself.  Nobody even has to be aware of it.  It is the
constitutive rule of property ownership that needs continually to be
constituted by rulelike practices.  The relationship of inequality thus
generated does not need other specific practices to be constituted or
causally operative.

        The persistent guerrilla activity in Guatemala, finally, may lead,
as it momentarily did in Nicaragua, to a situation where the actors manage
to change the rules that generate the structures that oppress them. Among
their causal properties, oppressive structures may motivate actors to alter
them.  Giddens, by the way, who argues that human actors need to be
"decentered," has no account of motivation other than an unconscious need
for "ontological security."  To reduce all motivation to that is as
reductionistic as early Freudianism.  For a more systematic treatment of
motivation, Giddens needs an account of structured interests, which
coincides with a relational (as opposed to a rulelike) view of structure.

Doug
















>Heikki lists four interpretations of structure:
>
>"1. Structures as virtual, yet real.
>
>2. Structures as non-virtual and real, but neither distinct nor on a
>   different level than agency.
>
>3. Structures as non-virtual and real and also on a different level than
>   agency.
>
>4. Structures as non-virtual and real and, in a addition to being on a
>   different level than agency, also distinct from agency."
>
>Personally, i would like to argue that structures are real, can
>metaporically be depicted as virtual, as long as this does not mean
>that they loss their ontological and objective status.
>
>Structure 2 does not seem to me to be Doug's position (perhaps closer
>to 4?).  2 seems to have the strongest tendency toward reification.
>Personally, i believe this to be the *most* dangerous tendency, for
>it denies both an adequate conceptions of agency and potential for
>(especially conscious) transformation.
>
>However, i would further argue that 4 also as a tendency to imply
>reification.
>
>Also, i am unsure in what way one can speak of structure and agency
>as non-distinct, but on different levels, if this is the case we
>should also have: 5. distinct, though not different levels?
>
>Let me make sure i understand the difference between distinct and
>different levels.  By distinct: i understand this to be in reference
>to the duality of structure and agency, in that neither can (or
>should) be reduced to the other -- as depicted by the Weberian and
>Durkheimian cases (PON chapter 2).  Different levels, also is in
>reference to the duality of structure and agency, specifically in
>avoiding reifing structure and agency to a dualism.
>
>Whereby, we can discuss distinction with respect to the ontological
>status of each one, and different levels with respect to interaction
>between these two different "things".
>
>With respect to different levels, we (should) want to speak about
>ontological priority, without reifing.  In this sense, the
>term "different level" seems to overstate the case.  Better we can
>concieve of time-space relation, as does Giddens and (i believe)
>Bhaskar.
>
>For Giddens the time-space relation seems to suggest intersubjective,
>perhaps because it emphasizes the discursive consciousnes aspect;
>while for Bhaskar the time-space relation seems to suggest
>objectivity, perhaps because of his emphasis on the pre-existence of
>social relations with respect to the individual.
>
>Moreover, Giddens conception seems to depend on the a notion of
>consciousness (discursive, practical, and un-), whereas Bhaskar does
>not have structure so much dependent on consciousness, but rather
>more directly related to agency as enabling.
>
>The exchange between Heikki and Colin on *mechanism* seems quite
>helpful --in that it is related to the question: what ontological
>status should be given to a generative mechanism?
>
>I.P. Wright offers a few (soical) examples:  e.g. the rate of profit,
>mass unemployment, capitalist markets.  For example the status given
>to the (tendency for the) rate of profit (to fall) will very much
>determine our understanding of a capitalist society [however,
>generative mechanisms are here understood as tendencies in the
>Bhaskarian sense, not *necessarilly* as empirical manifestations].
>
>Personally, i do not see the import over the term "virtual".  In one
>sense the falling rate of profit is virtual, in that it does not
>exist somewhere as a natural enity, or in the same way as say gravity.
>It is in this sense that this "generative mechanism" is time-space
>dependent, specifically the falling rate of profit is t-s dependent on
>the existence of capitalist relations or profit motivated behavior,
>but at the same in the time-space relation, we can speak of the
>falling rate of profit in the same way that we of (say) gravity.
>
>Finally i do agree with Heikki that external and internal relations
>become centeral to the discussion.  He (i assume he will not mind me
>mentioning) has argued this in his article "Concepts of 'Action',
>'Structure' and 'Power' in 'Critical Social Realism': A Positive and
>Reconstructive Critique" (*Journal for the Theory of Social
>Behaviour* 21:2 pp.221-249).  Although as the title suggests Heikki
>is more concerned with Action, Power, and Structure, i find the
>greatest sympathies with the discussion of external and internal
>relaions in understanding not only structure but also agency.
>
>Looking forward to futher discussion...
>
>
>hans despain
>University of Utah
>despain-AT-econ.sbs.utah.edu

doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

poporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu



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