Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 09:07:13 +0100
From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk (COLIN WIGHT)
Subject: Re: BHA: Fetishism


To use Howie's own phrase to begin my post.

>At the risk of prolonging a discussion that might better be gracefully
>retired for the time being,

very little that Howie said in his post is at odds to my position.




>First. What strikes me in all this is that the concept of duality should be
>front and centre in our discussions of structure/agency, not simply as a
>formal assertion, but as an acknowledgement that in practice structures
>exhibit features that make them look like agents and agents behave in ways
>that can be termed structurally determined. 

here, of course, I am reminded of RB's categorical claim in PON that we
_must_ distinguish between the powers and attributes pertaining to agents
and structures respectively. If structures look like agents but are not, why?

 To try to resolve
>them theoretically, in an a priori fashion, necessarily leads to one form or
>another of dogmatism. It is to try to impose closure on social life, which
>is necessarily open-ended. What we can try to come to terms with in abstract
>theoretical terms are the dynamics which characterise this never-ending dance.

Yes, again, I think RB has claimed somewhere (I have actualy used the quote
somewhere so I can hunt it out if someone wants it) that no general and/or
theoretical/philosophical solution to the agent-structure problem will be
forthcoming. If we take agents and structures seriously then we cannot
theoretically write out either from our analysis. 

>
>Second. I think Colin tends to overstate the indisputably true statement
>that only people act as intentional agents. 

Well I am simply following RB here who claims that intentionality is what
marks out human agency from social structure . There is an interesting point
to explore and take RB to task, but I agree with him, atoms do not act
intentionally  and nor do social structures. 

But we need to ask whether every individual action can
>be deemed intentional, whether individuals should always be held responsible
>for the consequences of their actions? 

I see this as basically an empirical point. Did Sophie have any choice? We
have to contextualise our inquiries here. Moreover, social acts clearly have
unintended consequences, but this insight should not lead us to deny that
the acting agents did not act intending to do something. Any other
formulation is in danger of making the notion of action otiose. Funny enough
I was reading Plato etc. (the chapter on social agency) this morning on
exactly this issues as it relates to reasons being causes.

It is clear that they cannot, and
>that this is recognised in various ways in the legal system. Once we have
>the possibility of non-intentional human action, 

can you give me an example here, of non-intentional social action, as
opposed to a non-intended social outcome?

we have human action which
>is causally determined by something other than the free will of individual
>agents. 

Absolutely.

 This means that it is the *potential* for intentional action which
>is the exclusive property of individual people. 

Yes.

>But the extent to which this
>potentiality is actualised depends on the circumstances.

Yes.


>
>The TMSA thus enjoins us not only to recognise the centrality of individual
>action to social life, but also the possibility that this action is unjustly
>constrained by the very social structures it generates. 

Yes. The problem for me comes when my discipline takes the state as its
agent, then theorises international structures, and then thinks it has got
the whole picture. It has got it's agents, and its structures, story complete.

The differences in
>life chances that are available to people in socially-stratified (i.e. all
>existing) societies are real, and mean that the ability to act
>intentionally, freely, is not uniformly distributed across society. So
>asserting that structures do not act in the way that people do only takes us
>part of the way. Structures have real effects on people's actions, making
>some things possible for some people and not for others. This makes them a
>legitimate object for scientific analysis, and understanding them is
>therefore a crucial part of any programme of social change. It is, of
>course, people who will ultimately have to act in order change the
>structures which generate oppression for some and privilege for others. But
>if we are to help this process along we must tread carefully along the fine
>line between blaming the victims for the crime, on the one hand, and not
>recognising the full extent of individual responsibility, on the other.
>This, I think, is a reflection of what I have called the duality of agency.

Yes.

>It is not at all clear
>to me the nature of the explanatory dividends that are supposedly made
>possible by referring to yet a further level of analysis, positioned with
>its own powers above both structures and agents.

The notion of a structuratum is Collier's not mine (RB has also said he
finds the notion useful), I simply find it a useful concept to denote the
powers that various structures have when combined. Structure, for me, refers
to the relations between the constituent elements which make up a
structuratum. A structuratum, we might like to say, emerges out of the
various structures which 
make it up, and it has a concrete existence, whilst a structure, as a set of
relations is abstract.  I am not sure that I would view as positioned above
or below structures, because I don't like the heirachical metaphor even as
it relates to agents and structures (structures, that is, are not above
agents). This does raise an interesting point about levels, and Doug Porpora
has done a really nice paper on the very concept of levels. 

But a question we might like to raise is :are agents and structures on the
same ontological level?

Anyway, I think you have to place this whole issue within my disciplinary
matrix. In international relations, the state is generally taken to be _the_
agent: a unified, thinking, intentional, acting, egoistic, conscious entity.
This state is an individual writ large. Starting with the TMSA, which is
framed around a notion of agency, as being human agency, I totally reject
this as a theoretical starting point, since the individuals that actually do
the acting get written out. 

Anyway, once again many thanks to everyone.

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Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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