Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 17:02:41 -0800
From: "Caroline New" <c.new-AT-bathspa.ac.uk>
Subject: BHA: Causal powers of structures


Hi Martha, Doug, Howard et al.
I agree with Martha that Doug is (surprisingly) steering close to
Giddens in failing to distinguish between structures at any given
moment, which are indeed the result of past agency (of what else?); and
structures in the present act of reproduction, elaboration or
transformation - all of which involve agency.
I agree with what you say happens, Doug, and the dialectic between
rules, structures and agents (though I need to think more about what we
mean by 'rules' here, and Tobin's point is salient), but it seems to me
important to insist, as Archer does, on the distinction between the
structures which are the conditions for agency at any given moment and
the actions which then affect those structures at the next moment.  It's
important for the very reason that you, Doug, used to criticise my own
earlier attraction to Giddens' 'rules and resources' notion of
structure: that otherwise our conception of structure is so VIRTUAL it
really denies the reality of structure and its own causal powers.  It
becomes voluntarist, as if capitalism had causal powers if you let it;
this way of thinking comes close to the epistemic fallacy, rather like
Beck's view of risks as indistinguishable from perceptions of risk.

But Martha, I'm unhappy about your use of 'reduction to
microfoundations' as criterion for distinguishing the two kinds of
structure that both you and I think Archer distinguishes, though I
haven't had time to check and must defer to Tobin if he says she makes
no such distinction.  If that's the case, it must be that I noticed she
uses two kinds of examples... and I certainly have noticed that when
listening to her as a speaker.  But Martha, the two kinds of structure
you now posit are surely not the two kinds we started off with.  Then it
was demographic structures on the one hand, vs. structures of gender
inequality on the other, and now it's both these on the one hand, versus
specific instances on the other.
I think you've now introduced two new distinctions.  First, between the
abstract (e.g. mode of production) and the concrete - specific historic
instances of capitalism, or of racism. Second, between the macro and
micro levels. Because after all, we have the abstraction - the
capitalist mode of production.  Then we have specific historic instances
of that mode of production - still at a macro level.  Then we have
specific instances of the economic class struggle, say.  It seems to me
specific instances, whether macro or micro (or inbetween!) are not
reducible to microfoundations, since they are precisely instances of an
emergent reality with powers of its own. The fact that in the Stephen
Lawrence case the outcome was not determined by the preexisting
institutional racism of the police, does not mean that institutional
police racism did not play a causal role - it certainly did, mediated as
always through agency.  If their had been any agents (maybe there were)
with some reflexive awareness of those racist structures who were
attempting to sabotage them and bring about another outcome, that would
not mean the racist structures were causally inoperative.  I do have a
vague memory of the Erik O Wright article, and I think it may still have
been within the problematic it critiques.
See you folks, metaphorically speakaing,
Caroline



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