From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: Sociology or epistemology?
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 09:51:56 -0400


Ralph wrote:

>            Let me ask the Bhaskar
>people a question, to which I do not presume to have an answer.  Have any
of
>them come up with a social science concept of any richness, say on the
level
>of the "habitus", which claims to do some work in linking structure with
>agency?

Just a quick response: one person working specifically on how to analyze the
interplay between structure and agency from a critical realist perspective
is Margaret Archer (a sociologicst of education who's branched out into
larger questions of social theory).  Whether her concepts are as "rich" as
Bourdieu's "habitus" is a matter of personal judgment, or at least a matter
of the questions one is interested in (since the two are discussing
different issues).  "Habitus" introduces a "phenomenological" dimension of
sorts, which I find valuable both for specific social analysis and for
general social theory; a way of thinking about how we live and incorporate
the interplay of structure and agency.  Archer's work is more on the
interaction of structure and agency, in terms of their relative autonomy and
historicity; arguably, the dynamics upon which habitus depends.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gis.net
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce


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