Giddens: Lecture 1

Eclecticism: Weber- routinisation (Goffman- time frames, Garfinkel- trust, Laing –ontological security, Heidegger- time-space links, Bergson life cycles- duree, rhythms of life, the everyday in the modern world)
Durkheim- social reproduction
Marx- self-creation

Recursive nature of action
Actions reproduce the conditions (structure) in which they can be repeated
Therefore
Structure is both the medium and the outcome of action. It is the context in which action takes place and the actions reproduce that context e.g. Willis study...Lads fail at school and reproduce the class structure (unskilled labour in this case)

Time –space distantiation- we are influenced by events in other times and places. We can both bracket and draw upon this experience in situations where it is useful as a set of coping skills, know-how

Micro- macro split. Giddens: small scale events and processes reproduce large scale events and processes, therefore no split…the small is always part of the large…agents as part of structure. See Alan Dawe- ‘The Two Sociologies’, BJS, 1970

Duality/Dualism
Duality- action and structure are two sides of the same coin (e.g. Giddens, Crompton)
Dualism- e.g. Margaret Archer, David Lockwood. Archer gives two examples:
(a) Action is separate from and external to structure e.g. job vacancies in the occupational structure exist without agents to fill them. They precede in time (temporally) the agents who fill them
(b) structures or systems have emergent properties which are not attributable to agents alone e.g. I can't cure myself but the NHS might

In dualism the structure is often seen as an external threat by agents in their everyday lives and dualist sociologists don't really have an answer to the question of how we can influence, experience or know structure because it is beyond, outside the agent ( hence in popular culture dualism can mean the monstrous, barely imaginable forces…’the market’, the system, the state, foreign immigrants, the Communist threat, muggers, welfare claimants etc.- stereotypical imaginings)
In the case of duality we’d have to see these forces as part of ourselves e.g. when we go to work this is internalised as rendering us abstract functionaries, worth so many hours pay, units of labour power etc. ….this represents the system within us. When we go home we bracket this, but can draw upon these experiences also

How does the agent ‘do’ structure’? Practical consciousness/reflexivity
Agents draw on the bracketed, distantiated reality which is part of their cultural experience to enable them to understand and negotiate everyday life. This reality is drawn upon spontaneously as lived experience rather than in a conscious, thought-through way. (see Giddens on ‘the Lads’, who in coping with the classroom draw upon their neighbourhood, parental workplace and peer group subcultures for instance)

HF 01.03.2010