The relationship between structure[1] and agency[2] in shaping social reality is an issue of long-standing debate in sociological theory (Udehn, 2001). There have been three major sociological responses to this debate. Structural-functionalists[3] argue that human action is determined by overarching social systems that operate to preserve the integrity and coherency of society. In this perspective, socialization processes serve to shape individuals’ disposition towards and capacities for social action. Structured societies are regarded as self-reproducing and resistant to change. By contrast, micro-sociological theorists[5] argue that individual agents construct social meaning and social realities. In this perspective, social structures are the outcome of the interactions of self-determining individuals. Social change then is entirely within the scope of individual agency. A third response comes from modern sociologists[6] who have attempted to reconcile the foregoing perspectives and account for the mutual influence of both structures and agency on social phenomena.
In the early 2000s when I was working as a practitioner working on peace education in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, my orientation was agency-centred. The theory of change upon which my organization operated in that post-conflict context was the belief that by training and supporting local actors (in this case, educators), they would acquire greater capacity to act for peace and reconciliation in their war-ravaged communities. Once capacitated and activated, we envisioned these educators engaging with their students, colleagues, parents of students, local leaders and media, etc., in a way that would build the courage and capacities of these other potential actors to work for peace as well. Through a 'multiplier effect,' we envisioned a growing number of activated individuals, schools, and communities, networking and collaborating together to transform the Bosnian educational experience and thereby to accelerate the momentum of a positive social change movement in Bosnian society. To a considerable degree, certainly in the short term while the project had lots of funding, political support, and dedicated human resources, this vision was realized.
When I returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina a decade later, I became more aware of the tensions in the Bosnian education sector between the agency of individuals attempting to implement socially-transformative educational initiatives and the dominance of structures of division and status quo thinking that seem to resist that transformation. Recognizing the centrality of this dilemma within the Bosnian education system, I have found it beneficial in my current research to employ a methodological lens that combines a social ecological approach to inquiry with sociologist Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration.
Structuration theory is a way of looking at and understanding the dynamic interplay of agency and structure. In The Constitution of Society (1984), Giddens criticizes structuralist perspectives for overlooking capacities of individual will, while also criticizing interpretivist perspectives for discounting the importance of historical and socioeconomic contexts. It is, he argues, in the dialectic between structural properties and individual agency that the production and reproduction of social systems is best understood. He proposes a ‘theory of structuration’, central to which is the theorem of the duality of structure:
“The constitution of agents and structures are not two independently given sets of phenomena, a dualism, but represent a duality. According to the notion of the duality of structure, the structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organize. Structure is not ‘external’ to individuals…[but rather] more ‘internal’… Structure is not to be equated with constraint but is always both constraining and enabling” (Giddens, 1984: 25).
Thus, in what Giddens calls “the duality of structure”, individuals (actors) are understood to both create social systems, and to be created by them (Giddens, 1984). In other words, to understand social processes is to examine the juxtaposition and interplay of profound social forces and the capacity for individual will (Maclure and Denov, 2006). In his theory, structure is comprised of both rules and resources, and acts to both facilitate and constrain human actions. Structure thereby organizes social action, but is also a product of it.
Human individuals draw upon these rules and resources to effect social action. As humans are reflexive and purposive agents, however, they always have the possibility to break away from the normative expectations of their society. They have the power to ‘act otherwise’, the possibility to say ‘no’, and thereby to create different possibilities for social action and organization (Giddens 1984, p. 12). At the same time, agents are positioned variously within a given social system. Agents thus act and are acted upon at ‘specific intersections of signification, domination, and legitimation’ (Giddens, 1984: 83). As such, “all social interaction is situated interaction” (Giddens, 1984: 86).
The duality of structure “shifts emphasis away from social or organizational structures as fixed entities and towards structuring as a dynamic process necessarily involving individual actions” (Yates, 1997: 161). Conceived in this manner, structuration theory shifts the debate from structure versus agency to an exploration of the relationship between structure and agency which I find helpful for understanding the role of education in social reconstruction and reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A structuration perspective makes it equally important to understand, one the hand, the manner in which historically-situated rules and resources both enable and constrain human action, and on the other hand, to understand the reflexivity and motivations of individuals who work to reproduce and to change their social realities.[7]
Structuration theory is particularly relevant to education research. Bickmore (2006) takes a structuration perspective on public schooling: “Public schooling is a project of the state, [with] a built-in mandate to legitimate the existing (inequitable) social order. At the same time, social and political institutions are made up of human beings, whose passive consent and active agency continually ebb, flow, and reshape them” (p. 360). Ashwin (2008) engages a structure-agency inquiry in his research on teaching, learning and assessment in schools by asking: How much are individuals free to decide on their own actions and how much are they constrained by the social settings in which they operate? Are explanations of educational phenomena to be found at the micro level of the individual or at the macro societal level? To what extent are educational institutions stable entities or to what extent can they be changed by the actions of individuals? How much can educational theory predict educational practice and how much does practice define theory?
While the agency-structure debate has waned in British sociology over the past decade, this line of questioning remains highly relevant to my study of interethnic peacebuilding through education in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Through interrogating structure-agency dynamics in the Bosnian context, my project can offer greater insight into the successes, disappointments, and future potential of peacebuilding through education in that complex post-war environment, than could a structuralist or phenomenological study alone. Drawing from the valuable insights gained, recommendations can be made to educational institutions and actors on how to further interethnic peacebuilding within and despite structural constraints.
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[1] Structure refers to both material structures, such as institutions, laws, and systems (e.g. economic, political, etc.), as well as social-cultural structures (including traditions, norms, customs, beliefs, and social codes).
[2] Agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to determine their own free will. “Hewson (2010) describes three types of agency: individual, proxy, and collective. Individual agency is when a person acts on his/her own behalf, whereas proxy agency is when an individual acts on behalf of someone else (such as an employer). Collective agency occurs when people act together, such as a social movement.
[3] Such as Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), and Talcott Parsons (1902-1979)
[5] Such as Max Weber (1864-1920), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), and Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011).
[6] Such as Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) and Anthony Giddens (1938- ).
[7] Maclure and Denov (2006), for example, use structuration theory to explore the phenomena of child soldiers in Sierra Leone. Analyzing the narratives of boys formerly involved with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), they demonstrate how “the exercise of free will, often manifested in extraordinary violence, but occasionally as well in subtle resistance, was bound up with the unique historical and sociocultural forces in which these boys were growing up” (p. 121). In another study, Healy (2006) uses structuration theory to examine the experiences of asylum-seekers and refugees in the UK, as they grapple with and manipulate their positionalities, identities, networks, and coping strategies to maximize their agency within the structures that define their daily life in their new social-cultural setting.