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The most recent updated version of this chapter is available at: https://opentext.ku.edu/teams/chapter/structuration-theory/

Structuration

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The theory of structuration is a social theory of the creation and reproduction of social systems that is based in the analysis of both structure and agents (see structure and agency), without giving primacy to either. Structuration proposes that structures (i.e., norms, rules, roles) interaction with agency (i.e., free will) to reproduce in groups, teams, and organizations.

Duality of structure

Structure refers generally to “rules and resources” and more specifically to “the structuring properties allowing the ‘binding’ of time-space in social systems”. These properties make it possible for similar social practices to exist across time and space and that lend them “systemic” form.[1]:17 Agents—groups or individuals—draw upon these structures to perform social actions through embedded memory, called mental models. Mental models are the vehicle through which guide everyday social action.

However, structure and agency are mutually influential. Structure is the result of these social practices. Thus, Giddens conceives of the duality of structure as being:

…the essential recursiveness of social life, as constituted in social practices: structure is both medium and outcome of reproduction of practices. Structure enters simultaneously into the constitution of the agent and social practices, and ‘exists’ in the generating moments of this constitution.[5]:5

Giddens uses “the duality of structure” (i.e. material/ideational, micro/macro) to emphasize structure’s nature as both medium and outcome. Structures exist both internally within agents as mental models that are the product of phenomenological and hermeneutic inheritance[2]:27 and externally as the manifestation of social actions. Similarly, social structures contain agents and/or are the product of past actions of agents. Giddens holds this duality, alongside “structure” and “system,” in addition to the concept of recursiveness, as the core of structuration theory.[1]

Cycle of structuration

The duality of structure is essentially a feedback–feedforward process whereby agents and structures mutually enact social systems, and social systems in turn become part of that duality. Structuration thus recognizes a social cycle. In examining social systems, structuration theory examines structure, modality, and interaction. The “modality” (discussed below) of a structural system is the means by which structures are translated into actions.

Interaction

Interaction is the agent’s activity within the social system, space and time. “It can be understood as the fitful yet routinized occurrence of encounters, fading away in time and space, yet constantly reconstituted within different areas of time-space.”[1]:86 Rules can affect interaction, as originally suggested by Goffman. “Frames” are “clusters of rules which help to constitute and regulate activities, defining them as activities of a certain sort and as subject to a given range of sanctions.”[1]:87 Frames are necessary for agents to feel “ontological security, the trust that everyday actions have some degree of predictability. Whenever individuals interact in a specific context they address—without any difficulty and in many cases without conscious acknowledgement—the question: “What is going on here?” Framing is the practice by which agents make sense of what they are doing.[1]

Routinization

Structuration theory is centrally concerned with order as “the transcending of time and space in human social relationships”.[1] Institutionalized action and routinization are foundational in the establishment of social order and the reproduction of social systems. Routine persists in society, even during social and political revolutions, where daily life is greatly deformed, “as Bettelheim demonstrates so well, routines, including those of an obnoxious sort, are re-established.”[1]:87 Routine interactions become institutionalized features of social systems via tradition, custom and/or habit, but this is no easy societal task and it “is a major error to suppose that these phenomena need no explanation. On the contrary, as Goffman (together with ethnomethodology) has helped to demonstrate, the routinized character of most social activity is something that has to be ‘worked at’ continually by those who sustain it in their day-to-day conduct.”[1] Therefore, routinized social practices do not stem from coincidence, “but the skilled accomplishments of knowledgeable agents.”[2]:26

Explanation

When I utter a sentence I draw upon various syntactical rules (sedimented in my practical consciousness of the language) in order to do so. These structural features of the language are the medium whereby I generate the utterance. But in producing a syntactically correct utterance I simultaneously contribute to the reproduction of the language as a whole. …The relation between moment and totality for social theory… [involves] a dialectic of presence and absence which ties the most minor or trivial forms of social action to structural properties of the overall society, and to the coalescence of institutions over long stretches of historical time.[1]:24

Thus, even the smallest social actions contribute to the alteration or reproduction of social systems. Social stability and order is not permanent; agents always possess a dialectic of control (discussed below) which allows them to break away from normative actions. Depending on the social factors present, agents may cause shifts in social structure.

The cycle of structuration is not a defined sequence; it is rarely a direct succession of causal events. Structures and agents are both internal and external to each other, mingling, interrupting, and continually changing each other as feedbacks and feedforwards occur. Giddens stated, “The degree of “systemness” is very variable. …I take it to be one of the main features of structuration theory that the extension and ‘closure’ of societies across space and time is regarded as problematic.”[1]:165

The use of “patriot” in political speech reflects this mingling, borrowing from and contributing to nationalistic norms and supports structures such as a police state, from which it in turn gains impact.

Structure and society

Structures are the “rules and resources” embedded in agents’ mental models. Agents call upon their mental models on which they are “knowledgeable” to perform social actions. “Knowledgeability” refers to “what agents know about what they do, and why they do it.”[1]Giddens divides these reproducing mental models (structures-within-knowledgeability[2]) into three types:

  • Domination (power): Giddens also uses “resources” to refer to this type. “Authoritative resources” allow agents to control persons, whereas “allocative resources” allow agents to control material objects.
  • Signification (meaning): Giddens suggests that meaning is inferred through structures. Agents use existing experience to infer meaning. For example, Zanin and Piercy (2019) show that mental illness meaning comes from contextualized experience.
  • Legitimation (norms): Giddens sometimes uses “rules” to refer to either signification or legitimation. An agent draws upon these stocks of knowledge via memory to inform him or herself about the external context, conditions, and potential results of an action.

When an agent uses structures for social interactions, they are called modalities. Modalities emerge the forms of facility (domination), interpretive scheme/communication (signification) and norms/sanctions (legitimation).

Thus, he distinguishes between overall “structures-within-knowledgeability” and the more limited and task-specific “modalities” on which these agents subsequently draw when they interact.

The duality of structures means that structures enter “simultaneously into the constitution of the agent and social practices, and ‘exists’ in the generating moments of this constitution.”[5]:5 “Structures exist paradigmatically, as an absent set of differences, temporally “present” only in their instantiation, in the constituting moments of social systems.”[5]:64 Giddens draws upon structuralism and post-structuralism in theorizing that structures and their meaning are understood by their differences.

Agents and society

According to Giddens, agency  is human action.  Agency is critical to both the reproduction and the transformation of society. Another way to explain this concept is by what Giddens calls the “reflexive monitoring of actions.”[7] “Reflexive monitoring” refers to agents’ ability to monitor their actions and those actions’ settings and contexts. Monitoring is an essential characteristic of agency. Agents subsequently “rationalize,” or evaluate, the success of those efforts. All humans engage in this process, and expect the same from others. Through action, agents produce structures; through reflexive monitoring and rationalization, they transform them. To act, agents must be motivated, knowledgeable, and able to rationalize the action; further, agents must reflexively monitor the action.

Agents, while bounded in structure, draw upon their knowledge of that structural context when they act. However, actions are constrained by agents’ inherent capabilities and their understandings of available actions and external limitations. Practical consciousness and discursive consciousness inform these abilities. Practical consciousness is the knowledgeability that an agent brings to the tasks required by everyday life, which is so integrated as to be hardly noticed. Reflexive monitoring occurs at the level of practical consciousness.[8] Discursive consciousness is the ability to verbally express knowledge. Alongside practical and discursive consciousness, Giddens recognizes actors as having reflexive, contextual knowledge, and that habitual, widespread use of knowledgeability makes structures become institutionalized.[1]

Agents rationalize, and in doing so, link the agent and the agent’s knowledgeability. As agents, people coordinate ongoing projects, goals, and contexts while performing actions. This coordination is called reflexive monitoring, and is connected to ethnomethodology’s emphasis on agents’ intrinsic sense of accountability.[1]. According to Giddens (1984), reflexivity is comprised  discursive consciousness (i.e., that which is said) and practical consciousness (i.e., the activity, or what is done). Kaspersen (2000) explained Giddens conceptualization of monitoring as what occurs as a result of routinized activity29.

The factors that can enable or constrain an agent, as well as how an agent uses structures, are known as capability constraints include age, cognitive/physical limits on performing multiple tasks at once and the physical impossibility of being in multiple places at once, available time and the relationship between movement in space and movement in time.

Location offers are a particular type of capability constraint. Examples include:

  • Locale
  • Regionalization: political or geographical zones, or rooms in a building
  • Presence: Do other actors participate in the action? (see co-presence); and more specifically
  • Physical presence: Are other actors physically nearby?

Agents are always able to engage in a dialectic of control, able to “intervene in the world or to refrain from such intervention, with the effect of influencing a specific process or state of affairs.”[1]:14 In essence, agents experience inherent and contrasting amounts of autonomy and dependence; agents can always either act or not.[2]

Change

The existence of multiple structures implies that the knowledgeable agents whose actions produce systems are capable of applying different schemas to contexts with differing resources, contrary to the conception of a universal habitus (learned dispositions, skills and ways of acting). He wrote that “Societies are based on practices that derived from many distinct structures, which exist at different levels, operate in different modalities, and are themselves based on widely varying types and quantities of resources. …It is never true that all of them are homologous.”[19]:16

Originally from Bourdieu, transposable schemas can be “applied to a wide and not fully predictable range of cases outside the context in which they were initially learned.” That capacity “is inherent in the knowledge of cultural schemas that characterizes all minimally competent members of society.”[19]:17

Agents may modify schemas even though their use does not predictably accumulate resources. For example, the effect of a joke is never quite certain, but a comedian may alter it based on the amount of laughter it garners regardless of this variability.

Agents may interpret a particular resource according to different schemas. E.g., a commander could attribute his wealth to military prowess, while others could see it as a blessing from the gods or a coincidental initial advantage.

Structures often overlap, confusing interpretation (e.g., the structure of capitalist society includes production from both private property and worker solidarity).

Technology

This theory was adapted and augmented by researchers interested in the relationship between technology and social structures, such as information technology in organizations. DeSanctis and Poole proposed an “adaptive structuration theory” with respect to the emergence and use of group decision support systems. In particular, they chose Giddens’ notion of modalities to consider how technology is used with respect to its “spirit”. Appropriations are the immediate, visible actions that reveal deeper structuration processes and are enacted with “moves”. Appropriations may be faithful or unfaithful, be instrumental and be used with various attitudes.[20]

Group communication

Poole, Seibold, and McPhee wrote that “group structuration theory,”[26]:3 provides “a theory of group interaction commensurate with the complexities of the phenomenon.”[27]:116

The theory attempts to integrate macrosocial theories and individuals or small groups, as well as how to avoid the binary categorization of either “stable” or “emergent” groups.

Waldeck et al. concluded that the theory needs to better predict outcomes, rather than merely explaining them. Decision rules support decision-making, which produces a communication pattern that can be directly observable. Research has not yet examined the “rational” function of group communication and decision-making (i.e., how well it achieves goals), nor structural production or constraints. Researchers must empirically demonstrate the recursivity of action and structure, examine how structures stabilize and change over time due to group communication, and may want to integrate argumentation research.[26]

References: Structuration

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05728-9.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Stones, R. (2005). Structuration theory. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b Bryant, C.G.A., & Jary, D. (1991). Coming to terms with Anthony Giddens. In C.G.A. Bryant & D. Jary (Eds.), Giddens’ theory of structuration: A critical appreciation (pp. 1-32). New York, NY: Routledge.
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b Giddens, A. (1993). New rules of sociological method: A positive critique of interpretative sociologies. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  5. ^ Jump up to:a b c Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
  6. ^ McLennan, G. (1997/2000/2001). Critical or positive theory? A comment on the status of Anthony Giddens’ social theory. In C.G.A. Bryant & D. Jary (Eds.), Anthony Giddens: Critical assessments (pp. 318-327). New York, NY: Routledge.
  7. ^ Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age.Cambridge: Polity Press.
  8. ^ Ilmonen, K. (2001). Sociology, consumption, and routine. In J. Gronow & A. Warde (Eds.), Ordinary Consumption (pp. 9-25). New York, NY: Routledge.
  9. ^ Turner, J.H. (1986). Review essay: The theory of structuration. American Journal of Sociology, 91(4), 969-977.
  10. ^ Archer, M. (1995). Realist social theory: The morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  11. ^ Healy, K. (1998). “Conceptualising constraint: Mouzelis, Archer, and the concept of social structure.” Sociology, 613(4), pp.613-635.
  12. ^ Mouzelis, N. (1989). “Restructuring structuration theory.” The Sociological Review, 32(3), pp.509-522.
  13. ^ Jump up to:a b Mouzelis, N. (1991). Back to sociological theory: The construction of social orders.New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
  14. ^ Parker, J. (2000). Structuration Buckingham: Open University Press.
  15. ^ Archer, Robert. Education policy and realist social theory : primary teachers, child-centred philosophy and new managerialism. Routledge. ISBN 9780415464338.
  16. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Thompson, J.B. (1984). Studies in the theory of ideology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  17. ^ Giddens, A. (1981). A contemporary critique of historical materialism: vol 1: Power, property, and the state. London: Macmillan.
  18. ^ Giddens, A. (1989). A reply to my critics. In D. Held & J. B. Thompson (Eds.), Social theory of modern societies: Anthony Giddens and his critics (pp.249-301). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  19. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Sewell, Jr., W. H. (1992). A theory of structure: duality, agency, and transformation. The American Journal of Sociology, 98(1):1-29.
  20. ^ Jump up to:a b Desanctis, G. & Poole, M. S. (1994). Capturing the complexity in advanced technology use: adaptive structuration theory. Organization Science, 5(2):121-147.
  21. ^ Orlikowski, W. J. (1992). The duality of technology: rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science, 3(3):398-427. Earlier version at the URI http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/2300
  22. ^ Orlikowski, W. J. (2000). Using technology and constituting structures: a practice lens for studying technology in organizations. Organization Science, 11(4):404-428.
  23. ^ Stillman, L. (2006). (Ph.D Thesis). Understandings of Technology in Community-Based Organisations: A Structurational Analysis. Monash University, Australia. Retrieved from: http://webstylus.net/?q=node/182.
  24. ^ Workman, M., Ford, R., & Allen, W. (2008). A structuration agency approach to security policy enforcement in mobile ad hoc networks. Information Security Journal, 17, 267-277.
  25. ^ Pavlou, P.A>, & Majchrzak, A. (2002). Structuration theory: Capturing the complexity of business-to-business intermediaries. In M. Warkentin (Ed.), Business to business electronic commerce: Challenges & solutions (pp.175-189). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing.
  26. ^ Jump up to:a b Waldeck, J.H., Shepard, C.A., Teitelbaum, J., Farrar, W.J., & Seibold, D.R. (2002). New directions for functional, symbolic convergence, structuration, and bona fide group perspectives of group communication. In L.R. Frey (Ed.), New directions in group communication (pp.3-25). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
  27. ^ Poole, M.S., Seibold, D.R., & McPhee, R.D. (1996). The structuration of group decisions. In R.Y. Hirokawa & M.S. Poole (Eds.), Communication and group decision making (pp.114-146). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  28. ^ Jump up to:a b Falkheimer, J. (2009). On Giddens: Interpreting public relations through Anthony Giddens’ structuration and late modernity theory. In O. Ihlen, B. van Ruler, & M. Frederiksson (Eds.), Public relations and social theory: Key figures and concepts (pp.103-119). New York, NY: Routledge.
  29. Kaspersen, L. B. (2000). Anthony Giddens: An introduction to a social theorist (S. Sampson, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

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