Structure and Agency explained - Theory for postgraduate social science students
The words structure and agency are often taken for granted in social science theory. These are things that you just know, right? Wrong! In this blogpost, I’m going to explain what they mean, and how you can use them in your critical analysis of theory. We’ll begin with structure, move on to agency and identify three key things you really need to know about the relationship between them.
Structure
When we talk about structure, we’re talking about overarching frameworks for social life, things that exist over and above the individual. Social institutions like education, family, religion, political systems and economies and organizations like schools, households, churches or mosques, parliaments, and corporations. They exist beyond the individual over and above the individual. They’re enduring, they’re longstanding. They’re stable, strong, substantial. It’s difficult for individuals to change them. They’re relatively hard and solid.
Agency
When we talk about agency, we think about individuals with freedom, autonomy and choice. We think of free willed, creative beings, subjective, unique. Agency is about actions, behavioural tendencies, traits and quirks, rituals, habits, routines, activities, ways of living. Interacting with others through learning, having relationships, committing criminal offences, playing sports, eating, exercising, pursuing hobbies and interests.
Relationship between structure and agency - 3 key things to remember!
Structure and agency are often thought of as two distinct things. Polar opposites.
There’s also a tendency to see structure as bad and agency as good.
These are really limiting and simplistic ways to look at structure and agency and I’m now going to teach you a way of looking at them differently.
Structure and agency are not completely separate, they are not polar opposites. In fact they are interlinked and there are three things we need to be aware of in terms of how they relate to each other. Structure can’t exist without agency. Structure isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Agency isn’t always about complete freedom. Let’s take a look at each of those statements in detail.
(1) Structure can’t exist without agency
Even though structure is something that transcends us as individuals, it’s something that occurs in the background, over our heads, structures wouldn’t exist in the first place if it wasn’t for people doing stuff to create them.
For example, the capitalist economy wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the actions of individual entrepreneurs, businesspeople, managers and workers. The state education system wouldn’t exist as it does if it wasn’t for campaigners, philanthropists and politicians who demanded it in the first place and if it wasn’t for the teachers and staff that work within it.
(2) Structure isn’t necessarily a bad thing
There is a tendency to think about structure as something that’s constraining. As something that limits people, holds them back, narrows their choices and options, orders them to live their lives in a particular way.
We can fall into the trap of thinking structure = bad.
But structures can be enabling as well as constraining.
Think about education for example, and that many countries in the world have a state education system that’s free at the point of use, you don’t have to pay to send your kids to school. That structure – even though it’s far from perfect - gives children opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise had. If we think of another structural thing – language for example, it makes thinking about things and communicating our understanding with others possible.
Structures can limit us, but they also provide us with the tools to develop a sense of self and be creative and transformative – so they make freedom – or agency – possible. Without structures, there aren’t any rules. Without any rules, there is no foundation or direction to our sense of self – which makes meaningful action kind of impossible.
(3) Agency isn’t simply about unfettered free will and limitless choices
People have agency in that there are always choices available to them – but the range of those choices are determined by the structures in which they live.
You have the freedom to choose to go and get yourself a coffee from the coffee shop, but you can only choose from the coffees that are on the menu.
You can go buy yourself a new smartphone, but you can only choose from the models that exist.
Alternative courses of action are always possible, but your choices are always limited by the available set of structurally provided options.
They’re also limited by your position within that structure. Some people will have more options than others. For some it might be a choice between everything on the Starbucks menu, for others, they have to take their own coffee to work because they’re on a limited budget.
Some people are able to choose between a 1 series and a 3 series BMW to use for their commute. Others have to choose between walking or taking the bus.
It’s fair to say that most of the time, people engage in actions that reproduce the prevailing structures of social life. We simply choose from what’s available to us, that exists within our structure, and in choosing those things, we’re reproducing the structure.
Sometimes we go against the grain. Sometimes we decide not to get married. We decide not to have children. We decide that we don’t want to buy that house in that area. We decide that we’re not going to put that item on our credit card. We’re not just going to agree with our boss at work or be a ‘yes’ person today. Perhaps we decide to give up our job and go live in a tent in the woods. But does that change capitalism? No, the deeper structures of social life remain intact.
Does it mean that capitalism can never be changed – no it doesn’t. Because if enough people decided to go against the grain in the same ways, the cumulative effect of that would start to rock the system. This stuff has happened – for example, if enough people decide that they aren’t happy with the current political order, they can overthrow it in a revolution. It’s rare, but it happens. One person can decide they are never going to go to that coffee shop again because they didn’t like coffee and they thought the barista was rude. Will that lead to the coffee shop closing down through lack of business – no. But if 100 regular customers make the same decision, yeah, that structure may well change.
However, the more enduring a structure is, the more challenging it is to change it.
Summary
Hopefully now, you’re feeling a bit more confident with structure and agency. Let’s briefly recap what I’ve just covered. Structures are durable and operate above the level of the individual. However, without individuals, they wouldn’t exist in the first place and they wouldn’t continue to exist. Structures can constrain us in that they place limits of what we’re able to do but they enable us at the same time in that they make certain options possible. They give us choices. And agency is all about choices – those choices that become possible within the structures that exist. As humans, the choices we make tend to reproduce those structures. However, the possibility of changing structures is real – rare but real. Human agency and social structure are not separate – they are mutually dependent.
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