The Duality of Structure

1. The Duality of Structure Michael Ryan

2. Introduction Introduce students to Anthony Giddens� theory of social structuration and his concept of the duality of structure in the analysis of everyday life in Modern society. Michael T. Ryan Professor of Sociology Dodge City Community College

3. Topics of Discussion Structuration theory Concept of the duality of structure Determinism and freedom in social interactions

4. Topic One: Structuration Theory Structuration theory attempts to capture the interaction and relations between social structures and social actors� interactions in everyday life, with structure and everyday life seen as two different levels of analysis and social reality. Analysis can proceed on either level while the other level is set aside or �bracketed.�

5. Social structures are sets of rules and resources that are institutionalized �out there� in society and simultaneously carried as memory traces in socialized actors. They stretch across time and space as they are recurrently produced in everyday life. For example: How do individual actors think and communicate through the social structure of language?

6. Language as a Social Structure Semiology is the science of signs: Signs are collective representations Signs are arbitrary differences that have meaning because we have agreed within a language group to use them to refer to material objects, social conditions, and internal experiences and states of consciousness.

7. For example, �tree� is a sign and an acoustic image in the English language that refers to �those things out there,� i.e., oaks, cedars, maples etc. We can talk about them across our language group because this is a conventional usage.

8. We think through the medium of language: Actor�s thoughts--signs--objects,external, and internal conditions [internal referent] [external referent] Signs can be analyzed in terms of both semantic and syntactic chains.

9. In the first case, signs have multiple meanings, or connotations. For example, �red� is a sign that has multiple meanings. What are some of the meanings of the sign, �red�?

10. How do we know the precise meaning of a sign when we see it in print or hear it in a conversation?

11. The precise, or denotative, meaning depends upon the context of the sentence, the paragraph, or the conversation as a whole. For example: �He stopped at the red light.�

12. Here �red� means stop, and the context is produced by stringing together according to the rules of syntax the subject (He), the verb (stopped) and the predicate (red light). Despite differences on the surface, all human language groups share the same syntactical structure, or infrastructure.

13. Thus, in order to express our thoughts and to enter into conversations in everyday life, we must draw upon our knowledge of the institutionalized rules and resources of the English language as a social structure. For Giddens, this process demonstrates the interaction of structure and agency.

14. Topic Two: Duality of Structure Anthony Giddens claims that social structures are both the media for actors to produce interactions with each other in everyday life as well as the products of these interactions, although largely as unintended consequences of these interactions.

15. For example, actors draw upon their knowledge of the rules of syntax as well as vocabulary resources, the institutionalized properties of the English language, to produce their conversational interactions with others in everyday life. �I feel terrible today�. �You should take some aspirin for your cold�. Again, Giddens calls this the interaction between structure and agency, structures and actors.

16. If actors do this in a grammatically correct way, they not only produce and participate in an everyday conversation, but they contribute, in a modest and unintended fashion, to the reproduction of the English language as a social structure. The English language is a living language because it is recurrently reproduced through the everyday conversations of the millions of English speaking actors across the globe.

17. Topic Three: Social Interactions-Determinism or Freedom? The followers of Durkheim, the structural functionalists, emphasize the constraints that social structures impose on individual actors. Human actions are determined by forces that are beyond the control of the social actors involved. For example, in moments of rapid social change (market booms and busts), the suicide rates for wealthy Americans tend to increase.

18. Whereas, the interactionist schools of thought in the field of sociology tend to err in the opposite direction in emphasizing the freedom of actors, groups and organizations to construct their social relations in everyday life. For example: Race and gender relations and identities are said to be socially constructed by the actors, groups, organizations or social movements involved.

19. Social structures do constrain us in a number of ways. For example, if we want to initiate a conversation with someone, we have to formulate our thoughts according to the rules of syntax and the conventional meanings of words.

20. Otherwise what we say will be unintelligible to the individuals with whom we are conversing. The following sentence makes no sense: �Like, like, like ....�

21. But social structures also enable us to solve problems in everyday life. Despite the constraints that the English language, or any language, imposes on us, we can think and say whatever thought that comes to our minds. We do not have to have heard these thoughts or have been rewarded for thinking these thoughts in the past. Imitation in learning processes for G.H. Mead The conditioned responses of behavioral psychology

22. We have the capacity to create new thoughts and ideas. The content of our thoughts and speech is not determined by the social structure of language; it is a contingent outcome of our creative thought processes and involves some degrees of freedom, although not complete freedom.

23. This theory allows Giddens to capture interactions between structure and agency without reducing sociological analysis to either side. Social actors, or agents, are not typically driven by forces beyond their control as the functionalists see it.

24. Nor are they masters of their own destinies, acting with full knowledge and exercising complete freedom in everyday interactions as interactionists and social constructionists sometimes see it. Human actors are simultaneously the products of their circumstances as well as the producers of their circumstances. As Karl Marx put it, �Men make history, but not in the circumstances of their own choosing.�

25. What This Means-1 Structuration theory and the concept of the duality of structure allows us to think about society from both a structural and a behavioral perspective without reducing the analysis to either the institutional level or to the level of everyday life (behavioral). It allows us to do our analysis on one level while we set aside the other level.

26. It allows us to see how the two levels are connected both in theory and in social reality. Finally, it allows us to appreciate the fact that individual actors and social groups are not simply products of their social circumstances, but they are also the producers and reproducers of these social relations and circumstances.

27. What This Means-2 Giddens theory can be applied to the analysis of social interactions in any social structure or subsystem in everyday life. For example:How is the duality of structure evident in social interactions on the streets and highways of Kansas? What sorts of resources are necessary for interactions in this system?

28. What sorts of rules must be followed to produce interactions? How do drivers contribute to the reproduction of the system? How do drivers exercise any degree of freedom in this system?