Agency and Power/Placed by Margith Strand

Agency and Power:

CONF 730: STRUCTURAL SOURCES OF CONFLICT

Professor Ho-Won Jeong
George Mason University
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution



Relation between action and power: the possibility of acting or refraining from acting in the world: capability to 'make a difference.' Is power the property of the individual or the community? In duality of structure it is both. Resources are structured properties of social systems, drawn upon and reproduced by knowledgeable agents in the course of interaction. Resources are the media through which power is exercised.

Structure and Structuration: core-structure, structuration and duality of structure

Structure: properties allowing the binding of space-time in social systems-allow for similarity across space and time. Deeply embedded properties are structural principles, the greatest of which are institutions.

Rules imply methodological procedures of social interaction: two aspects-constitution of meaning and sanctioning of modes of conduct. Rules are techniques and generalized procedures of applied in the enactment/reproduction of social practices-the very core of knowledgeability. "the discursive formulation of a rule is already an interpretation of it." (p.23)-sustaining ontological security. The structuring quality of rules is the forming, sustaining, termination and reforming of encounters. Rules and resources are recursively involved in institutions.

Social reproduction is not necessarily social cohesion.

Duality of structure: (p. 25) agents and structures are not two independently given phenomena, a dualism, but a duality.
Structure: sets of rules and resources; connection with those physically absent.

System: reproduced relations organized as social practices, requires co-presence.

Structuration: continuity and transformation of structures.

Competent members of society are vastly skilled in the practical accomplishments of social activities and are expert sociologists. But human knowledgeability is always bounded, plus, the flow of action continually produces consequences which are unintended by the actors, and these UC may form unacknowledged conditions of action.

(p. 29) "forms of institutions"-modalities of structuration-enable to 'go on' in a form of life.

Interlacing of meaning, norms and power. Interpretive schemes are the modes of typification in forma of life.

Structure signification domination legitimation

Modality interpretive facility norm
Scheme

Interaction communication power sanction

(problem : most theories focus on ONE aspect only)
(problem: must include accountability: capacity to say "no")

p.33

Time, the Body and Encounters