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predecessors have been inconclusive because of a fundamental misconception. The concept of ‘social structure’, upon which they depend, is vague, does not correspond to observable realities, and imports into social science a set of assumptions that are inappropriate if we want to understand the human world. The notion of social structure has dispatched many social theorists on wild goose chases from which they could never return with anything useful. In short, social structure is a concept without which we can, and should, learn to live. The vagueness of social
The structure/agency debate has been among the central issues in discussions of social theory. It has been widely assumed that the key theoretical task is to find a link between social structures and acting human beings to reconcile the macro with the micro, society and the individual. This book considers a general movement in which the collective concepts established by the early pioneers of modern sociological thought have been reconsidered in the light of both theoretical critique and empirical results. It argues that the contemporary sociological preoccupation with structure and agency has had disastrous effects on the understanding of Karl Marx's ideas. Through a critical evaluation of 'structuration theory' as a purported synthesis of 'structure and agency', the book also argues that the whole idea of a structure-and-agency 'problem' mythologises the fracture lines that do run through relatively recent sociological thought. Michel Foucault's ideas were used to both shore up existing positions in sociology and to instantiate (or solve) the 'new' structure-agency 'problem'. Foucault allowed sociologists to conduct 'business as usual' between the demise of structuralism and the contemporary consensus around Pierre Bourdieu-Anthony Giddens-Jurgen Habermas and the structure-agency dualisms. Habermas is one of the most prominent figures in contemporary social theory.
Elizabeth Gaskell used Gothic as a symbolic language to explore the dark side of Unitarian thought. She explores, in rationalist terms, evils origins, effects, and remedy, using Gothic tropes as metaphors for humanly created misery. Gaskell locates the roots of ‘evil’ in an unenlightened social order – in ‘The Crooked Branch’ erroneous parenting, and in ‘The Poor Clare’ wider social structures, both distorted by the ideology of privilege. ‘The Poor Clare’ also engages with the tension between moral determinism and personal responsibility, and defends a Unitarian salvation. This tale also demonstrates Gaskell‘s views on aspects of Roman Catholicism.
important in ensuring effective and sustainable measures in specific stages of the disaster lifecycle. Kenney et al. (2015) contend that the Maori population of Christchurch after the major earthquake in 2011, were able to draw on their cultural norms and social structures as a coping capacity; therefore, the social structure of indigenous populations like that of the Maori population can be harnessed to improve community resilience ( Tiernan et al. , 2018 ). Capitalising on the various conceptions of resilience as perceived by disaster-affected people especially in
interventions were taking place. MSF also has ongoing advocacy activities to ensure care home residents are not forgotten. Challenges Encountered Initial Public Health Response Excluded Care Homes In Spain, there is a decentralised system for health care that is the responsibility of each region. However, across Spain, care homes lie outside of the health system and are considered social structures. The initial focus of
, C. ( 2010 ), ‘ Discourses on ICT and Development ’, Information Technologies and International Development , 6 : 3 , 1 – 18 . Burt , R. S. ( 1992 ), Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition ( Cambridge, MA and London : Harvard University Press
stigmatized and discriminated’. Probably, as Arthur Kleinman affirms, the displaced ‘could speak to us of a more terrible aspect of the ontology of suffering: that the displaced can endure, survive and even adapt to the most inhuman conditions produced in their exile and with the unjust intervention of the State’ (Kleinman, 2008, cited in Das, 2010 : 515). How has this routinisation been carried out? This task is not only an epistemological operation; it has to do with power. According to Judith Butler (2009 : 2), precarious lives are formed through social structuring
moved with a plan for permanent settlement. Early on in the war refugees were largely accepted in neighboring European countries as ‘hapless wartime victims’ ( Gatrell, 2014 ). As the war continued, and as countries scrambled to accommodate the growing numbers of people who were putting a strain on economic and social structures, the image of the refugee began to change. Almost as if to respond to such anxiety, Hine made the pieta pictures and also photographed refugees orderly participating in routine activities, including registration. ‘Returned refugees to
This book shows how environmentalists have shaped the world's largest multilateral development lender, investment financier and political risk insurer to take up sustainable development. It challenges an emerging consensus over international organisational change to argue that international organisations (IOs) are influenced by their social structure and may change their practices to reflect previously antithetical norms such as sustainable development. The text locates sources of organisational change with environmentalists, thus demonstrating the ways in which non-state actors can effect change within large intergovernmental organisations through socialisation. It combines an account of international organisational change with detailed empirical evidence of change in one issue area across three institutions.
This book demonstrates that incest was representative of a range of interests crucial to writers of the Gothic, often women or homosexual men who adopted a critical stance in relation to the heteronormative patriarchal world. In repositioning the Gothic, representations of incest are revealed as synonymous with the Gothic as a whole. The book argues that extending the traditional endpoint of the Gothic makes it possible to understand the full range of familial, legal, marital, sexual and class implications associated with the genre's deployment of incest. Gothic authors deploy the generic convention of incest to reveal as inadequate heteronormative ideologies of sexuality and desire in the patriarchal social structure that render its laws and requirements arbitrary. The book examines the various familial ties and incestuous relationships in the Gothic to show how they depict and disrupt contemporary definitions of gender, family and desire. Many of the methodologies adopted in Gothic scholarship and analyses of incest reveal ongoing continuities between their assumptions and those of the very ideologies Gothic authors strove to disrupt through their use of the incest trope. Methodologies such as Freudian psychoanalysis, as Botting argues, can be positioned as a product of Gothic monster-making, showing the effect of Gothic conventions on psychoanalytic theories that are still in wide use today.