Morphogenesis versus Structuration: On Combining ... - Moodle

Morphogenesis versus structuration 467
eroded by cumulative action) or that collective action can reshape
social structure (without necessarily erasing every familiar regularity
or routine). What most of us seek instead of these truisms are theoretical
propositions about when (more) recursiveness or (more) transformation
will prevail-a specification which would necessitate
unravelling the relations between structure and action. This Giddens
refuses to give on principle because to specify their inter-relationship
would involve dualistic theorizing. Yet, ironically, what does his
bracketing device do other than traduce this very principle, since it
merely transposes dualism from the theoretical to the methodological
level-thus conceding its analytical indispensability.
More importantly this bracketing approach has serious implications
concerning time which seem to contradict the aim of making
temporality integral to explaining the system and its properties. To
Giddens what is bracketed are the two aspects of the 'duality of
structure', institutional analysis and strategic conduct being separated
out by placing a methodological epoche upon each in turn. But
because they are the two sides of the same thing, the pocketed
elements must thus be co-terminous in time (the symmetry of the
epoc/zes confines analysis to the same epoque); and it follows from
this that temporal relations between institutional structure and
strategic action logically cannot be examined.
The attempt to reunite the two elements under the rubric of
'structuration' consists in the introduction of three 'modalities',
drawn upon by actors strategically but at the same time constituting
the institutional features of the system-'interpretative scheme',
'facility' and 'norm'.46 To Giddens the 'level of modality thus provides
the coupling elements whereby the bracketing of strategic or institutional
analysis is dissolved in favour of an acknowledgement of
their interrelation'.47 But the interrelationship is not really at issue
(or more precisely it is only an issue for hard-linethnomethodologists
and extreme structural determinists). The real theoretical issue is not
whether to acknowledge it but how to analyse it, and how to explain
the systemic properties it generates and elaborates. Yet little of this
can be tackled from an approach which precludes theorizing about
the temporal relations between structure and action.
The basic notion of the 'duality of structure' militates against the
latter because it resists untying structure and action, except by the
bracketing exercise. In turn this means Giddens cannot acknowledge
that structure and action work on different time intervals (however
small the gap between them). This, ironically, leads him to underplay
the full importance of time in sociology. What he stresses is that
theorizing must have a temporal dimension: what he misses is time as
an actual variable in theory. In consequence Giddens asserts that
'social systems only exist through their continuous structuration in
the course of time ,48 but is unable to provide any theoretical purchase