Morphogenesis versus Structuration: On Combining ... - Moodle

Morphogeness versus structuration 461
This oscillation between contradictory images derives from Giddens
not answering 'when' questions-when can actors be transformative
(which involves specification of degrees of freedom) and when are
they trapped into replication (which involves specification of the
stringency of constraints) These answers in turn require analysis
of the potential for change, which is rooted in systemic stability/
instability, and the conditions under which actors do/do not capitalize
on it. Although Giddens admits that structures are both facilitating
and constraining, indeed it is one of the major theoretical tasks to
discover what aspects of social organization govern the interconnection
between the two,22 this is precisely, with one exception, what he
does not do. His theory consistently avoids concrete propositions of
this type.
Stringency of Constraints The reason for this omission is his principled
but misguided distaste for the constraint concept (contaminated by
functionism):23 the exception, his analysis of contradiction, is of
course on the contrary an example of systemic facilitation. Specification
of the stringency of constraints is sedulously avoided at all
three levels of analysis-structural properties, social institutions and
social systems. Structural Properties are integral to social constitution
and reconstitution, but when do they throw their weight behind the
one or the other Generally in sociology this has been tackled through
an appreciation that some properties are more resilient or engender
more resistance to change than others, at any given time. This
specification of the strength of constraints is both impossible in
Giddens's conceptualization and unacceptable to him. First his
properties (defined reductively as rules and resources) are outside
time and space, having a 'virtual existence' only when instantiated by
actors. Second, since what is instantiated depends on the power of
agency and not the nature of the property, then properties themselves
are not differentially mutable. Excessive voluntarism enters through
these two doors which are conceptually propped open.
However, why should one accept this peculiar ontological status for
structural properties in the first place Where resources are concerned
he argues that what exists in a spatio-temporal sense is only a 'material
existent' which, to become operative as a resource has to be instantiated
through power relations in conjunction with codes and norms.24
This is an argument of necessary accompaniment and it is not a very
convincing one, for the so-called 'material existents' often constrain
in their own right. Examples include various kinds of scarcity which
can arise without power or normative regulation and involve nothing
other than physiological signification, like famine, over-population,
shortage of skills or land. In what possible sense do these require
instantiation They are there and the problem is how to get rid of
them or deal with them.