Agency Vs Agency

agency debate?

Within the social sciences there is a ongoing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in relevance to shaping human behaviour. Agency is the ability and capacity in which a person or persons make their own free choices (Barker 2005). Structure is the continuous patterned arrangements that will influence or even limit the choices or opportunities available to the individual. When looking at the structure versus agency debate within sociology, I have understand that one may look at this debate as a issue with socialisation against autonomy, whereby which I mean how both of these issues determine whether an individual acts of their own accord, free will etc or they are dictated by social structure. Two theorists on which I will highlight in-depthly throughout this essay are Giddens and Bourdieu.

The debate over the primacy of structure or agency is one that appears in both classical and contemporary sociological theory. For functionalists such as Karl Marx for example believe in the idea that social structure can refer to both economic and cultural e.g. the norms and traditions or even ideologies of that certain culture. Theorists such as Emile Durkheim, by contrast, emphasise the point that structure and hierarchy are without reproach when looking into the stabilisation of the existence of society as a whole.

Other theorists highlight that the ideas and knowledge we have about our social existence is largely determined by the overall structure of society e.g. social structure whereby I mean the patterned social arrangement in society that are both come from and also determined by the actions of the individuals. The alleged agency of an individual can also mostly be explained by the operation of t...

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...articipating in the field. These actors that are incorporated into the existening habitus have specific rules which then allow them to be constituted into the field. Therfore , habitus enacts the structures of the field and the field mediates between habitus and practice (Bourdieu, 1977; 1984; 1992

Bourdieu highlights this analgy to help explain better the existence and relationship between each term. ‘For instance, of a footballer, we can infer that it is necessary to take into account the player’s ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu, 1998, p.76-77) developed by his past experiences playing football (habitus), his physical and tactical resources (capital) and the rules of the football game alongside the privileged forms of capital within it (field/doxa) if we are to fully understand and explain why the sportsman behaves in the way he does

(action/practice). ‘