Giddens Structuration And The Juggernaut

Structuration Rework Structure and Agency (relationship is dialectic) People produce and reproduce the structures in which they exist Constraining and/or enabling Begins with social practices

Social Practices ARE NOT Mentally created (are part of action) Created by structural conditions ARE People’s expressions Historical, processual and dynamic

Action and Motivation Free action from intention Intention, Reason, Motive misleading Production of society brought about by active constituting skills

Double Hermeneutic Actors/agents reflect upon/interpret (use language to account for) Social researchers reflect upon/interpret (use language to account for) Relationship between what lay people and what social scientists do

Motivation and Action Discursive consciousness – ability to describe our actions in words Practical consciousness - actions that actors take for granted, without being able to express in words what they are doing (see p. 234)

Agency and Intent For Giddens, these are separate (figure 17.1 on p. 233) Unacknowledged Reflexive monitoringUnintended Conditions of action of action consequences Rationalisation of actionof action Motivation of action

Structure, System Structure – rules and resources System – reproduced social practices, or relations between actors or collectivities.

Back to Structuration Conditions governing the continuity or transformation of structures, and therefore the reproduction of systems Involves Interplay of meanings, norms and power

Agents’ knowledge Actors enmeshed in their structural setting They have important knowledge about their activity even if not fully conscious Oppressed have more conscious knowledge about social forms that oppress them

The Juggernaut Metaphor for society Massive force Barely controllable Constraining, risky, but also enabling Effects of social practice have wide reaching consequences Creates risk and uncertainty

How do we deal with risk Must develop trust in people who control (parents, authority figures, systems and institutions) Learn trust through socialization

Risk is still ever present Juggernaut is uncontrollable because of Design problems Operator errors Unintended consequences of intentional modification Unintended consequences of new knowledge

Juggernaut Modernity as Impersonal Interdependence Estrangement and familiarity Personal trust and impersonal ties Abstract systems and day-to-day knowledge Pragmatic acceptance and activism