Margaret S. Archer

Critical realism : essential readings

Critical realism is a movement in philosophy and the human sciences most closely associated with the work of Roy Bhaskar. Since the publication of Bhaskars A Realist Theory of Science, critical realism has had a profound influence on a wide range of subjects. This reader makes accessible, in one volume, key readings to stimulate debate about and within critical realism. It explores the following themes: * transcendental realist * the theory of explanatory critique * dialectics * Bhaskars critical naturalist philosophy of science.

Routine, Reflexivity, and Realism

Many scholars continue to accord routine action a central role in social theory and defend the continuing relevance of Bourdieus habitus. Simultaneously, most recognize the importance of reflexivity. In this article, I consider three versions of the effort to render these concepts compatible, which I term “empirical combination,” “hybridization,” and “ontological and theoretical reconciliation.” None of the efforts is ultimately successful in analytical terms. Moreover, I argue on empirical grounds that the relevance of habitus began to decrease toward the end of the 20th century, given major changes in the structures of the advanced capitalist democracies. In these circumstances, habitual forms prove incapable of providing guidelines for peoples lives and, thus, make reflexivity imperative. I conclude by arguing that even the reproduction of natal background is a reflexive activity today and that the mode most favorable to producing it—what I call “communicative reflexivity”—is becoming harder to sustain.

Realism and the Problem of Agency

The central problem of theorising agency is how to conceptualise the human agent as someone who is both partly formed by their sociali ty, but also has the capacity partly to transform their society. The diff iculty is that social theorising has oscill ated between these two extremes. On the one hand, Enlightenment thought promoted an ‘undersocialised’ view of man, one whose human constitution owed nothing to society and thus was a self-suff icient ‘outsider’ , who simply operated in a social environment. On the other hand, there is a later but pervasive ‘oversocialised’ view of man whose every feature, beyond his biology, is shaped and moulded by his social context. He thus becomes such a dependent ‘ insider’ that he has no capacity to transform his social environment. Instead, if we are to understand and model the human being as both ‘ child’ and ‘parent’ of society, then social theory firstly needs a concept of man whose sociality does make a vital contribution to the realisation of his potential qua human being. Secondly, however, it requires a concept of man who does possess sufficient relatively autonomous properties and powers that he can reflect and act upon his social context, along with others li ke him, in order to transform it. It is argued that both the ‘undersocialised’ and the ‘oversocialised’ models of humankind are inadequate foundations for social theory because they present us with either a self-suff icient maker of society, or a supine social product who is made. The preliminary part of this paper seeks to show how these two defective models of the human being have sequentially dominated social theory since the Enlightenment, and to indicate their deficiencies for social theorising. The bulk of the paper attempts to substitute a better conceptionof man, from the perspective of social realism, which grants humankind (i) temporal priority, (ii) relative autonomy, and (ii i) causal efficacy, in relation to the social beings that they become and the powers of transformative reflection and action which they bring to their social context, powers that are independent of social mediation.

Cultural System or norm circles? An exchange:

This article takes the form of a debate between the two authors on the social ontology of propositional culture. Archer applies the morphogenetic approach, analysing culture as a cycle of interaction between the Cultural System and Socio-Cultural Interaction. In this model, the Cultural System is comprised of the objective content of intelligibilia, as theorized by Karl Popper with his concept of objective World 3 knowledge. Elder-Vass agrees that culture works through an interplay between subjective belief and an external objective moment, but argues that the external moment cannot take the form of ‘objective knowledge’ as this is understood by Popper. Instead, the external moment of culture takes the form of normative pressures exerted by groups of people: norm circles. Ultimately both authors share a commitment to a similar critical realist ontological framework, while offering alternative accounts of the nature of culture within that framework.

Social conflict and educational change in England and France, 1789-1848

Preface 1. Introduction 2. Domination and assertion 3. Change in English primary education 4. Change in English secondary and higher education 5. Assertive ideologies in English education 6. The defensive ideologies of Anglican domination 7. Change in French primary education 8. Change in French secondary and higher education 9. Assertive French educational ideologies 10. French ideologies legitimating educational domination 11. Conclusion Notes Bibliography.

Culture And Agency: The Myth of Cultural Integration

The conceptualization of culture is extraordinary in two respects. It has displayed the weakest analytical development of any key concept in sociology and it has played the most wildly vacillating role within sociological theory. At the descriptive level, the notion of ‘culture’ remains inordinately vague despite little dispute that it is indeed a core concept In every way ‘culture’ is the poor relation of ‘structure’. Definition of the former has not undergone an elaboration equivalent to that of the latter. Consequently there is no ready fund of analytical terms for designating the components of the cultural realm corresponding to those which delineate parts of the structural domain (roles, organizations, institutions, systems, etc). Methodologically, such is the poverty of conceptualization that there are as yet no ‘units’ for describing culture: essentially cultures are still ‘grasped’, in contrast to structures which are now ‘analysed’. Basically the notion of cultures being structured is uncommonly rare outside of structuralism: instead of different ‘cultural structures’ there are endless ‘cultural differences’. At the explanatory level the status of culture oscillates between that of a supremely independent variable, the superordinate power in society and, with a large sweep of the pendulum, a position of supine dependence on other social institutions. Hence, in various sociological theories, culture swings from being the prime mover (credited with engulfing and orchestrating the entire social structure) to the opposite extreme where it is reduced to a mere epiphenomenon (charged only with providing an ideational representation of structure). Together, this descriptive vagueness and these theoretical vagaries, mean that culture occupies no clear place in sociological analysis.

Social Morphogenesis and the Prospects of Morphogenic Society

The book discusses ‘social morphogenesis’ within late modernity and the potential of this process to reshape the social order. Contributors are not signatories to a manifesto for a Morphogenic Society but are willing to consider this notion given rapid global change, the current crisis and perceived inadequacies in macroscopic social theory today. The introduction undertakes four tasks. (i) Clarifying the distinction between the Morphogenetic Approach as an explanatory framework and the idea of Morphogenic Society as an inchoate theory; yet to be articulated and not yet advocated. (ii) The synergy intensifying between structure and culture, such that ‘variety generates further variety’, is suggested to foster a new ‘situational logic of Opportunity’, as opposed to the ‘situational logic of Competition’ characterising modernity. (iii) The adequacy of modelling the global system as ‘self-governing’, ‘self-organizing’, or as a ‘relationally contested organization’ is assessed. (iv) Social networks are examined not only as communicative links but also as integrative bonds because the current deficit in social integration may produce social antagonism alone rather than social transformation.

Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction: French or universal?

collection of institutions devoted to formal education, whose overall control and supervision is at least partly governmental, and whose component parts and processes are related to one another.’ Instead, Bourdieu seeks to embrace all forms of education within the same ’logic of pedagogic action’ and this has the immediate effect of denying any significance to varying types of educational systems. His aim, especially in Reproduction, is to formulate universal propositions which specify the generic conditions of cultural transmission in any social formation.’ Such is his overt intention : my argument will be that this ’logic’ of cultural reproduction, which is advanced as being universal, is in fact covertly dependent upon the structure of French education and consequently cannot be universalized.

Critical Realism and Relational Sociology

Abstract This article examines the convergence between Italian relational sociology, developed by Pierpaolo Donati and introduced here by Emmanuele Morandi, and critical realism. Whilst the latter is preoccupied with relations between people and structures, Donati sees the whole social order as a relational entity sui generis. Consequently, relational sociology can provide a fuller account of ‘social integration’ than critical realism, which concentrates upon ‘malintegration’ because of its transformative potential. This difference is viewed as a potential source of synergy between these two versions of realism.

Anormative Social Regulation: The Attempt to Cope with Social Morphogenesis

The ‘problem of normativity’ concerns the role that society’s value system, norms and conventions play in legislative regulation. Rapid social change was always problematic, for example the swift displacement of French Revolutionary law by the Napoleonic Code. What validated one or the other, since both broke with previous social norms? Traditionally, both legal and social theories had appealed to shared normativity to account for the ‘bindingness’, the sense of obligation held to inhere in the law. However, the intensification of morphogenesis had growing negative repercussions on all the normative components of the legal order: law itself, norms and rules, conventions, custom and etiquette. It is argued that as these elements weaken, ‘Anormative Regulation’ (or ‘Bureaucratic Regulation’) takes over in contemporary society, entailing no ‘ought’, exerting a causal force not a moral one, and operating through penalizations and prohibitions, which are punitive without entailing either a criminal record or invoking social sanction.