Structure and agency interpenetrate through every discursive exchange.
Evidence
The interactional view that we take here has the added benefit of undoing the false dichotomy between structure and agency that has long plagued social theory (see discussion in Ahearn, 2001). On the one hand, it is only through discursive interaction that large-scale social structures come into being; on the other hand, even the most mundane of everyday conversations are impinged upon by ideological and material constructs that produce relations of power. Thus both structure and agency are intertwined as components of micro as well as macro articulations of identity. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction, 117
Categorization
- DEFINE: This dissolves a foundational structure/agency binary the reader’s identity-as-negotiation framework depends on micro-mechanisms actually sustaining macro structures.
- DEEPTHINKING: This reframes macro social structures as the aggregated product of micro conversational moves — a genuinely recursive claim worth sitting with.
- XREF: connects to: Social structures are objectivated meanings built through inter-subjective exchange; Discourse produces knowledge that shapes perceptions and enacts power — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 687; Social structure and individual agency are mutually constitutive, not opposed (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Social structure and individual agency are mutually constitutive, not opposed
#corroborates(0.90) - Social structures are objectivated meanings built through inter-subjective exchange
#expands(0.78) - Collective wills crystallize from countless micro-discursive acts
#exemplifies(0.75) - Discourse produces knowledge that shapes perceptions and enacts power
#expands(0.74) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 687 - Meaning and social relations form not sequentially but through structural articulation within a whole
#qualifies(0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 619 - Discursive formations are held together by regularity, not uniformity, of statements
#qualifies(0.71)