Relationship Between Structure And Agency

Sociological structure (OSW: p 14). In my own words I believe sociological structure is the way how in people's life they have to do everything a certain way. For example, the type of responsibilities they are in charge of and what they have to get done in order to survive in a society. An example from the movie, is how the polynesian society lives in an island and everyone has their responsibilities in order to survive. The men go out to catch fish and the women stay and make things out of scratch. I believe it is a good example because it shows how everyone in that society plays a role.

Free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion. Do we, as human beings, have a freedom of choice? There have a lot of debate about whether our conscious choices are really just an illusion created by the brain. The way we understand human behavior and the reality of understanding moral precepts "that form the basis for so many of our social and cultural institutions", is the outcome of this specific debate. In the "yes" article, Modell argues his stance in the subject by talking about "The Feeling of Agency Is an Illusion Created by the Brain". Agency is the cause. Modell believes that we are never the agency if our feelings, but we are responsible for our interpretations of those feelings. Though we cannot control the feelings, we can control our interpretation of those feelings.

Social structure is a reference to infinite social facts: on social/economic/political context in which action occurs that an individual does not have much control of and cannot end it (Orru, Haferkamp and Smelser, 1994). The reason being is that a person is either born into these social situations and they will carry on until the person dies or because through an achieved status a person becomes part of it. Religion, culture, class, gender, ethnicity, social status, race, family are all structural scopes of a person’s life which is inevitable and are examples of social facts.

Structural functionalism is a macro level approach to study sociology (Browning, 2015). Structural functionalists believe social consensus is what holds society together; social consensus being a condition in which most members of the society agree on what would be good for everyone. Structural functionalists view society as a web of social structures, each structure being functional to fulfill it’s own needs, but dependent on all other structures for survival (Vago, 2012).

Agency is freedom in the sense that you can be your own person with the capacity to feel, as well as think, about the world and the people in it in a way that makes sense to you. As I sit here trying to comprehend how to start this paper, I feel I have a sense of freedom to use all of Sewell’s and Weber’s thoughts and insights. By taking these ideas into my own hands I have come up with an interpretation of their views of the world that I can apply to everyday life. In this paper I am going to convince you of what I think Sewell and Weber intend for me to understand about agency and the Protestant ethic. In order to argue this, I want to lead you in my direction of how I came to an understanding of

To begin his work Marx studies history and produces an analysis of class struggles to set the premise that the history of society is a history based on opposing groups involved in class struggles. He concludes that throughout human societies there are people who own the surplus and those that work to supply that surplus, and this is the basis for the class struggle. Further, Marx posits these groups – or classes – were formed as a result of the economic forces of

The thing that caught my attention throughout this discussion and the readings were agency versus structure. Agency is when the individual has the free will to act independently in making their own life choices. Structure is the consistent arrangements that either influence or limit the choices and opportunities available to that individual. Many may consider the debate about agencies versus structures as being the underlining understanding of determining rather or not an individual is acting on their own free will or is that individual action dictated by social structure. Although agency is usually referred to as micro level, but it is not always micro level it can be macro level as well. This is because agencies refers to their ability

Writing to describe the influence of Karl Marx’s theorization around society, Dean MacCannell hinges on the revolutionary view that industrial scale production lead to the commodification of goods, services and people themselves. This alienating quality of the industrial revolution, is precisely what Marx’s theory of conflict is based on. In MacCannell view, Marx’s ideas about society suggested that the shift towards industrial production, the creation of factories, supply chains, and global trade paradigms were all tied to the development of more “rational and thinglike” way of viewing the relationship between workers and the things they create.

Structure and agency is defined by choice, according to sociologist when we all have the choice to do something is refer to agency, while structures is referred to how our choices are limited. Structure and agency both apply to the way society is shaped, because we all have choices but those choices are limited for some and this is what sociologist talk about when they refer to agency and structure. Agency and structure influence social factors and this affects me education wise. For instance, social structures such as the society we leave in and my family is what influences my decisions on why I go to college. The society we leave in we need at least a Bachelors to get somewhere and live comfortable, so that’s why I made the chose extend my education. My family is another social structure that influenced me to go further in my study because, they always told me that I need education to get somewhere in life; they encourage me to further in my school. The government affects my education because when they cut founds for school they limit me and my education.

Marx saw history as a succession of economic systems, or modes of production, each trying to satisfy human material needs. However, he says these systems only gives rise to antagonism between the varying classes of people. This leads to the creation of new societies in a pattern that goes on and on. This way of seeing society is very materialistic. Marx’s fundamental belief rode on the fact that material objects rather than ideas defined the success of a period of

For centuries, society has been shaped following a structure that might have slightly changed over time, however not in a radical way. As stated by Giddens, structure could be defined by a set of rules, laws and resources that societies follow, by producing and reproducing social practices.

Karl Marx, a modern German philosopher, forever altered our perception of who we are by offering a description of human nature that differs from traditional thinking. Although Marx’s theories were groundbreaking, they do not escape criticism. More specifically, differing views are offered for both the importance of labor and how our society shapes our nature. In this essay, I will be addressing these two opposing views and arguing for Marx’s description of human nature.

Because many past and present dictators around the world have claimed to be influenced by Karl Marx, it is no surprise as to why many people disagree with his philosophy. However, if his work is thoroughly analyzed, it can certainly be argued that Karl Marx is one of the most influential philosophers of all time. Contrary to popular belief, Karl Marx actually believed in a classless society, in which everyone would be considered equal and treated equally, thus, eliminating the possibility for inequality between the rich and the poor, or as Marx often referred to as the bourgeois and the proletariats. Unlike many philosophers, Marx believed that humans were perfectible but were, unfortunately, damaged by capitalism and other social institutions. As for his goals, Marx advocated for a communist society and believed that the only way to achieve his goal was through violent revolutions between the bourgeois and the proletariat. Although Marx’s philosophy stems from the societal issues taking place during his time, it is quite interesting to see that some of his biggest concerns—the disappearing middle class and the wealth inequality—are still some of the biggest and most challenging threats we face today.

Human action and social structure are extremely prevalent in the works of Marx. In terms of the workers and capitalist classes, he postulates that they are not free but rather actors of the capitalist system. The workers are forced into labour to make a living, the force of circumstance (Elster, 1986:29) while the capitalist is forced to keep themselves in business. Elster (1986:29) argues that this is

Karl Marx may be regarded as one of the most influential thinkers and his views on how society functions have shaped the development of socialist and economic theories. Political philosophers have developed a variety of enlightened ideologies depicting how governments and societies are organized over the course of history. Marx’s influence by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would lead to Marx’s view of history known as historical materialism, “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (Marx, Engels & Arthur, 2001 p. 69). Marx argued the existence of human society pushed on productions, and in turn, productions shapes the ideas of humans. Hegel possessed an idealistic view on how the world functions, idealism claims