structure and agency
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2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianthi Kourti

The ontological status of autism has been a subject of considerable debate and philosophical approaches of it have been recent and sparse. On the one hand, from its conception, autism has been historically heavily located in the fields of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience, which often assume access to an “objective,” neutral and infallible reality that is external to the research process and is based on the autistic person’s biology and behavioural characteristics, which can be scientifically observed and studied. On the other, proponents of the neurodiversity movement argue against medicalised and pathologising approaches to autism and toward approaches that consider social constructions of autism and relations of power. The Critical Realist philosophy can help reconcile the two positions. Critical Realism conceptualises objectivity as a statement about an object, rather than a neutral and infallible reality. Consequently, Critical Realism suggests that access to reality can only occur through fallible theories. It also suggests that effective theorising goes beyond appearances and phenomena and may even contradict them, which can help challenge dominant behaviourist approaches on autism. I then explore how the tenets of Critical Realism can help strengthen autistic-led theories of autism, the arguments they make, as well as how they support the importance of community autism knowledge. Finally, I present how Critical Realism’s approach to knowledge itself as well as the process of knowledge creation can strengthen autistic theorising, autistic participation in autism research and autistic emancipation. In the last part of the article, I explore how the concepts of Critical Realism apply to autistic sociability. I start with the debate between structure and agency, how Critical Realism reconciles this debate and the implications for autistic emancipation and autism research. I then present Critical Realism’s process of critique and explanation, how they connect to human emancipation and how they can lead to impactful change in autism research by requiring clear links from research to practice, enhancing practices with strong theoretical underpinnings and thus aiding the aims of emancipatory autism research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Guilan Zhu

How to improve the performance and efficiency of a public administration system has been an eternal challenge and a regular item on the government agenda. In contrast to an institutional check-and-balance mechanism, cadre education and training plays a special role in the Chinese socialist system. Educational work to inculcate desirable contents in cadres’ thoughts has taken up a large part in the Party’s efforts to enhance cadres’ capability since the years of revolutionary struggle. It is a strategy adopted by the Party-state for the sake of making cadres loyal to the CCP in bothpolitical and administrative e aspects. The study reviews the conceptual and theoretical discussion on the term ‘responsibility.’ The practices that the CCP adopted to create cadre responsibility in China are analysed through the perspective of “structure-and-agency.” The paper argues that individual agency goes beyond institutionalaccountability within China’s Public Administration System.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Devereux ◽  
Anna Wolkenhauer

This paper makes theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to the study of social policy diffusion, drawing on the case of social protection in Africa, and Zambia in particular. We examine a range of tactics deployed by transnational agencies (TAs) to encourage the adoption of cash transfers by African governments, at the intersection between learning and coercion, which we term ‘coercive learning’, to draw attention to the important role played by TA-commissioned policy drafting, evidence generation, advocacy, and capacity-building activities. Next, we argue for making individual agents central in the analysis of policy diffusion, because of their ability to reflect, learn, and interpret policy ideas. We substantiate this claim theoretically by drawing on practice theories, and empirically by telling the story of social protection policy diffusion in Zambia through three individual agents. This is complemented by two instances of self-reflexivity in which the authors draw on their personal engagements in the policy process in Zambia, to refine our conclusions about the interplay of structure and agency.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000765032110530
Author(s):  
Artur Steiner ◽  
Sarah Jack ◽  
Jane Farmer ◽  
Izabella Steinerowska-Streb

Using Giddens’s structuration theory and empirical data from a study with social enterprise stakeholders, the article explores how social entrepreneurs and the structure co-create one another. We show that the development of the contemporary significance of social entrepreneurialism lies in a combination of complex context-specific structural forces and the activities of agents who initiate, demand, and impose change. Social entrepreneurs intentionally tackle social challenges, but their actions bring unintentional results, such as the transfer of state responsibilities onto communities. Direct outputs of their activities introduce indirect outcomes, bringing wider changes in culture and policy. The evolving nature of entrepreneurship and a number of factors that interplay in time and space, and enable and constrain social entrepreneurs, confirm the applicability of Giddens’s theory in the field of social entrepreneurship. The originality of this article derives from revealing mechanisms that enable social entrepreneurs to emerge and reasons for structural change. We also build a “co-creation model of structure and agency” that can be used to “engineer” the process of social entrepreneurship.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Leah Kilpatrick

<p>This case study explores the aspirations of young people in a youth training programme and how structure and agency shape their aspirations. Transition policy is currently based on the pathways framework which provides many different educational and training ‘pathways’ to assist young people to move from school to work. The pathways framework uses the ‘pathways metaphor’ as a response to the knowledge-wave economy where the individual is responsible for creating their own ‘pathway’ in a flexible and complex labour market. For youth in Youth Training their ‘pathway’ is often non-linear and complex; not having followed conventional or mainstream transitional markers they are easily labelled problem-youth and ‘at-risk’ or vulnerable to failure. This study endeavoured to move beyond the labels of young in Youth Training to explore their stories in the context of the lived-experiences. It gave them the opportunity to voice their aspirations for the future and considered the structure or societal constraints associated with their transitional experience. A case study was undertaken with a group young people in Youth Training aged between 16 and 17 years old. Eight semi-structured interviews and two focus groups were held with four male and four female participants, of which the interview questions gave the opportunity to explore how young people felt about their future aspirations, the relevance of their training to their aspirations and how the students exercise their agency during training. Themes were drawn from the data and interpreted using choice biography, youth agency frameworks and discourse theory. The discussion of the data also explored the structural constraints within which the data sits. Findings showed that the future aspirations of young people in youth training are shaped by their lived-experiences. These lived-experiences are mediated by structural constraints and their ability to use agency. Structural constraints negatively affected their lived-experiences; and therefore, at times impacted on their future aspirations. The young people in this study described many complex and unique stories that exhibited the use of agency. Agency was exercised in the context of their lived-experiences to move beyond structural constraints and pursue their future aspirations. This study recommends the use of the contextual research approach when exploring youth transition research.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Leah Kilpatrick

<p>This case study explores the aspirations of young people in a youth training programme and how structure and agency shape their aspirations. Transition policy is currently based on the pathways framework which provides many different educational and training ‘pathways’ to assist young people to move from school to work. The pathways framework uses the ‘pathways metaphor’ as a response to the knowledge-wave economy where the individual is responsible for creating their own ‘pathway’ in a flexible and complex labour market. For youth in Youth Training their ‘pathway’ is often non-linear and complex; not having followed conventional or mainstream transitional markers they are easily labelled problem-youth and ‘at-risk’ or vulnerable to failure. This study endeavoured to move beyond the labels of young in Youth Training to explore their stories in the context of the lived-experiences. It gave them the opportunity to voice their aspirations for the future and considered the structure or societal constraints associated with their transitional experience. A case study was undertaken with a group young people in Youth Training aged between 16 and 17 years old. Eight semi-structured interviews and two focus groups were held with four male and four female participants, of which the interview questions gave the opportunity to explore how young people felt about their future aspirations, the relevance of their training to their aspirations and how the students exercise their agency during training. Themes were drawn from the data and interpreted using choice biography, youth agency frameworks and discourse theory. The discussion of the data also explored the structural constraints within which the data sits. Findings showed that the future aspirations of young people in youth training are shaped by their lived-experiences. These lived-experiences are mediated by structural constraints and their ability to use agency. Structural constraints negatively affected their lived-experiences; and therefore, at times impacted on their future aspirations. The young people in this study described many complex and unique stories that exhibited the use of agency. Agency was exercised in the context of their lived-experiences to move beyond structural constraints and pursue their future aspirations. This study recommends the use of the contextual research approach when exploring youth transition research.</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 61-89
Author(s):  
Tobias L. Kienlin
Keyword(s):  

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