Theory Beyond Structure and Agency: Introducing the Metric/Nonmetric Distinction - Couverture rigide

Guy, Jean-Sébastien

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 3030189821 ISBN 13 : 9783030189822

Editeur : Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2019

Synopsis

This book offers a solution for the problem of structure and agency in sociological theory by developing a new pair of fundamental concepts: metric and nonmetric. Nonmetric forms, arising in a crowd made out of innumerable individuals, correspond to social groups that divide the many individuals in the crowd into insiders and outsiders. Metric forms correspond to congested zones like traffic jams on a highway: individuals are constantly entering and leaving these zones so that they continue to exist, even though the individuals passing through them change. Building from these concepts, we can understand "agency" as a requirement for group identity and group membership, thus associating it with nonmetric forms, and "structure" as a building-up effect following the accumulation of metric forms. This reveals the contradiction between structure and agency to be a case of forced perspective, leaving us victim to an optical illusion.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Jean-Sébastien Guy is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, where he teaches classical and contemporary theory. He has published on globalization, Niklas Luhmann's systems theory and relational sociology.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Springer Nature Switzerland AG
• Date d'édition: 2019
• ISBN 10: 3030189821
• ISBN 13: 9783030189822
• Reliure: Relié
• Langue: anglais
• Nombre de pages: 277
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible