What I do for a living...

So I haven't posted a real faith oriented post recently, which I apologize for if anyone has missed such things. I've been busy with my occupation as of late, which is being a sociology graduate student. So, I've decided to offer up a piece of what I do to bring home the bacon. If you don't understand some of the obscure terminology, it's okay. Neither do most academics who are supposed to understand this stuff (me included about 95% of the time) But for what its worth, behold the insanity that is evaluating and discussing social theory.

Integrating Agency and Structure:

An Exploration and Expansion on the Theories of Pierre Bordieu and Zygmundt Bauman

Many academics would categorize Bauman and Bordieu as having developed opposing theories. Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity dismisses the idea of stable structures and empirical social truth, opting for perceived structures and the creative agency of the individual, while Bordieu posits that social structures are essentially stable and self-sustaining, and largely limit the agency of the individual.(cite?) Bauman insists that empirical research, and especially statistical analysis, is largely irrelevant to investigating the social world, while Bordieu demands that theory be affirmed by empirical evidence. (cite?)

I would argue that any stated dichotomy between Bordieu and Bauman is not only misleading, but defeats the possibility of a rich social theory that incorporates the best intellectual contributions of both. The greatest goal of an adequate sociological theory is to explain the relationships between social structures and social actors, to account for the role of agents in forming society and society in shaping agents. Both Bordieu and Bauman provide a wealth of ideas on this topic, but there are deficiencies in the theories of both that can be addressed the other. Bordieu theory‘s greatest strength is its integration of structure into the behavior of individuals through the habitus, but it has been accused of not providing a deep explanation of the ability of agents to alter society. Bauman’s theory is rich with ideas regarding how the actions of individuals are capable of altering the social structures in which they take place, but it has a difficult time accounting for the tendency of certain features of those structures to persist. My position is that, rather than being in conflict, the ideas of these two theorists are complementary to one another, and that their theories are actually converging from different directions towards a more complete picture of a mutual feedback system of agency and structure, in which the relationship between the two is not linear but rather circular in nature.

The diagrams represent three configurations of structure and agency, all of which allow for agents to impact structure and vice versa. In the first model, which is representative of Bauman’s theory, structure has a weak but present impact on agents, while agents have a robust impact on structure. In the second model, representative of Bordieu’s theory, agents have a noticeable but rather weak impact on structure, but structure has a concrete role in shaping the behavior of agents. The third model, which incorporates features of both but does away with hierarchy between the two, represents a mutual feedback system of social phenomenon. Here, the impact of agents on structures and structures on agents are both quite strong, and both are impacted constantly by the process. The focus however, is not on the position of one in terms of its dominance over the other, but on the processes by which each shapes the other in a circular system. There is consistency in the process by which each is shaped, but both the social structure and the individual actors are constantly evolving and adapting to one another.
In this kind of sociological theory, the object of study is not effect of structure on agents or agents on structure, but the processes by which they interact. This framework expands our gaze beyond the configuration of society, which Bordieu visualizes quite well with his geography of social spaces, as well as the mutability of contemporary social structures, which Bauman describes in rich detail through his work on liquid modernity. These are valuable, valid contributions to the field, but to progress the study of the social world, we need to look further into how we observe and describe the “motion” present in the relationship of agents and social structure. We should look for the points of initiation where structure transforms or reinforces particular social behaviors in individuals (i.e. what kind of social phenomenon encouraged and maintained popular support for state sanctioned segregation?), as well as the specific characteristics and circumstances of individuals at the point where changes in their social worlds begin. (i.e. what are the characteristics and beliefs that allowed individuals to end state sanctioned segregation?)

The challenge to such sociology is that it is extremely demanding. We should not, as individual researchers, choose correspondence analysis and neglect ethnographic research if we are to get a fuller picture of the interaction between agents and social structures. We should do both with the same intensity for all subjects of research, and thus come away from our research with the fullest picture of that subject that we can. This is responsibility not only to the field of study we have chosen, but also to the public we claim to serve through our scholarship.