Part II
Structure and Agency
Introduction to Part II
1 “A Theory of Group Solidarity”
2 “Metatheory: Explanation in Social Science”
3 “Catnets”
4 “Some New Rules of Sociological Method”
Introduction to Part II
A consistent tension in sociological theory lies between two fundamental visions of how social life unfolds. On the one hand, we have “structural” points of view that emphasize the role of durable social practices, resources, norms, and institutions that shape how people behave. The classical roots for this perspective are obvious in Marx (historical materialism; see Vol. 1, Part III) and Durkheim (social facts; see Vol. 1, Part IV)). On the other hand, much social theorizing is about what people do and how their actions matter. This agentic approach is similarly rooted in classical thought (consider Weber’s work on social action, Vol. 1, Part V) and, in its purposive-action variant, forms the core axiom of contemporary micro-economic theory. Known colloquially as the “structure/agency” problem, the tension turns on how we account for both sides of a process that, at some degree, we know must be both true and incomplete. That is, it is obvious that people are agentic in some domains and to some degree locally making choices that affect their life and life chances and collectively acting (or not) to affect wider social and political features. The apparent reality of consequential choices is evident in the many biographies detailing people’s lives and historical accounts of pivotal events – actors experience their lives through an agentic lens. However, at the same time, durable inequalities deeply rooted in race, class, and gender, and other long-lasting cultural patterns persist, often despite concerted efforts to change them, and the best predictor of most outcomes in social life is the accident of where people are born.
The conundrum is not merely a question of empirical scope; rather, it is a question of theoretical incompleteness and internal consistency. A clear and consistent theory at either pole is generally incapable of accounting for core observations from the other pole. For example, a model built on well-internalized norms leaves people making pseudo-choices and living only seemingly agentic lives, as the institutionalized norms and practices are so deeply rooted in people’s (collective) memory that they cannot meaningfully make other choices. Theoretical consistency is not easier on the agentic side, as the implications of choice-sets for action quickly compound beyond what actors could possibly know, gutting any meaningful notion of agency or reverting to a “revealed-preference” accounting that is true by default and unfalsifiable (see Leifer, 1988).
This problem is well recognized by contemporary social theorists and has been the subject of extensive theoretical effort aimed at solving the problem at the intersection while retaining the power of structural and agentic accounts, respectively. The roots of these contemporary debates lie in social exchange and social dilemma problems, such as the free-rider problem (see Vol. 1, Part IX) with the works of Blau and Homans being key touchstones and much of Parsons’ work aimed to solve a similar set of problems from a structural point of view. Contemporary work has layered in an interpretive problem that we need to understand what actors are doing from their own points of view, which breaks the traditional simplifying rationality assumption while maintaining agency. Each of our single-author sections later in this volume (Bourdieu, Foucault and Habermas) deals directly with these questions.
In this section, we provide four theorists who each point to characteristic strategies for solving the structure/agency problem, arranged here thematically starting with clear-action models and moving on to more structure-centric models. We start with Michael Hechter’s work from Principles of Group Solidarity (1987); Hechter has been at the forefront of building rational-choice models in the study of social/collective solidarity. This work highlights the core challenges to individualistic accounts for collective outcomes. Similarly, James S. Coleman in Foundations of Social Theory (1990) uses a disaggregation strategy, relying on a traditional rational-action approach at the actor level while recasting the structure problem as one largely of context on the input side and complex aggregation on the output side. Perhaps not surprisingly, a tempting solution is to understand structure as an emergent property of social interaction through social networks. Harrison White developed a model of normative structures embodied in roles and norms as the tractable implication of consistent social relations. Here, we reproduce an underground-circulated set of Harrison White’s class notes (“Catnets”) as an exemplar of a general contemporary approach rooted in observed social networks. Finally, in New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), Anthony Giddens highlights the difficulty of integrating structural constraint with an actively interpretive agent’s understanding, laying the groundwork for his own recursive structuration approach.
Michael Hechter: Social Solidarity from Individual Interest
Michael Hechter (b. 1943) is an American sociologist and political scientist who has written extensively on rational-choice theory, social movements, solidarity, and comparative historical accounts of rebellion and nationalism. His empirical work on political action, nationalism, and rebellion works from within a collective-action frame asking how actors’ coordinated behaviors and intersecting interests create significant social change. His most cited work is Internal Colonialism (1975), which examined differentials in social solidarity across the Celtic, Scottish, and English areas of Britain. The work argues that the alignment of tasks with ethnicity via a “cultural division of labor” between a core and peripheral parts (“internal colonies”) fosters a dependent development that stunts economic growth and cultural autonomy. Importantly, the book makes two distinct arguments, one resting on the macro-structural division of labor between regions and a second on the level of individuals that turns on interaction and ethnic self-identity. The cultural division of labor conflates class with ethnicity as a medium for identity formation, which undercuts a generalized class identity in favor of an ethnic one.
Theoretically, Hechter has been at the forefront of generalizing rational-choice models for individual agency to explain social structural outcomes, starting with the edited volume The Microfoundations of Macrosociology (1983), and followed with his own extensive treatment in Principles of Group Solidarity (1987). Generally, rational-choice approaches seek to identify how structure emerges as an unintended consequence of individual action; with price minimums intersecting at supply and demand being perhaps the best-known example. Contemporary work recognizes the problems associated with free-rider and other social dilemmas that require active social interaction to overcome. In Principles of Group Solidarity, Hechter builds on this tradition by attempting to provide a methodological individualist account for the classical problem of social order and group cohesion. Hechter argues that none of the classical approaches (norms, function, structure) can adequately account for variations in group solidarity (1987: p. 29), noting in particular the failure of such approaches to curtail free riding. For Hechter, “The challenge is to show how group obligations evolve and then how members are induced to honor them” without reference to black-box concepts, such as “norms.” Hechter reduces the problem of solidarity to the joint problem of the “extensiveness of group obligations” and the “probability of compliance with obligations.” Compliance is a complex problem with many variants, but ultimately rests on the control capacity of groups. This control capacity is also subject to free-riding issues (since it is a “second-order public good”), but they are often not as severe as general compliance.
In his more recent writing, Hechter continues to both expand on the value of rational-choice models for sociological work and engage deeply with historical and collective action empirical contexts. In Rational Choice Sociology (2019), Hechter collects a set of previously published papers in one place that directly challenge notions that rational-action models