Realist social theory : the morphogenetic approach /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Archer, Margaret Scotford.
Imprint:Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Description:xii, 354 p.
Language:English
Subject:
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/2338100
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ISBN:0521481767
0521484421 (pbk.)
Description
Summary:Building on her seminal contribution to social theory in Culture and Agency, in this 1995 book Margaret Archer develops her morphogenetic approach, applying it to the problem of structure and agency. Since structure and agency constitute different levels of stratified social reality, each possesses distinctive emergent properties which are real and causally efficacious but irreducible to one another. The problem, therefore, is shown to be how to link the two rather than conflate them, as has been common theoretical practice. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world. The morphogenetic approach is the sociological complement of transcendental realism, and together they provide a basis for non-conflationary theorizing which is also of direct utility to the practising social analyst.
Physical Description:xii, 354 p.
ISBN:0521481767
0521484421