In this final book by renowned sociologist Margaret S. Archer, her groundbreaking morphogenetic approach is defended, refined and extended through a series of engagements with her critics. Archer, a pioneer of critical realism, addresses key debates surrounding her work on structure, agency, and social change. Each chapter responds to critiques from a different scholar, using these exchanges as springboards to further develop her powerful explanatory framework. Through these lively dialogues, Archer elaborates her tools for analysing social and cultural dynamics. This book offers readers a unique window into Archer's thought as she clarifies, sharpens and expands her theoretical contributions in response to constructive criticism. It will be an essential read for scholars and students across the social sciences, and for anyone seeking to understand the forces that shape our social world and how we can reshape it.
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'Margaret Archer has created the most original sociological framework combining structure, culture and agency to help us account for social change as morphogenesis - change generating further change without moving in a single predefined direction. In Morphogenesis Answers Its Critics, she provides a reflexive view of how she made her way through the world of contemporary social sciences, controversy after controversy. It is both challenging and helpful for all narrow specialists (myself included) who try to rethink their practice in the context of contemporary challenges and transitions.' Emmanuel Lazega, Professeur des universités, Institut Universitaire de France 'For over two decades now, Margaret Archer's morphogenetic approach to social explanation has sparked great interest but also opposition from different quarters. In this spirited volume, Archer responds to each of her major critics, making for a lively engagement that advances the conversation for both critics and supporters of the morphogenetic approach. Thus, for all engaged in the approach, whether pro or con, this statement is must reading.' Douglas Porpora, Professor of Sociology, Drexel University
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Counterposes Margaret S. Archer's Structure, Agency and Culture theorizing with the popular 'Problem of Structure and Agency'.
1. The morphogenetic approach and its trajectory: a first-person account by the author; Part I. Culture:
2. When culture is marginalized;
3. Critical realists do debate culture;
4. Should concepts of culture give more prominence to critical discourse analysis; Part II. Structure:
5. Misrepresenting S.A.C. as dualism;
6. The majority of agents are the dead: implications for central conflation;
7. Can structuration and morphogenesis be compatible?; Part III. Agency:
8. Enter the passive agent;
9. Agents as individuals and dispositions as plural;
10. Two types of agency, but are they not related?
Margaret S. Archer was Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick. She founded the Centre of Social Ontology at the Swiss Federal University, Lausanne, was the first woman President of the International Sociological Association and was appointed by Pope Francis (2014) as President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Science. In April 2023, she was awarded the British Sociological Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. She has written or edited 40 books and 95 articles and chapters including The Social Origins of Educational Systems (1979), The Relational Subject (with Pierpaolo Donati, Cambridge, 2015), The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity (Cambridge, 2012), Making our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility (Cambridge, 2007), Being Human: The Problem of Agency (Cambridge, 2000), Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory (Cambridge, 1996) and Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge, 1995).
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