SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

First Semester S.Y. 2020-2021

MODULE 11
Discipline and Ideas in the
Social Sciences

Name: _______________________________ Date :__________

Grade/Section: ________________________ Week : 11
Track/Strand: _________________________

Lesson SOCIETY AND US: HOW DO WE MAKE SENSE OF

11 OURSELVES AND THE WORLD AROUND US?
(STRUCTURE AND AGENCY)
WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?

In the social sciences, there is a standing debate over the primacy of

structure or agency in shaping human behavior.

Structure is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence

or limit the choices and opportunities available.

Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to

make their own free choices. The structure versus agency debate may be
understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining
whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by
social structure.

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TO LEARN?

Content Standard:

The learners demonstrate understanding of:

1. key concepts in the Social Sciences rooted in Filipino language/s
and Experiences; and
2. the role of Social Science in the real world.

Performance Standard:

The learners should be able to:

1. carry out an exploration of personal and social experiences using
indigenous concepts; and
2. illustrate situations and contexts in which Social Science can be
applied.

Objectives:

After the lesson, the learners should be able to:

1. define structure and agency;
2. identify the differences of structure and agency; and
3. understand the role of language and communication in our construction of
reality.

PRELIMINARY ACTIVITY
Let’s start!
Hello learner. Please sign the learning agreement before reading the
topics and answering the different activities. ENJOY!

DISCUSSION

Structure and Agency: The Nature of Their Relationship

Just like what we have seen in MMDA street signage’s and markers
(and possibly in the urbanized centers in your provinces and localities),
rules and ordinances are instruments of the state/governing institution
that control and regulate human behavior, action, and consciousness in a
given situation, say, in an urban area. Here we can see structure-one of
the two main topics for this lesson-at work, though quite subtly and
finely, in the shaping of people's consciousness. The MMDA represents the
structure whose principles are, in turn, representative of a particular ideology-the
ideology of an urbanized sector with specific ways of behaving and thinking so that a
city or an urban area can be managed, maintained, and preserved. In other words, the
concern of these rules and regulations is to provide a definite and concrete system for
human behaviors, thoughts, and actions so that institutions, values, and societies
themselves can be “reproduced” for posterity. This is what we call “social
reproduction”.

MMDA rules and ordinances-and signages for that matter-have changed over
period of time (and they keep on changing). The evolving slogan, motto, theme, color
scheme, strategies, and programs of the MMDA have been subjected to change,
institutional review, and update over the years. This is reflective of the dynamic
relationship of the bureau with the public. Moreover, people's individual behaviors,
actions, decisions, and attitudes toward those rules and ordinances (hence, the
signages) have also shaped the structure of these rules and ordinances. That is why the
MMDA seems to adjust to particular behaviors of some people from time to time. This
is what we call in social science theory as “agency” or the ability of individuals to make
choices, decisions, and actions for themselves to express their free will and
independence from structures. Focusing more on individual actions and decisions and
their impact on the overall structure of life in society underscore the creative and
productive side, of this act; hence, the “social transformation.”

The whole message of this section is to show how structure and agency
simultaneously shape our society today. Considering the fact that previous social
theories either lean toward macrostructures or individual actions and decisions in
explaining social phenomena, they have missed important points about the other side of
the coin. This is where “structuration theories”-as they are known in social theory-will
come into the picture. This is about building bridges and striking a balance between
and among existing social theories.

Let us take for example, signages in certain highways in Metro Manila: “Bawal
ang tao dito, doon ka sa bangketa’” was initiated because both the sidewalk vendors
and pedestrians keep on imposing their own interpretation of the uses and functions of
sidewalks: a place for vending, parking, biking, and, yes, even walking. Another
curious sign is the standard warning, “Bawal tumawid,’ which eventually became
“Bawal tumawid, nakamamatay,’ highlighting the fact that jaywalking is a very risky
thing to do. Until finally, when apparently nobody was paying much attention to the
stern warning, MMDA replaced the sign with, “Bawal tumawid, may namatay na dito,’
emphasizing the number of deaths, which has resulted from crossing those particular
streets.

We can also cite the debate between the Mayor of the City of Manila and some
critics of the Black Nazarene Feast organizing strategies during the 2015 Quiapo fiesta.
Critics alleged that the local government was unable to limit and control vendors from
occupying the middle of the streets. This impeded the flow of procession and posed
hazards among the hundreds of thousands of barefooted devotees. The Mayor of the
city, himself a former Philippine President, said that despite all their efforts to talk to
vendors and attempt to limit their movements, some space or consideration must also
be given to them because this was a rare occasion for them to earn a good amount of
money. Also, the vendors were scattered from all over and there were far too many
visitors and pilgrims to manage and handle. He added that there had to be some leeway
or flexibility in local ordinances and imposition of rules and laws because the feast was
a special and extraordinary event.

Without overemphasizing the role of either structure or agency, “structuration”

theories aimed at providing a more practical and inclusive picture of the process that
shaped modern society, stressing the equal role of and interaction between the two
major aspects of social life-the objective and the subjective natures of social
phenomenon.

Examining the interface between the two said factors necessitates an alternative
way of looking at the society outside the traditional structure-agency divide. Earlier
ideas of society have insufficiently looked into either the internal parameters of “social
reproduction’ of institutions, values, and systems (hence, focus on structure) or “social
transformation,’ the forms and avenues through which people subjectively create
society and social institutions (hence, agency). In the contemporary world, which is full
of unprecedented changes and development in the way people live and think, a deeper
understanding of the relationship and interaction between structure and agency is
warranted.

One of the most important ideas that informed structuration was the notion of
“practical consciousness”-a phenomenological concept-through which people's
activities (social phenomena) are neither totally unconscious (people think and behave
automatically and unintentionally because of overarching structures such as culture,
government, economy, etc.) nor wholly conscious (people purposively and intentionally
act on and think about their situation). Instead, people's activities are carried out
“semiconsciously,’ meaning, people just do what they know how to do without
analyzing the situation. However, such behavior and mode of thinking occur within the
bounds of their respective practical, everyday reality, which is also known as
“lifeworlds” (indeed, another key phenomenological concept). Structuration believes
that within this lifeworld of practical human consciousness, the society is reproduced
and transformed. The challenge is to examine this realm or field without burdening
analysis with one-sided attention to either structure or agency.

Nevertheless, it is the very idea of giving “equal” treatment to both structure and
agency that has provided the same basis for critiques of this perspective. Is it really
possible to get away from the lure of the structure-agency divide? In a nutshell, what
the critiques (all theories and ideas about society have its own set of critiques) have
been saying is that equal treatment to structural factors and individual facets of social
phenomena might prove to be an impossible task. According to these critiques,
structuration theory simply masks either a hidden bias toward structure or agency in
explaining society, something which social theory over the centuries has not fully freed
itself.

In the end, the nature of relationship between structure and agency is one that is
fluid, incessant, and dynamic-like a free-flowing river-hence, it fits the nature of society
that we live in and experience today; continuously flowing, moving, and changing.
Later in this lesson, we will see how structuration ideas’ two important thinkers, Pierre
Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, have provided us with exciting twists to the very long
history of social thought.

Bourdieu: Revealing Hidden Mechanisms of Society

It has long been realized by the 20th century social theory that classical Marxism
is somewhat limited in the way it understands the workings of society, that is large
structures, such as the economy, are the sole and determining factors of all forms of
social institutions, frameworks, and relations. Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most
important French intellectuals of the late 20th century, was very critical of the status
quo and the modes in which society was interrogated and interpreted by modern social
theory over the decades.
Like a true phenomenologist, Bourdieu showed that in the practical side of
human life-the actual, concrete, minute, logical, and everyday realities of people-we can
see a more nuanced interplay of institutions, class, values, as well as social transactions
and individual decisions. They make up and dynamically create society instead of
simply relying too much on given and ready-made systems such as economy and
politics as well as being overly dependent on action-oriented theories. At the same time,
like a true Marxist, he endeavored to reveal the hidden structures of power that
perpetuate the interests of the ruling elite. Bourdieu is a special kind of social thinker:
He did not only examine abstract and philosophical issues besetting contemporary
Western society but also advocated an empirical attention of social studies to empirical
research. Being trained in the disciplines of philosophy, anthropology, and sociology,
he saw the need for empirically grounded research while reconciling it with the need
for theorizing. His life-long intellectual production led him to the study of education,
arts, media, popular culture, and globalization.

Bourdieu saw that a major issue afflicting the lives of many people was the so-
called status quo, which perpetuates, reproduces, and legitimizes the interest of the
powerful sector: the ruling elites. He called this situation the “neoliberal scourge,’ in
which society is burdened and afflicted with underlying structures of violence,
injustice, and control from the powerful minority. But how does it happen? How does
one operationalize this analysis and perspective?

Bordieu started with a crucial idea: the concept of “habitus.” In Bourdieu's terms,
habitus meant a distinctive and typical mode of behaving, doing, thinking, and acting
shared by all members of a given group of people. The group experience and condition
require members of a group to follow prescribed mode of existence as well as allow
creativity and freedom on their part to enrich the whole system. The result is the
phenomenon of “practice” or the locus (a place where collective social acts happen)
where all these human activities occur and where much of social reproduction
(tradition, heritage, and values) and social transformation (dynamic exchange due to
regular human interaction) take place. In other words, the person's habitus is merely a
reflection of his or her own group's habitus since the former is part and parcel of the
latter. Here, Bourdieu attempted to reconcile structure and agency by uncovering
human practice-both collective and individual-as the key analytical tool to examine the
nature of social phenomenon.

Habitus is both objective and subjective, in a sense, because it possesses both the
social/material conditions of life and individual recreations of and reactions to those
said conditions. The particular habitus of the individual is transmitted through the
process of socialization-the ways in which he or she is brought up and shaped within a
group. Socialization into a particular habitus transpires during childhood and goes on
until adulthood that is why everything that one does may have something to do with
habitusbodily gestures, behavior, personal disposition and propensity toward
something, etc. For Bourdieu, this socialization mostly embodies the habitus of a class,
but at times, ethnicity or gender too. Having learned about this, is it not too difficult
now to explain why, often times, we associate a certain social class or group of people
as possessing the same backgrounds, same qualities, and same likes and dislikes?

Let us move forward by examining habitus in specific contexts of our lives, say,
courtship. if we follow Bordieu’s analytical tool-habitus-we could analyze and
understand why and how we choose our partners in life.

Courtship is a good example where we can observe how habitus-the intersection

between what structures does to people and vice versa-has informed the way we choose
our partners. Almost always, as what your ethnographic informants have probably
demonstrated, we tend to choose our life partners within our own social status, within
our culture’s parameters, within our system of values, and within our set of material
and economic realities. Our expectations of life and what we demand from it are sort of
tempered and tailored to suit the world in which we live. Indeed, fairy tales do happen,
like when a rich landlord falls in love with a peasant (in popular movies, these things
happen often) but, in reality, going out of one’s sociocultural milieu and our very own
habitus may seem an exception rather than the rule and outrageous, even, in some
instances.

So, social life is like a coin that has two sides: on one side, structure; on the other
side, the individual. It is still basically within and of the same coin. Within the people's
practices, interaction between those two sides of the coin occurs, so to speak. Bordieu
saw class consciousness as usually providing the habitus by which individuals behave,
act, and think. Within the basic frame, we try to make an impact on the bigger fields
and institutions affecting our lives, but our decisions and actions are also limited by the
said frame.

Moreover, social life is also played at a level and situation akin to a game-like a
typical children’s game. Participants or players play within the bounds of the game as
rules, regulations, and system are followed by all concerned. To be able to succeed in a
game, a player must equip himself with certain skills. Whether it is about the know-
how or tools relevant to a game, it is a matter of strategically accumulating this skills set
as part of one's own social repertoire that shall make him or her successful. In a real life
situation, the game is the field while skills, know-how, and tools are forms of capital.
The former deals with the social context where every day human practices occur, while
the latter involves resources that individuals tap and accumulate in order for them to
succeed in the given field. Hence, each field or social structure requires a different set of
capital.

There are three types of capital (this is clearly a reworking of classical Marxist
concepts): (a) economic capital, (b) social capital, and (c) cultural capital. The first one is
the amount of money one has; the second one is the degree of social network one
possesses that adds to his or her reputation and social standing; and finally, the third
type of capital is the level of cultural knowledge one demonstrates in order to impress
the rest that one belongs in that particular field or social structure. In other words, the
sociological measure of one social standing and success is the accumulation and
buildup of those mentioned three types of capital.

Either as a group or individual, work on the task below and examine the issues
surrounding a reworked and redefined Marxist category of capital.

Giddens: The Role of “Agents” in the Social Construction of Society

Much like Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens (born in 1938) believes that there should
be no dichotomy between “structure” (role of social institutions) and agents (role of
individual actions) in explaining the nature and mechanisms of society. Like the
analogy of a coin, two sides of life-macro social institutions and structures as well as
micro individual actions and dispositions-should be taken into account in social
analysis. In fact, Giddens has a more purposive and conscious analysis of the
relationship between structure and agency, which he calls the theory of “structuration:’
 Giddens was trained in sociology, anthropology, and psychology. He critiqued
previous ideas about society such as positivism, structural functionalism, rational
choice theory, and other interactionist ideas. He also examined canons such as the ideas
of Durkheim, Marx, and Weber. He has written numerous books and became a very
popular figure in contemporary social science, especially, sociology. He also served as a
director at the London School of Economics. Giddens was given the title of Baron by the
state (thus, he is oftentimes referred to as “Lord Giddens”). Unlike Bourdieu, who is
perceived to be on the side of the left-leaning social theory and who was very critical of
the status quo and neoliberalism, Giddens is associated with the “third way” politics
and served, in the 1990s, as an adviser to former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. His
lifelong works include many aspects of contemporary world such as the study of
globalization, risk society, power, and surveillance, among others.

Giddens’ main concern is “agency” or agents who are individual actors acting on
their own behalf. He believes that agents have a range of options upon which they base
their decisions and actions. These acts, done through everyday human practices, are
unconsciously made without necessarily being subjected to purposive analysis-since all
these actions occur on the level of practical consciousness. Practices do change over a
period of time, and in the process, social institutions or structures provide the setting of
whether society focuses on social transformation or the reproduction of social
institutions. Social media is an arena where structuration-the intimate interaction of
structure and human agents-occurs. The whole technological setting and framework
provides the overarching rules and models of behavior and interaction among its
participants (also known as players) but, at the same time, the participants (members of
society or users of the Internet) creatively shape technology and contribute to its
improvement and development. Change has been a constant feature of social media as
it keeps on evolving based on how users behave and react on various aspects of the
program and technological structure. Thus, netizens-as regular and active Internet and
social media users are called today-are shaped by the World Wide Web (i.e., the
Internet) and vice versa. Through the everyday practice of chatting, texting, uploading-
downloading, viewing, liking, and status checking, social media becomes a democratic
space for all users who see social media as a free world vice versa offering opportunities
and providing an uncensored and unhampered flow of information. It is basically open
for all types of utility (good or bad), agenda, and interpretation.

In the same vein, humans do create society (they are the creators and makers of
society) but, at the same time, humans are also very much affected by society's general
scheme and overall appearance. In other words, the conditions are already preset for
human agents’ to improve, debunk, revise, remodel, and reinterpret. In the end, it is a
never-ending process that leads to transformation as well as reproduction of social
institutions through everyday human practice. The relation is one that is dialectical,
each one constituting and affecting the other.

Giddens believes that there are certain moments in history where humans have
creatively redefined and reorganized life in the world in which they live. Some of these
moments in the past were largely about the social reorganization of time and space, say,
the invention of writing during ancient times, the first successful telegraphic message,
or the sending of satellites in outer space. All these moments, according to Giddens, are
revolutionary and are truly the reasons why our society is global and historical. In all of
these crucial moments, furthermore, human agency has created and defined what
society should be like.

Giddens’ agents are knowledgeable participants and actors within a given social
structure and not just dummies of some rules or structures. In the conduct of their
livesor practices-they draw on various skills and information available around them
through which they carry out what is supposed to be carried out in life. All these
activities occur in the level of practical consciousness; meaning, they do not necessarily
think about what they are doing. In the level of practices, the world of human action in
consonance with the current situation, social transformation, and social reproduction
seems to happen as naturally as it can be, but actually, it is substantially a product of
human agency. Giddens’ agents are also reflexive actors especially when they
constantly engage “late modernity”-this era of true globalization and high capitalism-
and search for meaning in this ever-changing an

ASSESSMENT
ACTIVITY I – MY THOUGHTS!
Directions: Write some thoughts about the two words below and follow the guide
question. Write your answer on the circle.

Q – What is the difference between the two words?

Structure Agency

ACTIVITY II- ESSAY

Directions: Explain each question below and write your answer on the space provided.
Your answer will be rated by the following criteria:

Content 2 points
Construction 2 points
 Originality 1 point
TOTAL 5 points

1. What is the main concern of Giddens’s about Agency?

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2. What is Habitus according to social sciences?

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FEEDBACK

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REFERENCE
Rex Book Store “Disciplines and Ideas in the Social Sciences by Carlos Peña Tatal
Jr. 2016 Edition