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For Emergence: Refining Archer's Account of Social Structure.
- Source :
-
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour . Mar2007, Vol. 37 Issue 1, p25-44. 20p. - Publication Year :
- 2007
-
Abstract
- The question of social structure and its relationship to human agency remains one of the central problems of social theory. One of the most promising attempts to provide a solution has been Margaret Archer's morphogenetic approach, which invokes emergence to justify treating social structure as causally effective. Archer's argument, however, has been criticised by a number of authors who suggest that the examples she cites can be explained in reductionist terms and thus that they fail to sustain her claim for the independent causal effectiveness of social structure. This paper offers an alternative argument to support the emergentist claim for the causal effectiveness of social structure, and shows how this argument refutes a representative critique of social emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- *SOCIAL structure
*EMERGENCE (Philosophy)
*ONTOLOGICAL proof of God
*HUMAN behavior
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00218308
- Volume :
- 37
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 24458125
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2007.00325.x