Description
This book completes Margaret Archer's trilogy investigating the role of reflexivity in mediating between structure and agency. What do young people want from life? Using analysis of family experiences and life histories, her argument respects the properties and powers of both structures and agents and presents the 'internal conversation' as the site of their interplay. In unpacking what 'social conditioning' means, Archer demonstrates the usefulness of 'relational realism'. She advances a new theory of relational socialisation, appropriate to the 'mixed messages' conveyed in families that are rarely normatively consensual and thus cannot provide clear guidelines for action. Life-histories are analysed to explain the making and breaking of the various modes of reflexivity. Different modalities have been dominant from early societies to the present and the author argues that modernity is slowly ceding place to a 'morphogenetic society' as meta-reflexivity now begins to predominate, at least amongst educated young people.
What do young people want from life? This book shows how the 'internal conversation' guides individual choices.
About the Author
Margaret S. Archer is Professor in Social Theory at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Directrice of its Centre d'Ontologie Sociale. She was Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick from 1979 until 2010. She has written over twenty books including Making Our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility (2007), Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (2003) and Being Human: The Problem of Agency (2000).
Reviews
'In critiquing the theory of reflexive modernity, Archer provides a valuable service in questioning such a focus ... This is an important and welcome critique insofar as it argues, in contrast to reflexive modernization theory, that structural and cultural changes are behind this trend.' Jonathan Joseph, Journal of Critical Realism
'... an important and welcome critique ...' Jonathan Joseph, Journal of Critical Realism
Book Information
ISBN 9781107020955
Author Margaret S. Archer
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 700g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 20mm
What do young people want from life? This book shows how the 'internal conversation' guides individual choices.
About the Author
Margaret S. Archer is Professor in Social Theory at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Directrice of its Centre d'Ontologie Sociale. She was Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick from 1979 until 2010. She has written over twenty books including Making Our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility (2007), Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (2003) and Being Human: The Problem of Agency (2000).
Reviews
'In critiquing the theory of reflexive modernity, Archer provides a valuable service in questioning such a focus ... This is an important and welcome critique insofar as it argues, in contrast to reflexive modernization theory, that structural and cultural changes are behind this trend.' Jonathan Joseph, Journal of Critical Realism
'... an important and welcome critique ...' Jonathan Joseph, Journal of Critical Realism
Book Information
ISBN 9781107020955
Author Margaret S. Archer
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 700g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 20mm
