User:Ajbd33/Social structure

Early History
The term social structure was first used by the English polymath Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Sociology, in which he drew analogy to a biological organism and its constituent parts. Although the term was originally coined by Spencer, the idea of 'social structures' can be traced as far back to Plato in his dialogue The Republic, in which Plato compares the constituents of a perfect state to the psychological constituents of the just man. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes would go on to use similar organismic metaphors to draw parallels between the body politic to blood, joints, and nerves.

Another early progenitor of the concept, without using the term itself, was the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville in his celebrated classic Democracy in America, which he set in opposition to the idea of self-contained, atomized individuals immune to group processes. The aftermath of the French Revolution would also influence the burgeoning discipline of sociology and the break from myopic individualism. Auguste Comte, the father of sociology, used the term 'solidarity' to refer to the reciprocity between organisms as per the laws of biology which thereby led to an organized whole. Spencer's own reading of Comte likely influenced his usage of the term 'social structure.'

Later, Karl Marx, Ferdinand Tönnies, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber would all contribute to structural concepts in sociology. The latter, for example, investigated and analyzed the institutions of modern society: market, bureaucracy (private enterprise and public administration), and politics (e.g. democracy).

One of the earliest and most comprehensive accounts of social structure was provided by Karl Marx, who related political, cultural, and religious life to the mode of production (an underlying economic structure). Marx argued that the economic base substantially determined the cultural and political superstructure of a society. Subsequent Marxist accounts, such as that of Louis Althusser, proposed a more complex relationship that asserted the relative autonomy of cultural and political institutions, and a general determination by economic factors only "in the last instance."

In 1905, German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies published his study The Present Problems of Social Structure, in which argues that only the constitution of a multitude into a unity creates a "social structure", basing his approach on his concept of social will.

Émile Durkheim, drawing on the analogies between biological and social systems popularized by Herbert Spencer and others, introduced the idea that diverse social institutions and practices played a role in assuring the functional integration of society through assimilation of diverse parts into a unified and self-reproducing whole. In this context, Durkheim distinguished two forms of structural relationship: mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. The former describes structures that unite similar parts through a shared culture, while the latter describes differentiated parts united through social exchange and material interdependence.

As did Marx and Weber, Georg Simmel, more generally, developed a wide-ranging approach that provided observations and insights into domination and subordination; competition; division of labor; formation of parties; representation; inner solidarity and external exclusiveness; and many similar features of the state, religious communities, economic associations, art schools, and of family and kinship networks. However diverse the interests that give rise to these associations, the forms in which interests are realized may yet be identical.

Introduction - Aliyah
''' Human agency and social structure: From the evolutionary perspective. '''

Shanyang Zhao. (2022). Human agency and social structure: From the evolutionary perspective. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 52(3), 473–493. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12336

Social structure has 4 components


 * Stable patterns of human behavior
 * Law-like regularities that govern human behavior
 * Systems of human relationships among social positions
 * Rules and resources

“Social structure is defined as systems of relationships among social positions which are subject to the influence of many factors. The aim of this study is to find out the extent to which the structure of such relationships is determined by the agency of the members of society”

– humans make and affirm social structure by

– “there can be no institutional rules without the action of agentic individuals, and all agentic actions involve choices among structured alternatives.”

– social structure is shaped by larger environments in which humans live and evolve

Ideology, Critique, and Social Structures

Bianchin, M. (2021). Ideology, Critique, and Social Structures. Critical Horizons, 22(2), 184–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/14409917.2019.1676942

Social structures possess causal powers. Although they do not trigger action, they work as structuring causes by constraining rational choice. On the other hand, they originate in social practices defined as interdependent connections of resources – both human and non-human: people, tools, physical facts and so on – and interpretive schemas – shared concepts, beliefs and attitudes used to interpret information and to coordinate thought, action and affects. Social structures thus act as an “invisible foot” because they are generated by the way shared concepts, beliefs, and attitudes shape the way resources are employed to yield specific patterns of interaction and power relations

– shared beliefs **

– networks of social relations, work as structures

Institution as mediation between social structure and agency: Toward a realist social ontology of institutions

Institution as mediation between social structure and agency: Toward a realist social ontology of institutions. (2021). Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 51(3), 489–507.

– structures cannot exist individually whether that be person or action

– human relations, positions, roles

– “Marxian schema where systems correspond to the mode of production, social positions to class positions, and human relations to intra‐ and inter‐class relationships such as domination, competition and exploitation.”

– norms are within the social structures not because of the social structures