Glossary of Terminology of Structuration Theory

This list includes either neologisms or terms employed differently from established usage. It is intended only to summarize formulations offered in the text, not to elucidate them further.

Allocative resources Material resources involved in the generation of power, including the natural environment and physical artifacts; allocative resources derive from human dominion over nature

Analysis of strategic Social analysis which places in suspension

conduct institutions as socially reproduced, concen­trating upon how actors reflexively monitor what they do; how actors draw upon rules and resources in the constitution of inter-action

Authoritative Non-material resources involved in the

resources generation of power, deriving from the capability of harnessing the activities of human beings; authoritative resources result from the dominion of some actors over others

Class-divided society Agrarian states in which there is class division of discernible kinds but where such class division is not the main basis of the principle of organization of the society

Contextuality The situated character of interaction in time-space, involving the setting of interaction, actors co-present and communication between them

Contradiction Opposition of structural principles, such that each depends upon the other and yet negates the other; perverse consequences associated with such circumstances

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Credibility criteria The criteria used by agents to provide reasons for what they do, grasped in such a way as to help to describe validly what it is that they do

Dialectic of control The two-way character of the distributive aspect of power (power as control); how the less powerful manage resources in such a way as to exert control over the more powerful in established power relationships

Discursive What actors are able to say, or to give verbal

consciousness expression to, about social conditions, including especially the conditions of their own action; awareness which has a discursive form

Double hermeneutic The intersection of two frames of meaning as a logically necessary part of social science, the meaningful social world as constituted by lay actors and the metalanguages invented by

social scientists; there is a constant `slippage' from one to the other involved in the practice of the social sciences

Duality of structure Structure as the medium and outcome of the conduct it recursively organizes; the struc­tural properties of social systems do not exist outside of action but are chronically implicated in its production and reproduction

Episodic Character- The designation, for comparative purposes,

ization of forms of institutional change; episodes are sequences of change having a specifiable opening, trend of events and outcomes, which can be compared in some degree in abstraction from definite contexts

External critique Critique of lay agents' beliefs and practices, derived from the theories and findings of the social science

Historicity The identification of history as progressive change, coupled with the cognitive utilization of such identification in order to further that change. Historicity involves a particular view of what ^`history^' is, which means using knowledge of history in order to change it

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Homeostatic loops Causal factors which have a feedback effect in system reproduction, where that feedback is largely the outcome of unintended consequences

Institutional analysis Social analysis which places in suspension the skills and awareness of actors, treating institutions as chronically reproduced rules and resources

Intersocietal systems Social systems which cut across whatever dividing lines exist between societies or societal totalities, including agglomerations of societies

Internal critique The critical apparatus of social science, whereby theories and findings are subjected to evaluation in the light of logical argument and the provision of evidence

Knowledgeability Everything which actors know (believe) about the circumstances of their action and that of others, drawn upon in the production and reproduction of that action, including tacit as well as discursively available knowledge

Locale A physical region involved as part of the setting of interaction, having definite boundaries which help to concentrate inter-action in one way or another

Mutual knowledge Knowledge of `how to go on' in forms of life, shared by lay actors and sociological observers; the necessary condition of gaining access to valid descriptions of social activity

Ontological security Confidence or trust that the natural and social worlds are as they appear to be, including the basic existential parameters of self and social identity

Practical What actors know (believe) about social

consciousness conditions, including especially the con­ditions of their own action, but cannot express discursively; no bar of repression, however, protects practical consciousness as is the case with the unconscious

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Rationalization of The capability competent actors have of

action `keeping in touch' with the grounds of what they do, as they do it, such that if asked by others, they can supply reasons for their activities

Reflexive Monitoring The purposive, or intentional, character of

of action human behaviour, considered within the flow of activity of the agent; action is not a string of discrete acts, involving an aggregate of intentions, but a continuous process

Reflexive Self- Causal loops which have a feedback effect in

regulation system reproduction, where that feedback is substantially influenced by knowledge which agents have of the mechanisms of system reproduction and employ to control it

Regionalization The temporal, spatial or time-space differen­tiation of regions either within or between locales; regionalization is an important notion in counter-balancing the assumption that societies are always homogeneous, unified systems

Reproduction circuit An institutionalized series of reproduction relations, governed either by homeostatic causal loops or by reflexive self-regulation

Routinization The habitual, taken-for-granted character of the vast bulk of the activities of day-to-day social life; the prevalence of familiar styles and forms of conduct, both supporting and supported by a sense of ontological security

Social integration Reciprocity of practices between actors in circumstances of co-presence, understood as continuities in and disjunctions of encounters

Stratification model An interpretation of the human agent, stressing three `layers' of cognition/ motivation: discursive consciousness, practical consciousness and the unconscious

Structuration The structuring of social relations across time and space, in virtue of the duality of structure

Structural principles Principles of organization of societal totalities; factors involved in the overall insti­tutional alignment of a society or type of society

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Structural properties Structured features of social systems, especially institutionalized features, stretching across time and space

Structure Rules and resources, recursively implicated in the reproduction of social systems. Structure exists only as memory traces, the organic basis of human knowledgeability, and as instantiated in action

Structures Rule-resource sets, implicated in the institu­tional articulation of social systems. To study structures, including structural principles, is to study major aspects of the transformation/ mediation relations which influence social and system integration

System The patterning of social relations across time-space, understood as reproduced practices. Social systems should be regarded as widely variable in terms of the degree of `systemness^' they display and rarely have the sort of internal unity which may be found in physical and biological systems

System integration Reciprocity between actors or collectivities across extended time-space, outside con­ditions of co-presence

Time-space The stretching of social systems across time‑

distanciation space, on the basis of mechanisms of social and system integration

Time-space edges Connections, whether conflictual or symbiotic between societies of differing structural types

Validity criteria The criteria appealed to by social scientists to justify their theories and findings and assess those of others

World time Conjunctures of history that influence the nature of episodes; the effects of the under-standing of historical precedents upon episodic characterizations