Structure and agency are
properties of social interaction that represent the capacity for human
action. The difference between them is
that structure is built into social organization, while agency is the set of
possible behavior within it. They are
like opposite sides of the same coin; as structure puts constraints on
interaction, agency provides the vehicle of choice. Many geographers prefer one over the other,
such as Marxists and humanistic geographers (Cresswell, 198). As Marxists rely heavily on economic
structure to diagnose behavior, humanists believe agency reinforces structure
as a byproduct of interaction. Most
geographers accept that both exist because of each other; that individuals are
not able to act freely, but they are able to make choices based on the
structures they live in, which determine the possible actions of the
individual.
The cause for such debate lies in one’s theoretical
position, and there is a long history in geographic thought that has sustained
it. Early geographers were more heavily
influenced by structuralism than later geographers. They believed things like environmental
determinism, language, and culture were ways of explaining agency, as each were
thought to program people to think and behave certain ways (Cresswell, 198). After the quantitative revolution, it was
Marxist geographers who most strongly supported structuralism, as the means of
production were seen to allow more agency for the bourgeoisie than the
proletariat. During this time, there was
an increasing reaction against structuralism, pivoting the balance in agency’s
favor, or at least finding an equilibrium with structure. Humanists and poststructuralists introduced agency
as a way of sustaining structure, stressing the importance of choice in
maintaining social order.
The
structures that early geographers envisioned had centers around which they revolved. In environmental determinism, it was ecology
and natural selection that determined traits and thus behavior. In language, it was grammar that determined
forms of communication, which was critical to interaction. Those who believed culture was the strongest
structure thought that rules and mores were what determined one’s agency. In Marxism, it was the heavy constraint of
capitalism that limited agency by exploiting the labor of the masses. Such variety in explaining structure led to
wide disagreement about what the most important structure was, which resonated
across disciplines, not just geography (Cresswell, 199). It also led to wide disagreement about the
degree of agency’s influence on structure, which the poststructuralists sought
to reconcile.
The
way they did this was through structuration theory, introduced by Anthony
Giddens to describe the process of the structural properties in any society
being reiterated by agency (Cresswell, 202).
Since everyday actions reiterate the structure of a society, it isn’t as
rigid as a structure would assume, allowing agency to constantly reinvent it in
subtle ways. For example, Juneteenth became
a federal holiday because of all the agency involved in the civil rights
movement, starting from the Civil War to present. It was brought to a head in 2020, after the
George Floyd incident, culminating in federal recognition after decades of struggle
for social justice. The new holiday subtly
adjusted the structure of our calendar, impacting many services on a single
day.
But
the most important point of structuration theory is that agency is expressed
within the framework of it. Group
actions, such as playing a game of football, support the structure of a place
by creating the need for a field, showing how there can’t be a structure in
place without agency. Most of the time
the structure stays the same, but as Cresswell (205) points out, once somebody
decided to pick up the football (agency), the new sport of rugby was conceived,
reinventing the structure of fields.
This
is how the poststructuralists completed the reconciliation of structure and
agency: through specific examples that display the balance of action and constraint. The agency of action has enough mobility to
slightly alter the constraint of structure, but not to the point of it
breaking. That can only be done by a
series of changes, as the Marxists and civil rights activists demonstrated.
Cresswell, T. 2013. Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
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