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This book offers a solution for the problem of structure and agency in sociological theory by developing a new pair of fundamental concepts: metric and nonmetric. Nonmetric forms, arising in a crowd made out of innumerable individuals, correspond to social groups that divide the many individuals in the crowd into insiders and outsiders. Metric forms correspond to congested zones like traffic jams on a highway: individuals are constantly entering and leaving these zones so that they continue to exist, even though the individuals passing through them change. Building from these concepts, we can understand "agency" as a requirement for group identity and group membership, thus associating it with nonmetric forms, and "structure" as a building-up effect following the accumulation of metric forms. This reveals the contradiction between structure and agency to be a case of forced perspective, leaving us victim to an optical illusion.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Structure and Agency: Problem and Solution.- 3. DeLanda and the Metric/Nonmetric Distinction.- 4. Metric and Nonmetric in Weber and Durkheim.- 5. Forms and Medium in Luhmann's Systems Theory.- 6. Bourdieu, Giddens and Foucault Through the Metric/Nonmetric Distinction.- 7. Applying the Metric/Nonmetric Distinction.- 8. General Conclusion.
About the author
Jean-Sébastien Guy is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, where he teaches classical and contemporary theory. He has published on globalization, Niklas Luhmann's systems theory and relational sociology.
