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In the social sciences there is a standing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behaviour. Structure is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. [1] Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. [1]
One's agency is one's independent capability or ability to act on one's will. This ability is affected by the cognitive belief structure which one has formed through one's experiences, and the perceptions held by the society and the individual, of the structures and circumstances of the environment one is in and the position one is born into.
Archer maintained that structure precedes agency in social structure reproduction and analytical importance, and that they should be analysed separately. She emphasised the importance of temporality in social analysis, dividing it into four stages: structural conditioning, social interaction, its immediate outcome and structural elaboration.
Drawing on Bourdieu's ideas, Fuller (2009 [34]) adds to the theoretical understanding of structure and agency by considering how young people shape their educational identity and how this identity is often the result of messages reflected at them, for example, through grades, setting and gendered expectations. Social location is considered ...
The individual agency differs strongly within the society across age, gender, income, education, personal health status, position in social networks, and other dimensions. Collective agency refers to situations in which individuals pool their knowledge, skills, and resources, and act in concert to shape their future.
Practices are conceptualized as "what people do," or an individual's performance carried out in everyday life. Bourdieu's theory of practice sets up a relationship between structure and the habitus and practice of the individual agent, dealing with the "relationship between the objective structures and the cognitive and motivating structures which they produce and which tend to reproduce them ...
The notion of social structure is intimately related to a variety of central topics in social science, including the relation of structure and agency. The most influential attempts to combine the concept of social structure with agency are Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory. Giddens emphasizes the ...
The integrative model is an interdisciplinary organization that combines, rather than separates, academic subjects, faculties, and disciplines. A departmental structure may be in place for each field or discipline, but the physical organization of the educational facilities may place different subject-based classrooms or labs in groupings, such as in a defined area, wing, or small learning ...