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Structural Inquiry, Human Agency and the Contribution of Harre and Bhaskar: A Case Study of Wright's “Classes”
Author(s) -
ADKINS BARBARA
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal for the theory of social behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.615
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5914
pISSN - 0021-8308
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5914.1993.tb00235.x
Subject(s) - wright , agency (philosophy) , sociology , citation , library science , social science , art history , computer science , history
This paper examines the contribution of aspects of critical and referential realism to the “logic” of structural explanation through an analysis of Erik Olin Wright’s Classes and the debate surrounding this work. Wright’s Classes has been selected as a case study because it offers an opportunity to examine issues pertaining to “objective” and “subjective” determinations of class and related\udquestions of agency and structure at the level of actual methodological strategies. A close examination of the structure of Wright’s inquiry reveals a number of places where Harre’s and Bhaskar’s approaches may contribute to\udthe prescription of methodological strategies which could overcome some of the antinomies on which the debate on Classes is based. As a case study, the paper underlines the important “underlabourer” role of critical and referential\udrealism and their contribution to questions of agency and structure in the context of actual stages involved in structural explanatio