Premium
Social Structure and Social Relations
Author(s) -
ELDERVASS DAVE
Publication year - 2007
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.1468-5914.2007.00346.x
Subject(s) - normative , mechanism (biology) , epistemology , social structure , sociology , critical realism (philosophy of perception) , social relation , social psychology , realism , positive economics , psychology , social science , political science , philosophy , law , economics , politics
This paper replies to Porpora, King, and Varela's responses to my earlier paper “For Emergence”, focussing on the relationship between the concepts of social structure and social relations . It recognises the importance of identifying the mechanisms responsible whenever we make claims for the emergence of causal powers, and discusses the mechanism underlying one case of social structure: normative institutions. It also shows how critical realism reconciles the claims that both social structures and human individuals have emergent causal powers that combine to produce actual social events.