Abstract
This chapter discusses the problem of structure and agency. Structure and agency inescapably contradict each other so that sociological analysis perpetually undermines itself. Ironically, this situation arose out of the development of sociology as a discipline. This chapter shows a way out of this problem by presenting the picture given by the concepts of structure and agency as a case of forced perspective inducing of a loss of depth in sociological imagination. We can correct this optical illusion by adopting metric/nonmetric in place of structure/agency as guiding distinction. To assemble the metric/nonmetric distinction, we have to operationalize the structure/agency distinction as well as the micro/macro distinction and the individual/society distinction: none of these distinctions applies universally; they all vary from context to context. The metric/nonmetric distinction offers the means for reconstituting these variations and for restoring the perception of depth as the difference in modalities between cases.
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Guy, JS. (2019). Structure and Agency: Problem and Solution. In: Theory Beyond Structure and Agency. Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18983-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18983-9_2
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