Culture and Agency 2ed

by Margaret S. Archer

This is a revised edition of Margaret Archer's Culture and Agency (CUP, 1988), a seminal contribution to social theory and the case for the role of culture in sociological thought. Described as "a timely and sophisticated treatment", the book showed that the "problems" of culture and agency and structure and agency could be solved using the same analytical framework. The revised edition contextualizes the argument in 1990s sociology and links it to Professor Archer's latest book, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (CUP, 1995).

Genres: Sociology, Cultural

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Margaret Scotford Archer was an English sociologist, who spent most of her academic career at the University of Warwick.

Reviews

[Bruce Lee Livingston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dare not try to conduct a definitive review of this thick academic book. It seems like she takes on the entire history of sociology and to some extent structuralism and neo-marxism. Margaret S. Archer was a legend and central figure in sociology until her passing in 2023. In this book she is separating the field of analysis of structural elements of society from analysis of culture. She uses the framework of Morphogenesis and Morphostasis to understand the cultural field separately from structure, and then look at how they affect each other. In other books and articles she dove more deeply into social/ cultural interactions as the key lived reality in social change.

Unfortunately, one would have to be a graduate student in sociology to understand half of her references and the debates she is in the midst of. It is a challenging book, but perhaps it does shine light upon Praxis and forces of individual actions leading to social, structural and cultural change, I intend to look at other works by her. If you do get your hands on this book, I do recommend reading at least the preface, first chapter and final chapter – – but move on to other works by her such as “Being Human.“