Agency and Structure: Interpreting Power Relationships

Abstract

Many of the debates over the 'true' nature of power relationships concern the importance given to agents or to structures in describing those relationships. Writers who discuss the power structure or system tend to concentrate upon structures; those who write about the power of agents or power relationships tend to concentrate upon actors. The agency-structure relationship goes deep into many seemingly different issues in very different approaches to power. I argue that whilst the agency-structure divide is false, our interpretation of the world - the way in which we describe it - means we cannot fully transcend the structure-agency divide using natural language. Whether we choose to use the language of structures or of agents depends upon the questions we are seeking to answer and commitments we wish to make in assigning responsibility. Those latter commitments do make power assignations normatively driven, though that does not, in itself, entail that they cannot be objectively made. Ultimately, structural and agential accounts can describe the world in non-contradictory ways though the choice of description demonstrates the sorts of commitments the describer has towards changing the world.