Structure vs. Agency. Foucault’s View

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The structuralist presented numerous claims concerning his position on this topic. First, Foucault presented such concepts as subjectivity, personality, and the soul and claimed that they constitute only one element of a concrete discursive formation presented by the action of one particular discursive power. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish was utilized in an attempt to analyze how power affects the human through external control (Foucault, 1979). Moreover, he elaborated his History of Sexuality for exploration of how the power operates through internal control. The first issue aimed to reveal how the development of a modern surveillance system in prisons, schools, churches, hospitals, and other facilities impacted individuals. The experiment was held since it is evident that the current the concept of power relies on supervision; therefore, it controls people in accordance with a specific concept of normality.

A later work examines the extension of the self’s confessional technology from the religious sphere to social life in general. People control themselves by revealing, confessing, and controlling their thoughts and behavior according to an individual perception of normality. Even if it sometimes seems that Foucault attached too much importance to the body through things like the law, his standpoint remains clear. The structuralist presumes that society can be perceived as a specific regime of power (Foucault, 1979). This power determines the subject, taken in terms of both the norms. They try to live by these norms and seeks for the ways to abide by them. An individual is an arbitrary construction of a social formation. Society gives the values and practices that people live by.

Foucault developed the idea that not a single person could possibly exist as an autonomous unity since the regimes of power remain visible in the society. As a result, Foucault denied the concept of the “sovereign, founding subject” for one of “the subject” as “constituted through practices” (Foucault, 1979). One day individuals start to live in accordance with their values, beliefs, and standards which they have accepted for themselves. However, following their commitments solely implies adjusting them to the regimes imposed.

Therefore, Foucault’s view of the subject assumes an idea deeply rooted to the tenets of liberalism, the Enlightenment Project, or modernity. This presumes that the individual stands out of the crowd and does not conform to the societal rules. It is true, that people’s idea of the subject as an autonomous agent derives from the fact that they haves mastered the principle of confession perfectly. Therefore, they mistakenly view it as a way to reveal their inner self, rather than as a way to define themselves in terms of social formation. He also claimed that the duty to confess was then relayed through many different points; they it was instilled in people’s minds (Vandenberghe, 2018). As a result, they no longer perceived it as the effect of a power that limited them; on the contrary, it seemed to them that truth, placed in their most sacred nature, demanded only to re-emerge.

Social sciences’ primary debate, which has not been solved yet, concerns structure and agency as the pivotal elements shaping human behavioral patterns. Many discussions about the “true” essence of power refer to the meaning given to agents or structures when describing these relationships (Las Heras, 2018). Relations between agencies and structures plunge into multiple seemingly miscellaneous problems and reflect upon various approaches to power. Authors who discuss power structures or systems tend to focus on structures; those who study the agents’ power or power relations tend to focus on actors. Structures are meant for social systems in which people live and act (Lemke, 2015). Meanwhile, “agents” are people who decide and choose, who navigate their life plans in conditions of restrictions. If researchers consider structure and agent as ontologically different stages, they may face several challenging questions.

The debates derive from the founders’ considerations, including Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. Other authors such as Anthony Giddens, Maurice Godelier, and Pierre Bourdieu made their own adjustments to the second generation (Las Heras, 2018). But in the last decade, new ideas have emerged that deserve to be reviewed. Since multiple approaches were examined, some fundamental and most common concepts were identified. Yet, different theorists developed their own standpoint on the issue, but Talcott Parsons and Michal Foucault proposed the brightest ideas. Therefore, this paper investigates how these two prominent researchers viewed the conflict between the structure and the agency.

To begin with, it is vital to define these two important notions. A social structure is an organized set of social institutions and models of institutionalized relationships that together make up a society (Lemke, 2015). The social network is believed to be the result of social interaction; thus, it directly qualifies this process. Social structures are not immediately visible to the untrained observer, but they are always present and affect all human experience dimensions in society.From the standpoint of macro sociologies, such structures include family, religion, school, economy, politics, and others. Since these organizations create a specific behavioral pattern for the large groups, they hold enormous power within the society (Vandenberghe, 2018). At a micro level, these social systems are viewed as interactions between individuals within specific institutions. Therefore, analyzing cooperation in a community can help create an extended pattern of societal rules.

Meanwhile, the agency alludes to the individual’s thoughts, feelings, and actions that express their power. Free will is an independent ability or ability of a person to act at will. This capacity impacts the cognitive beliefs organization, which was previously shaped through their own experience and perception of the societal system and the individual structures. In addition, they include the circumstances of the environment in which the person lives and the status given them from birth (Vandenberghe, 2018). Disagreements about the degree of free will often lead to conflict between parties, such as parents and children (Lemke, 2015). Agency has also been determined as a temporarily implemented process since it is comprised of three distinctive constitutive elements: iteration, practical evaluation, and projectivity. All these elements constitute the integral part of the agency as a separate unit. People use these elements for self-study of different features of the agency’s activities in order to draw conclusions about the broader concept. The iterative element of agency helps to reactivate previous patterns of behavior while performing some activity.

Thus, actors have routine actions in response to typical situations that help them maintain identity, interaction, and institutions over time. The projective part involves the process of imagining probable future directions of actions related to the actor’s needs, fears, and desires. The last element, which is the practice evaluation element, presupposes the ability of people to make practical and normative judgments. These judgments must be made among the alternative possible actions in order to respond to the context, demand, or current evolving situation. Agents can either demand respect or disrespect from people who have higher status; their requirement depends on what they need (Rigby, Woulfin and März, 2016). Moreover, these examples may prove that a choice depends on what a person feels in a given context; thus, deviant kinds of behavior may be viewed as a self-defense mechanism. Simultaneously, agency in this context can also take the form of staying in an institution in order to achieve success, while social structures try to hinder it.

While the structure’s concept stands for the recurrent measures that impact and restrict choices and opportunities for a human being, the agency can act independently and make the desired decisions. The debate between structure and agency presumes that a person must either act irrespectively of social standards or abide by the dictated norms. Sociologists perceive the relationship between social structures and free wil as a continually evolving dialectic (Rigby, Woulfin and März, 2016). Simply saying, such kind of relationship implies two-side connection where one element depends on another and in order to change one, it is vital to change another. To view the relationship between structure and Agency as dialectical is to argue that while the social structures forms individuals also form the social structure (Robertson and Turner, 1989). Afterwards, society is a social creation; the formation and maintenance of societal order requires the cooperation of people linked by social relations. Therefore, while the existing social structure frames the lives of individuals, they have the ability to make decisions and express them in behavior.

It is vital to view the ideas suggested by Parsons and Foucault to establish an understanding of structure and agency. Primarily, Talcott Parsons has contributed much effort to the structure-agency conflict and elaborated a theory of actions (some people called it “structural functionalism”) in the 1930s (Parsons, 2013). As a structural theorist, he and his colleagues were also functionalists; thus, they observed that society’s social structure is a more critical unity than the individual. Functionalism is a theory which aims at discovering specific rules rather than liberties. Once people are in a society, they are subjected to socialization within their surroundings, such as family, education, politics, and religion (Rigby, Woulfin and März, 2016). Therefore, the initiator of this theory, Durkheim, considers the society as a system, a unity of interrelated elements that form a whole (Parsons, 2013). There is a link between all these pieces and agents of collectivization, and all of them at once contribute to the alimentation of society as a whole. The author claimed that there are no contradictions between structure and agency, and all the problems related to this topic result from wrong interpretation (Parsons, 2013). Therefore, Parsons proposed his tenets to unveil his standpoint.

Talcott Parsons observed society as a whole unit of interconnected details. He argued that the social structure has four main functional prerequisites: adaptation, goal achievement, integration, and pattern maintenance. They can be seen as impediments that society must manage if it wants to survive (Vandenberghe, 2018). The function of any part of the social system is understood as its contribution to functional premises’ satisfaction. Goal achievement refers to all societies’ need to set goals that social activities are aimed at achieving (Parsons, 2013). Procedures for setting goals and prioritizing between destinations are institutionalized in the form of political systems. Governments not only set goals but also allocate resources to achieve them. Even in the so-called free enterprise system, the economy is regulated and governed by governments’ laws.

Integration was identified as the first element as it primarily alludes to “conflict resolution.” It is vital since it is responsible for coordinating and reciprocal adaptation of critical sectors of the social system. Meanwhile, legal norms determine and create standardized relations between society members and institutions; therefore, they decrease conflict power. When a debate occurs, it is resolved by the judicial system and, therefore, does not lead to the collapse of the social network. The next element concerns maintaining a pattern which presumes to defend a fundamental set of values institutionalized in society. Institutions capable of performing this function view the family, education, and religion as its integral part. According to Parsons, the assets of an organization derive from religious norms (Parsons, 2013). Talcott Parsons claimed that any social structure has functional premises that should be analyzed to prove that society is appropriately organized. In this way, all elements of culture allude to the role they perform.

To prove this idea, Parsons developed the actions system, which was based on four subsystems: personal, behavioral cultural, and social. Using these aspects, he sought to indicate how humans act autonomously and how such conduct helps to contribute to the emergence of social order. The personality system is responsible for goal-attainment; the behavior helps to adjust the external circumstances; the cultural system provides the actors with norms that urge them for actions, and the social one controls the integration function (Parsons, 2013). Moreover, his theory’s basis undergoes the voluntaristic principles, which presumes that the social rules and half free half dictate people’s decisions.

The actors were a vital part of the society as by interacting with each other they create different structures. Parsons noted that in an efficient system, values and norms are transferred to the actors to develop consciousness and help one conform to the social standards. Even when some people demonstrate deviant behavior, social control helps to sustain the equilibrium. All the subsystems working together allow actors to build an organized social structure and maintain it. Thus, he proved that by acting independently, society members create one design and abide by its rules and regulations. In other words, the subjective consciousness of each actor contributes to social actions. His ideas demonstrate no structure-agency perception; however, the action theory identifies the structure as predominant (Peterson, 2018). Yet, Parsons did not consider society’s ever-changing nature, where the concept may well rotate depending on the circumstances.

On the other hand, Michel Foucault, the French postmodernist, has been tremendously compelling in forming the societal system’s understandings. He also explored the notions of structure and agency through his own theoretical approach (Foucault, 1979). In general, his structuralist works presumed that individuals’ actions are primarily determined by social networks. According to Wheatley (2019), “this is the idea that the social structure is the predominant governing force of social reality” (p. 2). The statement implies that all the societal constituents create the surroundings as they impose rules and regulations on the population.

Foucault dedicated two works, namely Discipline and Punish and The Use of Pleasure, to unveil his philosophical perception of structure and agency. For instance, in the first framework, Foucault established that each crime is directly followed by strict punishment; thus, the distribution of power made people feel compelled to abide by the laws (Foucault, 2012). As a result, defined agency as people who do not follow the disciplinary regime and typically try to overthrow the authority by rioting (Foucault, 1979). These actors object and critique power and are commonly called “agency of indiscipline” (Squire, 2017) Therefore, he came up with the idea that a human being cannot live autonomously because they can never be free from the regimes of power.

Moreover, Michael Foucault considered socialization as a process of increased complexity. Thus, he claimed that governing people should not be forceful but should instead demonstrate versatile equilibrium. Besides, he believed individuals are capable of creating themselves by using miscellaneous technologies, which in reality dominate people imposing control on them (Foucault, 2012). Such an approach was identified since Foucault was a proponent of structuralism, and his ideas were solely based on elements of the organized hierarchy.

It seems quite reasonable to take into consideration Foucault’s hostility to the individual as a critique of autonomy. Such an opinion may exist since multiple modern social and moral philosophies, such as postmodernism highlighted the improbability of an autonomous subject standing outside of society (Foucault, 2012). They did this, at least partially, because of the strong influence of holism on modern philosophy. If all experiences and all reasoning necessarily epitomize theory and its assumptions, the subject can only perceive beliefs in the context of an existing belief network. Suppose a person can have the knowledge and exercise his mind only in relation to an initial set of theories. In that case, not a single researcher can imagine what they do so unless someone take them, at least initially, in the context of the set of theories available to him by his community. Therefore, holism implies that the subject cannot, even in principle, have experience or exercise his mind outside of all social circumstances. As a result, Foucault concludes that the person cannot ever be autonomous.

Many of the difficulties, but also some of the adoration associated with Foucault’s work, stem from his characteristic understanding of the difference between autonomy and free will or free will. Sometimes, when he talks about the omnipresence of force or the implausibility of the idea of a fundamental subject, he seems to reject only autonomy (Foucault, 1979). On other occasions, however, he also seems to reject free will since his description of confession as self-regulation under a regime of power or an individual as a simple consequence of control. Thus, it is possible to make a distinction between Foucault’s opinion the one who opposes the subject as an agent and his other claim that it consists not only of authorities.

Undoubtedly, the first option considers a man only as a product of societal power and presents to be more familiar (Las Heras, 2018). Foucault uncompromisingly declares the subject dead; moreover, he suggests that “the self” is merely a construct of episteme. Therefore, he creates stories that intentionally exclude allusions to deliberate and new actions by individuals. Nevertheless, Foucault’s composition, which allows the subject to constitute themselves in the circumstances of a regime of power, appears, especially in recent works on the ethics of governance and self-help.

Nonetheless, Foucault’s standpoint on the structure-agency debate did not entirely imply that individuals were devoid of free choice. It rather signified that there were no such notions as ‘individual’ or ‘freedom’ within a social structure. The actor was merely a byproduct of the societal system, which emphasized the philosopher’s works. According to Foucault, the structure stands for norms and values which regulate and shape human behavior in a society (Foucault, 1979). Therefore, his perception of structure and agency was closely related to Parsons’ tenets. However, Foucault also focuses on the historical part as a contributor to agents’ modes of thinking.

In conclusion, it seems reasonable to state that both Parsons and Foucault were functionalists and their views on the structure-agency debate were similar. Both considered social structure to be predominant and governing human behavior. Their opinions were based on different tenets; for instance, Parsons developed the theory of action while Foucault revealed these concepts in terms of several scientific frameworks related to historical events. It is essential to mention that Parsons considered the structure-agency debate as a mere problem made up by individuals. Meanwhile, Foucault concentrated more on proving the idea that this issue exists but still the society and its standards must dominate human being so as to avoid the upcoming chaos. However, despite the multiple attempts to solve this debate, scientists did not come to terms; therefore, people are still arguing whether they rule the society or the society rules them.

Reference List

Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, M. (2012) The history of sexuality: an introduction. New York: Vintage Books.

Las Heras, J. (2018) ‘Politics of power: Engaging with the structure-agency debate from a class-based perspective’, Politics, 38(2), pp. 165–181.

Lemke, T. (2015) ‘New Materialisms: Foucault and the ‘Government of Things’’, Theory, Culture & Society, 32(4), pp. 3–25.

Parsons, T. (2013) The Social System. London: Routledge.

Peterson, J. (2018) ‘Structure, agency and transatlantic relations in the Trump era’, Journal of European Integration, 40(5), pp. 637-652.

Rigby, J., Woulfin, S., and März, V. (2016) ‘Understanding how structure and agency influence education policy implementation and organizational change’, American Journal of Education Volume, 122(3).

Robertson, R. and Turner, B. S. (1989) ‘Talcott Parsons and Modern Social Theory — An Appreciation’, Theory, Culture & Society, 6(4), pp. 539–558.

Squire, V. (2017) ‘Unauthorised migration beyond structure/agency? Acts, interventions, effects’, Politics, 37(3), pp. 254–272.

Vandenberghe, F. (2018) ‘Sociology as Practical Philosophy and Moral Science’, Theory, Culture & Society, 35(3), pp. 77–97.

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Structure vs. Agency. Foucault’s View

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