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Conceptualising Constraint: Mouzelis, Archer and the Concept of Social Structure

Kieran Healy

This paper outlines and evaluates recent contributions by Nicos Mouzelis and Margaret Archer to the structure-agency debate. Mouzelis offers an internal reconstruction of Giddens's structuration theory; Archer an external alternative. I show that, although representing an advance on Giddens's position, Mouzelis's account fails because he relies on the former's definition of structure as comprising rules and resources. I then examine Archer's solution to the problem. I argue that her definition of activity-dependence makes her account of the relationship between agents and structures unclear. I outline an alternative account in terms of supervenience, and argue that it contains the minimum ontological claim necessary for a realist understanding of the structure-agent relationship.

Key Words: Archer • Mouzelis • social ontology • social structure • supervenience

Sociology, Vol. 32, No. 3, 509-522 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038598032003006
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