rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Theory Beyond Structure and Agency
    sub title: Introducing the Metric/Nonmetric Distinction
  name:
    name part: Guy, Jean-Sébastien.
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
    role:
      role term: aut
    role:
      role term: http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut
  name:
    name part: SpringerLink (Online service)
  type of resource: text
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: gw
    date issued: 2019
    edition: 1st ed. 2019.
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: electronic
    form: electronic resource
    reformatting quality: access
    form: remote
    extent: XIII, 277 p. 6 illus. online resource.
  abstract: "In this insightful and highly readable book, Jean-Sébastien Guy takes us on an intellectual tour de force that makes us see the social world in a different light. A fresh perspective and an essential contribution to the current discussions of social systems and relational sociology." -Jan A. Fuhse, Heisenberg Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany "In this original and provocative book, Jean-Sebastien Guy convincingly shows how the problem of structure and agency that has preoccupied sociologists throughout the history of their discipline amounts to an optical illusion. Employing the concepts of the metric and the nonmetric and using a variety of readily accessible examples, the author proposes an entirely different social theoretical lens that is perceptive to the internal variety of social reality." -Olli Pyyhtinen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Tampere, Finland This book offers a solution for the problem of structure and agency in sociological theory by developing a new pair of fundamental concepts: metric and nonmetric. Nonmetric forms, arising in a crowd made out of innumerable individuals, correspond to social groups that divide the many individuals in the crowd into insiders and outsiders. Metric forms correspond to congested zones like traffic jams on a highway: individuals are constantly entering and leaving these zones so that they continue to exist, even though the individuals passing through them change. Building from these concepts, we can understand "agency" as a requirement for group identity and group membership, thus associating it with nonmetric forms, and "structure" as a building-up effect following the accumulation of metric forms. This reveals the contradiction between structure and agency to be a case of forced perspective, leaving us victim to an optical illusion.
  table of contents: 1. Introduction -- 2. Structure and Agency: Problem and Solution -- 3. DeLanda and the Metric/Nonmetric Distinction -- 4. Metric and Nonmetric in Weber and Durkheim -- 5. Forms and Medium in Luhmann's Systems Theory -- 6. Bourdieu, Giddens and Foucault Through the Metric/Nonmetric Distinction -- 7. Applying the Metric/Nonmetric Distinction -- 8. General Conclusion.
  note: by Jean-Sébastien Guy.
  subject:
    topic: Sociology
  subject:
    topic: Social sciences-Philosophy
  subject:
    topic: Historical sociology
  subject:
    topic: Ontology
  subject:
    topic: Sociological Theory
  subject:
    topic: Social Theory
  subject:
    topic: Historical Sociology
  subject:
    topic: Ontology
  classification: H61
  classification: 300.1
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Springer eBooks
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology
  identifier: 9783030189839
  identifier: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18983-9
  record info:
    record creation date: 190910
    record change date: 20191028091230.0
    record identifier: 978-3-030-18983-9