Search results for "Structure and agency"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
The resilience of Finnish farms: Exploring the interplay between agency and structure
2020
Resilience implies, in its essence, the capacity of a system to tolerate disturbances while retaining its essential functions. In the context of agriculture, resilience thinking calls for considering the ability of farms to thrive in turbulent times along with the ability of the ecological system – in which the agricultural production is embedded – to retain its function and integrity. Resilience is a relevant conceptual tool to analyse the contradictory management demands that farms are facing within the current neoliberal market regime: being economically viable and environmentally sustainable. In this study, the resilience of farms was operationalised through farmers' perceptions concern…
Gendered Migratory Pathways: Exploring the Work Trajectories of Long-Term Romanian Migrants
2018
This chapter analyzes the work trajectories of Romanian returnees who lived and worked for a long period of time in other EU countries. To understand the evolution of the work dimension of migrants’ lives, the chapter is built on subjective evaluations of their work experiences before migration, during their stay abroad, and upon return. The qualitative methodology and homogenous sample allow us to employ a gendered perspective on the relationship between international migration and individuals’ work trajectories. Employing a classical sociological distinction between agency and structure, the chapter illustrates four contrasting patterns of work trajectories. Agentic models are differently…
Structure and agency in capabilities-enhancing homeless services: Housing first, housing quality and consumer choice
2021
The capabilities approach, a framework for understanding and measuring inequality, stipulates that equality is best understood as the freedom to do and be within a particular context. Homelessness has been referred to as a situation of ‘capabilities deprivation’, and the extent to which homeless services restore or enhance capabilities is of increasing interest. As part of a large, eight-country study of homelessness in Europe, we examined the extent to which adults with histories of perceived the services they receive as capabilities-enhancing. We collected data at two time points: baseline (nt1 = 565) and follow-up (nt2 = 399). Measures included perceived capabilities, choice and housing …
Goethe's dream
2009
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) defined living organisms as objects with an intrinsic purpose, which are self‐organized in such a way that every part is a function of the whole and the whole is a function of every part, and in which “nothing is for nothing”. Kant already anticipated the tension between agency and structure, and between forward and backward causation. He also perceived living beings as entities that, being extremely complex, are not amenable to descriptions based on laws that are similar to the fundamental laws of physics: “There will never be a Newton of a grass blade,” he wrote. Less metaphorically, Kant believed that science would not be able to understan…