Peter Berger and His Critics: The Significance of Emergence |
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Authors: | Paul Lewis |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Management, King’s College London, Franklin-Wilkins Building, 150 Stamford Street, London, SE1 9NH, UK |
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Abstract: | Peter Berger has attempted to develop an account of the relationship between social structure and human agency that navigates
a middle way between voluntarism and determinism. Berger’s approach has been criticised by social theorists for reproducing,
rather than transcending, the very errors of voluntarism and determinism that he strives to avoid. However, the critics have
focused on Berger’s explicit, meta-theoretical pronouncements about the nature or ontology of the social world, whilst ignoring
the more sophisticated account of the structure agency relationship that is implicit in, and presupposed by, his substantive
sociological research. The notions of ‘emergence’ and ‘emergent properties’ are used to develop an account of the structure-agency
relationship that is consistent with Berger’s concrete sociological work, whilst avoiding the shortcomings of his explicit
reflections about the nature of the social world. |
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Keywords: | |
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