Margaret Archer
Encyclopedia
Margaret Archer is Professor of Sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 at the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

, UK, since 1973. She is best known for coining the term elisionism
Elisionism
Elisionism is a philosophical standpoint encompassing various social theories. Elisionist theories are diverse, however they are unified in their adherence to process philosophy as well as their assumption that the social and the individual cannot be separated. The term elisionism was coined by...

 in her 1995 book Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach.

She studied at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

, graduating B.Sc. in 1964 and Ph.D. in 1967 with a thesis on The Educational Aspirations of English Working Class Parents. She was a lecturer at the University of Reading
University of Reading
The University of Reading is a university in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The University was established in 1892 as University College, Reading and received its Royal Charter in 1926. It is based on several campuses in, and around, the town of Reading.The University has a long tradition...

 from 1966 to 1973.

She is one of the most influential theorists in the critical realist
Critical realism
In the philosophy of perception, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events...

 tradition. At the 12th World Congress of Sociology, she was elected as the first woman President of the International Sociological Association
International Sociological Association
International Sociological Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to scientific purposes in the field of sociology and social sciences...

, is a founder member of both the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences was established in January 1994 by Pope John Paul II. It is headquartered in the Casina Pio IV in the Vatican. Professor Edmond Malinvaud was its first president...

 and the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences. She is a Trustee of the Centre for Critical Realism.

She has supervised many PhD students, many of whom have gone on to contribute towards the substantive development of critical realism in the social sciences. Notably, Dr Robert Willmott, author of Education Policy and Realist Social Theory and Dr Justin Cruickshank, senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham.

Analytical Dualism

Archer argues that much social theory suffers from the generic defect of conflation where, due to a reluctance or inability to theorize emergent relationships between social phenomena, causal autonomy is denied to one side of the relation. This can take the form of autonomy being denied to agency with causal efficacy only granted to structure (downwards conflation). Alternatively it can take the form of autonomy being denied to structure with causal efficacy only granted to agency (upwards conflation). Finally it may take the form of central conflation where structure and agency are seen as being co-constitutive i.e. structure is reproduced through agency which is simultaneously constrained and enabled by structure. The most prominent example of central conflation is the structuration
Structuration
The theory of structuration, proposed by Anthony Giddens in The Constitution of Society , is an attempt to reconcile theoretical dichotomies of social systems such as agency/structure, subjective/objective, and micro/macro perspectives...

 theory of Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29...

. While not objecting to this approach on philosophical grounds, Archer does object to it on analytical grounds: by conflating structure and agency into unspecified movements of co-constitution, central conflationary approaches preclude the possibility of sociological exploration of the relative influence of each aspect.

In contradistinction Archer offers the approach of analytical dualism. While recognizing the interdependence of structure and agency (i.e. without people there would be no structures) she argues that they operate on different timescales. At any particular moment, antecedently existing structures constrain and enable agents, whose interactions produce intended and unintended consequences, which leads to structural elaboration and the reproduction or transformation of the initial structure. The resulting structure then provides a similar context of action for future agents. Likewise the initial antecedently existing structure was itself the outcome of structural elaboration resulting from the action of prior agents. So while structure and agency are interdependent, Archer argues that it is possible to unpick them analytically. By isolating structural and/or cultural factors which provide a context of action for agents, it is possible to investigate how those factors shape the subsequent interactions of agents and how those interactions in turn reproduce or transform the initial context. Archer calls this a morphogenetic sequence. Social processes are constituted through an endless array of such sequences but, as a consequence of their temporal ordering, it is possible to disengage any such sequence in order to investigate its internal causal dynamics. Through doing so, argues Archer, it's possible to give empirical accounts of how structural and agential phenomena interlink over time rather than merely stating their theoretical interdependence.

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