Structure and Agency According to Shotter
(This is from Ela, not me :) ).
Ela Rossmiller
I propose that we explore Shotter’s philosophy in light of The Great Debate in the social sciences over structure and agency. Recall that early French structuralists (e.g. Levi-Strauss, de Saussure) proposed models of structures that explained the durability and patterning of social phenomena. Some reacted against this, accusing the classic French structuralists of a linguistic and/or social determinism that minimized human agency. Giddens and Bourdieu “saved” structure by offering more subtle, sophisticated models that allowed for greater human agency, e.g. with concepts like “the duality of structure,” and allowed for change over time, e.g. with concepts like “structuration.” Moreover, they explained how structures, capital, and one’s habitus can be not only constraining, but also enabling.
Then along comes Shotter.
Shotter minimizes structure and maximizes agency. While he is not entirely against structure (see p. 14), he does seem to view it as constraining and beside the point. In this vein, he also disparages or minimizes mental models, scripts (p. 17), metaphors, pictures, and, well, even explanations. These don’t really explain human behavior but instead blind us to the possibilities inherent in each moment to engage with life and people in a relationally-responsive way. Our reality is constructed through spontaneous, bodily, expressive conversation with others, and we should view ourselves not as a collection of individuals, but as part of a chiasmically-intertwined whole. The past does not predict the future; we are constantly facing situations for the first time. The situations in which we find ourselves require a fresh response, not the application of a theory constructed from past experience.
While these views may appear radical within the social sciences, they are taken for granted in other fields, e.g. the arts, philosophy, and mysticism. As I read Shotter, I heard echos of Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” and “On Intersubjectivity.” Buber had studied art and philosphy before moving to Hebrew University in 1938 where he taught anthropology and sociology. But the days of such free-ranging interdisciplinarity are over. Social science has never been the same since structuralism, and Shotter wants to stage a jail break.
Indeed, Shotter bemoans the disciplinary constraints of the social sciences and wistfully pines for more creative expression: “In fulfilling our responsibilities as competent and professional academics, we must write systematic texts, objective texts, for we run the risk of being accounted incompetent if we do not. We cannot write literature, novels, poems, or plays.” (p. 23) Of course, Shotter *can* write literature, novels, poems, or plays; however, this raises the question: “But is it social science?”
So, here are my questions for the group:
1. Are the social sciences so defined by the structure/agency debate that you cease to be a social scientist if you exit this debate?
2. Is it a problem that Shotter can’t write novels and be considered a social scientist?
Ela Rossmiller
I propose that we explore Shotter’s philosophy in light of The Great Debate in the social sciences over structure and agency. Recall that early French structuralists (e.g. Levi-Strauss, de Saussure) proposed models of structures that explained the durability and patterning of social phenomena. Some reacted against this, accusing the classic French structuralists of a linguistic and/or social determinism that minimized human agency. Giddens and Bourdieu “saved” structure by offering more subtle, sophisticated models that allowed for greater human agency, e.g. with concepts like “the duality of structure,” and allowed for change over time, e.g. with concepts like “structuration.” Moreover, they explained how structures, capital, and one’s habitus can be not only constraining, but also enabling.
Then along comes Shotter.
Shotter minimizes structure and maximizes agency. While he is not entirely against structure (see p. 14), he does seem to view it as constraining and beside the point. In this vein, he also disparages or minimizes mental models, scripts (p. 17), metaphors, pictures, and, well, even explanations. These don’t really explain human behavior but instead blind us to the possibilities inherent in each moment to engage with life and people in a relationally-responsive way. Our reality is constructed through spontaneous, bodily, expressive conversation with others, and we should view ourselves not as a collection of individuals, but as part of a chiasmically-intertwined whole. The past does not predict the future; we are constantly facing situations for the first time. The situations in which we find ourselves require a fresh response, not the application of a theory constructed from past experience.
While these views may appear radical within the social sciences, they are taken for granted in other fields, e.g. the arts, philosophy, and mysticism. As I read Shotter, I heard echos of Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” and “On Intersubjectivity.” Buber had studied art and philosphy before moving to Hebrew University in 1938 where he taught anthropology and sociology. But the days of such free-ranging interdisciplinarity are over. Social science has never been the same since structuralism, and Shotter wants to stage a jail break.
Indeed, Shotter bemoans the disciplinary constraints of the social sciences and wistfully pines for more creative expression: “In fulfilling our responsibilities as competent and professional academics, we must write systematic texts, objective texts, for we run the risk of being accounted incompetent if we do not. We cannot write literature, novels, poems, or plays.” (p. 23) Of course, Shotter *can* write literature, novels, poems, or plays; however, this raises the question: “But is it social science?”
So, here are my questions for the group:
1. Are the social sciences so defined by the structure/agency debate that you cease to be a social scientist if you exit this debate?
2. Is it a problem that Shotter can’t write novels and be considered a social scientist?
posted by Efe Sevin at 6:58 PM
3 Comments:
We ended our insightful discussion in class today with a reflection on the uses of Shotter's arguments for the study of international relations. The applicability of Shotter's argument first jumped out at me at the beginning of Chapter One where he touches on the roles of talk and the background in shaping power relations:
"Thus an important change occurs, not simply when one or another side in an institution wins an argument, but when such an opportunity is used to change the style of future discussions, i.e. the permitted forms of talk within that institution" (15).
Immediately I thought, "neocolonialism." After the independence of many countries from the colonial administrations of Europe, political and economic power relations remained fundamentally unchanged. Perhaps different vocabularies were used to describe the new relationships, but the fact remained that external capital-intensive value chains dominated local economies with close ties to local elites. Within a neocolonial context poverty continues. The tension between those struggling to get out of poverty and those seeking greater profit margins produces a dialogue. In Shotter's terms, the nature of this dialog both informs and is informed by the shared and individual backgrounds of the actors.
On one hand, the dialog is a repetition of the colonial power struggles. As one may expect, the the post-colonial anti-neocolonial attitudes reflect pre-independence discourses about the right to freedom from oppressive or exploitative colonial regimes. People are angry about exploitation of public goods by governments and corporations both local and foreign.
On the other hand, the situation is entirely new. We should not discount the game-changing effect that the independence movements had on shaping nations and identities. Later in his book, Shotter introduces the concept of "therapeutic re-authoring." Although Shotter applies the concept to couples therapy the concept may extend to international relations as well. Shotter emphasizes the force with which dialog can reshape relationships. In a neocolonial context dialog between contending actors is continual, albeit varied. At times the dialog is acrimonious, reconciliatory, under-handed, indirect, or silent.
Given the new and old aspects of a neocolonial dialog IR scholars may use Shotter to achieve nuanced accounts of relational changes between actors. While a conventional view may be that nothing has changed and that the "new" colonialism is as bad as the "old" one, Shotter gives us the tools to look at changes in relationships through time. Most of the examples Shotter gives are at the individual level. However, in my view, the relational-responsive lens may be applied in and between other conventional levels in IR: the state, the region, the group.
Thanks Caroline, for connecting Shotter’s work to IR – I was having a little trouble making that link. I felt that I was able to see more clearly how this book connects to social theory than to IR. For example, his points on the ‘politics of identity’ reminded me of what we’ve been reading in Social Theory regarding postmodernism, race and gender (70).
So Shotter suggests that instead of seeking to “solve” problems, we instead should struggle to create new pathways of understanding. Shotter believes that if we conduct our research around dialogical practices, we should then see a whole new array of “struggles” (69). These struggles can then lead to where “those who are concerned with finding a ‘history’ or a ‘tradition’ of their own, have begun to object to the monological, ahistorical systems of ‘central-planning and administration’ which exclude them” (69). I was intrigued with this statement and how it mirrored feminists’ critiques of postmodernism and subjecthood. Could Shotter offer a way out of this problem? Would it make a difference to this issue if we focus more on the dialogic relations between people instead of people as subjects?
Does this remind anyone of Bhabha, or is it just me?
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