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The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences Ali Murat Özdemir* Abstract: Despite its frequent use in the social sciences literature, the content of the concept of structure still maintains its ambiguity. When the literature is examined as a whole, there exist numerous theoretical approaches, instead of a single comprehensive theory of social structure that explains the concept of social structure. Different theoretical approaches define the concept in different ways. It is evident that in theoretical practice, these different approaches are rarely investigated with reference to the theoretical effects of the concept of structure. This article focuses on the various modes of conceptualization of the term ‘structure’ in the context of two different structural traditions, namely American and European approaches. Key Words: Structuration, structuralism, structural sociology, critical realism. INTRODUCTON When the interest the concept of structure captures in the field of social sciences and the references it receives are considered, it is striking that the explanations on the content of the concept and attempts to understand it are highly limited. Even though this can be explained to some extent by the fact that while the content of the concept is determined by the studies conducted in the fields of political philosophy and linguistics, its use is realized in a wide range of fields of study within the social sciences discipline, a call for in-depth studies on the concept should not be remained unanswered. As for the relevant Turkish literature, which is limited to a few number of translations and fewer number of copyrighted works in terms of debates on its content, such a call can be said to be more ac- * Assoc. Prof., Hacettepe University, FEAS, Department of International Relations. TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration, Volume 5 No2 June 2011, p. 1-39. 2 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration tual compared to the Western literature.1 Not focusing on the theoretical effects of the concept of structure, i.e. the effects of the explanation modalities used on the relationship established with production relations, is the major factor that differs the Turkish literature from the Western literature. This study reviews the content of the concept of structure by giving prominence to a series of basic arguments on the concept in the study fields within social sciences. Different theorization modalities analyzed in the literature were not approached in a consuming manner; these were subjected to a selective evaluation by focusing on the use of the concept of structure in the fields of study that fall within the scope of the disciplines of public administration, international political economics and international relations and on the theoretical effects of its use. The approaches that were subjected to a selective evaluation have been presented by the critical interpretation method, instead of simple definition. To this end, firstly, the meaning ascribed to the concept by American Structural Sociology. Secondly, Continental European approaches were discussed. While presenting Continental European approaches, current arguments on the theoretical effects of the concept of structure were taken into consideration, which thus led to the need for using two sub-titles. In this context, under the first sub-title of the latter subject, the meaning ascribed to the concept of structure and under the second sub-title, the Structuralist Marxism’s approach to the concept – and the meanings ascribed by Structuralist-derived approaches, though not literally overlap with pure and Structuralist Marxism – were scrutinized. The study was concluded by emphasizing the importance of the implications of meanings ascribed to the concept of structure on our practices of perceiving and intervening in the world. 1 Despite the relevant Turkish literature is less extensive than its Western examples, it involves a number studies on in the fields of science of politics, anthropology, linguistics, sociology and ve international relations (see: Bkz. Acar-Savran (2006), Çelebi (2001), Gökçe (1996, 2007), Kıray (1982), Kongar (1999). Yet the mentioned studies were not included in the scope of the analysis, as they did not focus on the theoretical effects of various structure conceptualizations. The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 3 The US-Based Approaches In its broadest sense, structure is a term that imposed itself in the effort to think rigorously about the way things or events get inscribed in a consciousness proposing grids or patterns without which they would not even appear (Rabate, 2003: 5). Questioning is usually conducted in such a way so as to cover the arguments on the ontology of the given consciousness, and how this consciousness can know. The concept comes into use as a manifestation of a general attitude that criticizes the approaches that overlook the system while frequently interpreting the events. However, the theoretical expressions of the attitude mentioned differ. Even though the concept of structure is given different contents by different theoretical approaches, it can be ascertained that the structure-oriented studies tend to give prominence to or to emphasize investigating synchronization, i.e. various elements comprising a structure and their interaction, against diachrony. The concept of structure developed within the context of studies of two deep-rooted traditions from two different geographical areas throughout the 20th century: the US-based approach and Continental European tradition (see: Baert, 1998; Harland, 1993; Sturrock, 2003; Swingewood, 1998; West, 1998). One of the fields of study obviously marked by the USbased approach is the American Structural Sociology. It is possible to detect deep influence of Durkheimian in the intellectual roots of this approach. However, Durkheimism actually entered into the American tradition by Merton and Talcott Parsons’s studies, thus via their interpretations (Wight, 2006). The lateperiod Parsons’s holistic, anti-psychological point of view brought a systematic society theory, which was comprehended in an integrated manned, against the anti-theoretical sociological empiricism that prevailed until the 1940s. Parsons was also in search of a theoretical position against the Marxist understanding of structure. His studies emphasized the voluntarist aspects of action and involved a functionalism that focused on the roles of individuals. The Parsonian approach with traces of 4 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration Durkheimism, which internalized the historical foundation of society as a process and structure in a static social solidarity and social consensus, found, with its current stance, an orthodox place in the American sociology in the 1950s (see: Koehler, 1971; Swingewood, 1998: 268-271). The style of analysis mentioned excluded the studies conducted based on structuralized patterns of social exchange, social power relations and finally, the themes such as change and conflict (Baert, 1998: 50-51). Meanwhile, Merton, while defining universalism and communism as scientific myths based on the connection he established between impersonality and consensus, spoke from this tradition, which was in search of a non-Marxist structure (Alexander, 1995: 114). The American Structural Sociology internalized Durkheim, ignoring one of the two meanings he ascribed to social facts (see: Sturrock, 2003; Tiryakiyan, 1962). Durkheim’s concept of facts of social morphology2 (the volume and density of population, birth and death rates, ecology) are “collective representations consisting of collective beliefs, values, norms and conventions as well as “collective relationships” that are interdependencies and antagonisms among individuals that are formed into divisions of labor and patterns of solidarity. According to Merton and Talcott Parsons, social fact refers to the set of facts, which Durkheim exclusively used as the facts of social morphology (Baert, 1998: 14, Scott, 2001: 80). The production of social facts exclusively from social morphology allowed this tradition to construct structure for the actor as an external mechanism. Thus, the isolated reactions of the actor, who entered into the completed structure and exposed to its restrictive effects could be scientifically examined. When the attitude of considering structure as an external mechanism is combined with the American Structural Sociology’s epistemology that developed in the context of 2 In its common acamedic use, the term social morphology refers to systematic knowledge production modality for determining forms composed of observable and measurable quantities resorted to while defining a given social or ethnic group or social layers of this given group (and the discipline dealing with this task). The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 5 methodological individualism, some sort of psychologism (which is interested not in motives of the object, but observable objective consequences of behavior) would be inevitable, and this happened, as expected: The actor existed before structure, and was exposed to the restrictive effects of structure. Now, the measurement of the individual’s reactions to external factors (with the explanatory references to the same individual-subject strategies) could be considered a legal target. There are different definitions by the US-based approaches, albeit preserving common characteristics within the framework given above (Hawkes, 2004; Eagleton 2004a; Giddens, 2000; Strurrock 2003). Among these definitions, the definition of “structure as patterns of aggregate behavior that are stable over time” comes to prominence (Wight, 2006: 127). This definition involves agents/actors as well. According to this definition, first the given individuals take action, then these actions start to display an order, and eventually, structure comes out. Structure, once it becomes clear, now can pose restrictive effects on actors, who have created it with their behavior. When social behavior patterns, institutions and organizations are accepted as abstractions obtained from behaviors of individuals, this given definition of structure and methodological individualism will be compatible with each other. In that case, structure, as the environment, where connections are materialized between real people, who take action, will not embody collective representations such as the state, economy, culture and social class; social consequences will be approached as the products of external effects that are assumed to create the existing state. Then, in some of the expansions made based on this definition of structure, being of structure, which is accepted as an abstraction (taking as starting point the view that abstractions individually cannot produce causal effect) is imperiled as an independent variable as well. In some versions of the US-based approach, structure is conceptualized as “law-like regularities that govern the behavior of social facts” (Porpora, 1998; Tiryakiyan, 1962). Waltz’s 6 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration methodological3 structuralism that explains the consequences of social facts by terms of structure (explaining social facts with social facts), but which excludes the effect of structure on the construction and shaping of its own elements, can be examined under this second definition. If we observe regularities among social facts (demographic or ecological data sets), then we can speak about the existence of a structure. Here, the idea of structure as an external restrictive environment for agency/actor once more manifests itself. However, in this definition, unlike the previous definition, the Durkheimian approach, which argues that social facts must be explained by social facts is determinant and the explanations made taking as starting point the elements of structure (like competitiveness of human being by his/her nature) are excluded from theorization. In the said case, psychological expansions are excluded; methodological individualism becomes invalid as a method and eventually, the concept of structure, by its form we discuss here, turns into a method (Wight, 2006: 127). Both definitions from the US tradition, which we discuss in the context of the US tradition, are based on a morphological understanding of social fact. As the morphological approach to social facts imagines structure as an entity exterior to the elements composing it, it constitutes an obstacle to the effort to include exchanges between structure and agency/subject/actor in the theoretical calculation. It should also be noted that interpreting criticisms on the USbased definitions of structure, whose common point to be based on “morphological description of social facts, which have been deeply influenced by the Weberian ontological individualism and Deweyian pragmatism (and pragmatic truth) embodies potentials for conceptualizing the possible interactions between structure and agency/subject/actor.4 3 Waltz can be attributed ontological structuralism, as he argues that structures in fact do not exist. 4 Ethnomethodology and Symbolic Interactionism are examples to interpreting criticisms. Ethnomethodology, which does not directly see structural elements of social interaction as object of research, but focuses on the method that people use for interpreting or ascribing meaning to social fact, which it is not directly interested in its structure, maintains that all forms of social interaction has a systematic and organized character. In this aspect, the starting point of Ethnomethodology is not the acts imposed by stable relationship patterns on The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 7 The tendency to recognize a subject that comes before the meaning ascribed to social facts and structure gave an opportunity to the US-based approaches to put a distance between themselves and Continental approach.5 In the US-based approaches, structure becomes “a set of social facts for individuals” or “the environment, where individuals act”, and it realizes its effect via individual behavior. The measurement of the effect is possible with individual-focused empirical studies. Over time, this attitude that combined empiricism with functionalism would approach to structure as the simple aggregate of the existing characteristics of their own elements, and it would also be selective while inquiring the functional relationship of the parts, which it manufactured from its own paradigm with the whole (see: Benton and Craib, 2008: 76). The American Structural Sociology, which is known with its devotion to the methodological individualism in some of its examples, but actually to the positivist method in general, kept off linguistic studies, semiotics and the Freudian approaches from those entered into this system of relationships, but how come social interaction, which is somewhat evident, has become regardable and measurable. The objective is to explore common methods of the members of the related society in their everyday actions. However, the mentioned interest in exploration - within the scope of criticism of structuralism – is ironic not as disinterest in structure, but to the extent it corresponds to an interest in the structure of everyday activities, (see: Keat and Urry, 2001:221-223; Swingewood, 1998: 319-321). According to Symbolic Interactionism, humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things. Behavior is the product of the process of ascribing meaning. Social interaction determines the content of meanings. Meanings that acquire their content during the interaction undergo new changes and transform depending on the interpretation processes, which their users employ in other interactions. In this scope, for Symbolic Interactionists, there is no knowledge independent from the known by humans investigated by the social scientist. The thing that appears in the course of our actions and interactions is that we deliberate (and thus construct) the meanings, which we ascribe to the objects in our world (Benton and Craib, 2008: 115-116). What is important in both movements, which include a similarity limited to some kind of instrumentalism adopted by positivists, who have problem with the status of unobservale and/or unmeasurable theoretical entities, is that in the reception of relevant social facts, the consequences produced by the reflective thoughts of action groups (actors) involve potentials that break the one-way determinism of classical concept of structure (see. Baert, 1998). As it is seen, in both ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism, the determinism of the concept of structure is indirect. Due to this reason, in this study that mainly focuses on the theoretical effects of the concept of structure, we briefly touch on important criticisms towards the US-based the practice of mainstream sociology (and thus Ethnomethodology and Symbolic Interactionism). 5 For instance, Merton places the rejection of continental structuralism as the second defining characteristic of his understanding of structural sociology (Merton, 1975: 32). 8 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration its content from the very beginning (Swingewood, 1998; Alexander, 1995).6 Later on, with the Talcott Parsons’s structural functionalism and his systems theory, its content entirely differed from the contents of the expansions of Structural Sociology, the Continental approaches, which developed as an anti essentialist movement having the tendency to consider the role of the subject less important than structure and especially that of Structuralism. The recognition of the constraint effect of structure by both American and Continental approaches provides a convenient criterion for their comparison. The constraint effect made it possible to approach to the societies as integrated systems in both understandings. The indirect influence of Marx and Durkheim on the understanding of structure has determining importance for both approaches (Sturrock, 2003). The Continental European-Based Approaches The term Continental Europe has not a clear content just like the term US-based approaches, and it corresponds to a very comprehensive field of study. The term, in its broadest sense, refers to an approach opposed to the analytical philosophy prevailing in English-speaking world. In this sense, the Continental European-Approach covers a broad field ranging from philosophers like Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, Habermas, Derrida, Foucault and Giddens to the movements of thought like Hegelism, Marxism, Critical Theory, Existentialism, Structuration, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Structuralism and PostStructuralism (see: West, 1993: 15). In that case, when we prefer the above-mentioned title, we speak about a diversity of movements of thought related with each other (mostly via opposition), rather than a tradition, This study, among various 6 Approaching to the relationships betwen structure and subject by using the expansions of the structuralist tradition dominated byFreud and psychoanalysis and a sicentific realistic epistemology - instead of positivism - rather than phenomenology, gestalt, semiotic and linguistic studies, are the distinctive characteristics of continental structuralism. The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 9 definitions of structure, will only focuses on the titles “Structure in Structuration Theory” and “Marxism and Structure, as these allow for precise determinations in this study that investigates the theoretical effects of the concept of structure. Durkheim’s influence is apparent in the social fact understanding of Structuration Theory and Structuralism, i.e. the Continental-based approach. However, these two theoretical approaches, which developed in the Continental Europe, prefer to conceptualize social fact as collective representations composed of collective beliefs, values, norms and conventions as well as collective relationships that are interdependencies and antagonisms among individuals that are formed into divisions of labor and patterns of solidarity (Baert, 1998; Porpora, 1987; Scott, 2001; Wight, 2006). Social fact in its latter meaning (collective representations and collective relationships), which is inherent in Durkheim’s studies, laid foundation for a different concept of structure. When interdependencies deriving from solidarity and divisions of labor, collective beliefs, values, norms and conventions are approached as social facts, they become inherent in the modalities of existence, names and identities of elements and actors comprising structure existence. Now, the individual or another actor cannot be considered exterior to social facts. In this context, the source of knowledge and values used of the actor will be moved outside his center (Eagle ton, 2004a: 134). In such a theoretical stance, social facts transform from being elements that determine the actor, who has somehow come into the world before them, into elements having constructional effect on the actor. Here, the decisive effect is based on reasons a piori for them. Structure in the Structuration Theory As mentioned above, the Continental European-Based approach is not holistic. Among the definitions developed by the studies that brought a holistic approach to the relationships between structure and subject, first Anthony Giddens’s definition of structure will be discussed. Giddens, with his definition of structure, which he developed through his arguments with 10 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration Luhmann – in the context of the system problem - and many interpreters from Frankfurt School and its circles – in the context of rationality, has a distinguished place in today’s political economy arguments.7 Taking Giddens as starting point, the “facilities” brought by defining structure as rules and resources were put into use in almost all constructive perspectives.8 This approach was also applied to some neoliberal and Gramsciah perspectives.9 Giddens accepts social facts as collective representations, and in this sense, he keeps distance with the American-based mainstream approaches. It does not seem possible to say that in Giddens’s works, the concept of structure is recognized as interdependencies deriving from solidarity and social consensus among individuals, and collective relationships stemming from conflicts. This enables Giddens to conduct an argument (within the European-based approach) against Marxism’s concept of structure, without falling into gaps of the American tradition. The Giddensian perspective approaches to structure as a set of rules and resources. This definition is immanent in Giddens’s approach to structuration (Giddens, 1981). According to Giddens, structures can be analyzed as rules and resources. Here, a distinction is made between structure and system. Social systems are composed of patterns of behavior between actors and collectivities reproduced across time and space. At the point we reach, it is seen that Giddens distinguishes a part of Durkheim’s understanding of social fact within itself as struc7 Like Habermas, Offe and Keane, Giddens too identifies basic contradictions at the heart of the systems of rationality which structure contemporary societies. But contrary to the arguments of the Frankfurt School, in Giddens’s studies, class implications and/or effects of the idea of order are systematically shunted aside; instead of the idea of class inequality and perspectives for eliminating inequality, a diversity of cultures are given prominence (West, 1998:287). However, according to Habermas, since the principle of destructive critical principle as the keystone of a sociology based on postmodern imagery, which is effective in modernity, will not be assimilated in a formless pluralist culture that has neither center nor structure, the said shift of perspective will have not constructive, but destructive consequences (Swingewood, 1998:376). 8 See: Kratochwil (1989), Onuf (1989) Wendt (1999). 9 See; Piore, M. and Sabel, C. (1984). The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 11 ture and system. That is to say, while the mainstream American tradition gives prominence to ‘facts of social morphology” given in Durkheim’s definition, Giddens subjects “collective representations” to the same procedure; he excludes interdependencies deriving from solidarity and divisions of labor among individuals and collective relationships stemming from conflicts from the content of social facts. As a result of Giddens’s maneuver, social systems turn into situated social practices. Accordingly, “...structures exist in time-space only as moments recursively involved in the production and reproduction of social systems. Structures have only a 'virtual' existence” (Giddens, 1981: 26). “social structure is not like a physical structure as a building, which exists independently of human actions. Human societies are always in the process of structuration. They are reconstructed at every moment by the very 'building blocks' that compose it – human beings like you and me” (Giddens, 2000: 6). In view of the considerations discussed until now, it can be said about Giddens’s concept of structure as follows: First of all, Giddens tries to get rid of the concept of structure as the sets of objective relationships faced by the subjects. At this point, though it can be said that he has an aim similar to methodological individualism, let’s add not be unfair to him: Giddens, while trying to get rid of the concept of structure inherent in structuralism, he, at the same time, rejects the efforts to explain social actions by making reference to the behavior of individual. As mentioned above, Giddens, thus, got rid of paying the price for difficulties inherent in American tradition. Besides, he reduced the determination of structure to the determination of norm by making distinction between structure and system and purifying structure from patterns of behavior. Determination of a structure composed of objective relationships – exterior to its object - in a certain sense resembles determination of laws of nature: Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, it has no option of not boil. However, determination of norm is the determination over an entity with will that produces meaning: individual has the option not to comply with the norm (Akın, 2005). In 12 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration fact, laws, especially penalty laws that involve numerous sanctions exist for this purpose. Giddens, by excluding objective relationships from structure, presented to the political philosophy a conceptualization of non-methodological individualistic structure against the Marxist discourse’s concept of structure composed of objective relationships, which illegalized all attempts towards compromising left-wing perspectives with market. Giddens conceptualized his two-way escape under the title of structuration. Within this perspective, interdependence of structure and subject becomes a cyclical process. Each of them continuously determines the other; the determined one re-determines the other; determination reaches out to infinity. Structure provides both mediation and result of practices that construct social systems. The point it should be noted is the thing accepted as structure among many other perspectives is called social system under Giddens’s theorization. When the patterns of behavior embodied in social systems are once removed from the content of the concept of structure, the concept of structure can be approached as rules and resources. Thus the process of structuration materializes at the level of “structure” that does not involve social relationships, and the intervention of social systems (or production relations, which are their contents) in the process of structuration or vice versa remains entirely out of discussion. The disconnection between social systems and structure (the state that the structuration process is limited to “stuucture” not embodying production relations) makes the intervention of objective relationships in the structuration process, and as an outcome of such theorization, Giddens’s “structuration” remains purely and simply at level of phenomena. The theoretical approach under discussion produce drastic results for the explanation of entities accepted as subject/agents well. The role of objective relationships (and thus structures breeding class effect) in the structuration and motivation of behavior is reduced to zero. From the perspective of this approach, strike will be explained based on a number of rules and resources, whose origin is not known. It cannot be ex- The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 13 pected that the issues and questions such as the structure of industrial relations, the state of capital accumulation regime, whether a given country is a central country or not, the state of the army of replacement workers and how many poles the world has come on the agenda of those making this explanation. According to Porpora (1987: 96), the conceptualization of social structure as rules and resources will result in the reduction of organizational and institutional characteristics of the society to the shade phenomenon of human behavior. Thus, numerous causal factors resulting from the organized structure of the society and the relationships between structures will either be concealed or denied. The denial of the complicated relationship between the structure of capitalist societies and individual decisions of actors/agents/subjects is very important for the bourgeois literature. The bourgeois structuralism developed numerous methods in order to make this denial feasible. The formula of Waltz (1986: 340), a member of the US-based approach, which can be summarized as “maintaining that causality on structural platform is entirely different from that the causality on the platform, which agents make decision and develop strategy” is among the most widely accepted one among the formulae produced to eliminate the structure-subject tension. Even though such distinction of subject and structure solves the problem of the subject-structure tension, probably because of the incompatibility of this solution with the Continental European approach that aims to scrutinize the interaction between both of them, Giddens reaches his conclusion, which resembles Waltz’s solution, through a different way: Instead of completely distinguishing structure and subject (as in Waltz), distinguishing structure and social system s and cutting off the interaction between them and thus, eliminating the interference of production relations in the structuration process (in the concrete in mind). According to Giddens (1984: 25), while structure, as recursively organized as sets of rules and resources, is out of time and space, the social systems, in which structure is recursively implicated, on the contrary, comprise the situated 14 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration activities of human agents, reproduced across time and space. Structure determines the activities of human agents through rules and resources. However, production relations can be understood and/or explained in any case dependent on time and space. Giddens (1984: 16) states that in the structuralist approaches, structure appears as external to human action and as a source of constraint, but it has also ‘enabling” aspect. This ascertainment almost entirely overlooks the theorization made under the subsequent title of this study. In addition, in Giddens’s formulation, the capacity of structure for enabling is capable of exercising causal power only through the consciousness. “The only moving objects in human social relations are individual agents, who employ resources to make things happen, intentionally or otherwise. The structural properties of social systems o not act, or `act on', anyone like forces of nature to `compel' him or her to behave in any particular way” (Giddens, 1984: 181). That is to say, structural constraints cannot make their presence felt except their reasons for the things done by subjects /agents and, the expression of unconscious to some extent. The existence of structures and institutions are imperiled as long as they are not reproduced in the mind of human agent. This is a view of structure, which is internally related with the action, and which can therefore be reached indirectly via the effects of the action of human agent. “The knowledge they [human agents] possess is not incidental to the persistent patterning of social life but is integral to it” (Giddens, 1984: 26). Repeating once again, in Giddens’s formulation, social structure, which does not embody independent causal effect of social relations, and therefore, which is virtually designed, has to owe its existence to the mediation of knowledge and mind of individuals. Then, Giddens, by strictly being attached to knowledge and awareness, reduces an ontological category to an epistemological one. The reduction of an ontological category to an epistemological category results in the dissolution and removal of both agents and structure in a sea of phenomena. This approach that restricts structuration to The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 15 phenomena limits the effect of structures entirely to the agent’s understanding of the related rules and resources, thus laying foundation for a voluntarist social (Wight, 2006). Giddens, with the theory he developed, prevents the inclusion of independent causal effects of social relations in theoretical calculations, thus making it difficult to understand difficulty and violence that come out in the production and reproduction process of social power as well. The rules that regulate the distribution of resources cannot be understood without being associated with social relations. It can be said as follows: exploitation and dependence are neither resources, nor rules. Labor is not commodified in order to fulfill the requirement of rule. A person’s sale of his/her labor, who is detached from means of production is a compulsion imposed by objective relationships, and as its sanctions are hunger and exclusion, there is a resemblance between the laborer’s compulsion and the compulsion that makes water molecules to activate at a certain heat, albeit not overlapping one-to-one. People, as the labor force potential, enter into the production process due to their being the resource of living labor, not because they are “resource”. Natural resources acquire the nature of resource depending on the given state of productive forces and production relations: metals like titanium, uranium and boron do not attract interest because of the strict processing rules. If certain structural conditions occur, even knowledge about their existence is not formed. So, knowledge human agents possess should first be shaped by structural conditions before they become important in shaping social life in a stable manner. Let’s assume we have acquired knowledge about these metals; this does not end here. What lie behind the motivation of processing them are the development level of productive forces and structural conditions arising from sovereign production relations in the given social formation. After all, both exploitation and dependence are asymmetric relations. That is to say, what makes the IMF powerful may the rules it lays down. But, what give power the IMF to set forth rules are the exploitation and dependence relations. Repeating once more, there are not rules that force the exploita- 16 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration tion and dependence relations to be as they are; on the contrary, the relations that create them produce independent causal effects that determine how rules are created and interpreted (Wallerstein, 1974). Eventually, Giddens and his followers necessarily interfere in the structuration process of objective relations. The motivation problem is an important point in comprehending the effect of structural conditions on subject/agent, i.e. the relationship between structure and subject. The concept of structure as rules and resources deprives us from ammunition necessary to investigate motivation: what are the reasons for obeying, rejecting or failing to obey rules? Within which framework will the activities related to setting forth, applying and changing rules be evaluated? Why does a group want the establishment of a set of rules while the others opposes to it? It can be said at that at this point, the Giddensian thesis of duality of structure, which sees the society as both the material cause and the constantly reproduced output of human agent turns into tautology, a definition that explains everything, but cannot be applied to any concrete situation and becomes invalid (Eagleton, 1996; 2004). Besides, the term “duality of structure” claims to free the subject, which constitutes its implicit content, from an absolute determination should also be noted. Interdependence between structure and event exists in Structuralism as well. That is to say, Structuralism, with its form developed (not in Giddens’s theorization, but) in Continental Europe, was influenced by Saussure’s studies against the American schools influenced by Bloomfiemd in linguistic studies (Hawkes, 2004; Eagleton, 2004a). A language may be studied along two axes, one langue and the other, parole. These two axes Saussure named the diachronic and the synchronic. Saussure conceptualized language as a system that embodies a full inventory of its components and the rules comprising the combination of these rules. Besides, oral or verbal declaration is the use, which individuals make of the total resources of the language they are born into. It is actual utterance, in speech or in writing. If langue is a structure, than parole is an event. Without the The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 17 events there would be no way in which we could know of or investigate the structure, and without the structure the vent would be formless and without meaning (Sturrock, 2003). That is to say, the detection of interdependence against structure and event - interdependence, which the thesis of the duality of structure refers to - is not a new idea. What makes it appear to be new is the thing not Giddens added, but excluded: the point, which Giddens excluded from this old thesis is that structure (rules of language) already exists before it turns into event, or emptiness (silence) is shaped at the axis of rules of structure. At the point reached, the connection between Giddens’s thought and constructivism should also be discussed. The reason is that Giddens’s theory of structuralism enters international political economy studies or international relations theory mostly via constructivism. Wendt (1999), one of the major writers of constructivism, following Giddens’expansions, attempts to overcome the consequences of the structure subject problem sometimes by rejecting the reality of physical social relations and sometimes by rendering it secondary (Copeland, 2006: 3). In conclusion, constructivism argues actors act based on the meanings they ascribe to objects and that these meanings are socially constructed (Alexander, 1995). It is not possible to say that the constructivist school, whose understanding of structure is founded on Giddens’s thoughts, is directly influenced by Saussure. However, there is no doubt that the theory of Constructivism, as all approaches asserting that meanings do not derive mechanically as an outcome of direct impositions of external world, is influenced by the Structuralism’s response to linguistics in the 19th century. According to structuralist linguistics, the thought that language gives expression to some relationships as a necessity is totally wrong: It is impossible to find a two language systems that regulates the world in the same manner. There is not a structure of structures that determines the structures of all languages (Benton and Craib, 2008; Eagleton, 2004a). From this point of view, the conclusion (which overlaps at some points 18 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration with post-structuralism) reached by the constructivism that the meanings ascribed by actors to the objects are arbitrary is supported by a wrong interpretation of basic distinction of the Saussurian linguistics (Sturrock, 2003: 35-36). That is to say: Saussure, while proposing that sign must be examined in two pars, signifier and signified, constructed sign as an abstract object. This abstract object is the object of language and it is not to be confused with something in the world; it is arbitrary. That is to say, it is not determined by the thing it is the sign of, or referent. The proof of this is the enormous variety of signs to be found can be found in different languages for the same referent. These signs could have taken a different form from that which they in fact have. However, it has to be realized that the arbitrariness of the signs of a language does not set the users of that language free to change them. The basic defects of constructivism or post-structuralism lie in its ignorance of the distinction between the sign and the referent (Sturrock, 2003: 35-36). In that case, while asserting that actors act according to the meanings they ascribe to object and that these meanings are socially constructed, we cannot overlook the coerciveness of referent (the effect of extra-discourse on discourse): social construction processes cannot be understood by replacing a set of norms by another one, i.e. by using statements like “it can happen this way or that way”. First, it should be asked “why not that set of norms, but this one?”. The name given to small cattle may in every language. We may know that while in the societies, where ownership over mobile production means (small and big cattle) is determinant (or once it was), these animals bear numerous names according to their age, gender and many other characteristics, in the societies, which have nothing to do (or had nothing to do in the past) with these animals, only one or two names for all of them. Social construction processes, if not names we give to small cattle, are related with the development level of production relations and productive forces in a given society and in a given time. Even though one does not determine the other, it is not possible to put forward an idea about social construction processes without taking into consideration the production relations (without fully The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 19 comprehending the importance of the referent). In brief, whatever name you give to train, don’t stand on the rails while train is passing! Let’s repeat again: Once the distinction set forth in the paragraph above (distinction between sign and referent) is omitted, the relationship between extra-discourse and discourse becomes invisible: in every language, signs are formed arbitrarily (without any necessity). But this situation does not produce an effect on the materiality of sign and the thing implied (referent). That is to say, a shepherd may give a thousand names to an ox. But if these people use an ox as a means of production; milk it and eat its meat and make shoes from its skin, the meaning of ox will exist independent from its names – e.g. as a universal equalizer that will allow for exchange. In this context, those who refer may not have existed before those referred. However, this rule cannot apply to referent: it is predecessor of both referring and referred, and it always includes extradiscourse in the theoretical calculations as a criterion of the consistency of discourse. The continuous repetition of the confusion mentioned (confusion between referent and sign) brings us to the fetichism of multiplism, which is formed based on the impossibility of determining the absolute truth among discourses. If a criterion cannot be developed in order to consider different structures, aside from structure and if a truth cannot be imposed on anyone it will be a virtue to incorporate all differences together. Then, on which platform will this togetherness realize? Is the holiness of private ownership on the production means lie on its base? Given the indispensability of the base, is there a multiple juxtaposition, or a hierarchical array added on the particular? As it is seen, the thing presented as multiplism is in fact presuming a particularity. Marxism and Structure This study, which focuses on the effects of the concept of structure from the perspective of the discipline of political economy, investigates the Continental European approach. The second issue that will be examined under the sub-title of 20 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration Continental Europe is the Marxist conceptualization of structure. Given the distinguished place of the concept of structure within the Marxist theory, it is not possible to assert that Marxism involves a monolithic definition of structure. While examining the Marxist conceptualization of structure within the scope of this study, firstly, the basic elements (its foundation in terms of architectural metaphor) of the Marxist understanding of structure will be scrutinized; then the tasks assigned to the concept of structure in different Marxist conceptualizations. However, while doing this, the Althusserian perspective and the Critical Realistic School, which could achieve to develop a holistic epistemology, though deeply influenced by Althusser, will be primarily and predominantly discussed. This analysis involves a non-eclectic combination of the achievements of both schools. Before arguing that social structures have an existence outside the activities they manage, first, the foundation of the Marxist concept of structure should be investigated. The foundation of the Marxist concept of structure is composed of a number of theoretical concepts. The major ones are the concepts of mode of production, productive forces and social relations of production. It should be noted that while considering the mode of production, both structure and action are included in this concept and that the representation of this combination simply by the base structure/superstructure metaphor is not possible for today (see: Akın, 2005; Balibar, 1994; Bordieu, 1977; Creaven, 2000; Woodiwiss, 1990). In other words, it can be said that the mode of production is both a configuration of social structures and a product of foundation-based social practices. In this context, the mode of production involves the labor process (and dependence relations inherent in these relations) and the relations with forces of nature on the one hand, (see: Braverman, 1994) and other social relations, which actors enter into (especially activities developed for reproduction and constantly repeated primitive accumulation) by considering them in a process and space (see: Harvey, 2004; 2008). As it is appreciated, within this scope, it is not possible to produce The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 21 static schemes from a relationship map. According to Bourdieu (1977), use of cognitive devices we use in constructing our knowledge, such as metaphor, synopsis and analogy, may damage the content of thought to the extent it strengthens its conveyance. The metaphor use, for example, the physical metaphor of base structure/superstructure provided certain facilities in conveying the social production relation and social circulation of its knowledge. On the other hand, it also caused apparent and recognized difficulties in the analysis of complex social institutions (law, justice, etc.) and organizations (ideological devices of the state, oppression devices of the state) and in the implementation of revolutionary strategies. Synopsis, which can be defined as a brief summary of a complex knowledge condensed in statistical models, representative schemes, diagrams or a combined reference has also adverse effects. It is highly probable that the entities, which diagrams have simplified and moved to a timeless and two-dimensional plane, and the relations between them will not fit to the real social relations plane. These diagrams almost always cause problems in the construction of perception of time and space. Then, it should be very careful in the application of cognitive devices and it should be prepared for the theoretical drawbacks of the sense of “a false clarity” (Bourdieu, 1977). Bourdieu’s concept of “false clarity” that resembles Althusser’s (2002) concept of “self-evidence” often turns into counter means in the hands of dominant ideologies. Therefore, the theoretical construction of reality should always be put before schemes or diagrams. Here lies the importance of the concept of mode of production. In this respect, the corpus developed by Marxism on the concept of structure assumes great importance in explaining complex social reality and numerous strings of relations comprising it. In the subject-structure dilemma, structure is he target of explaining social world, and subject is the focus target of understanding the same world. Marxism is directed towards both objectives of explaining and understanding. However, it should not be overlooked that while understanding has a retrospective aspect, explaining is rather a future-oriented act. Although the Marxist theory cannot aban- 22 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration don any of these objectives, when a political activity is in question, most of the Marxists are directed towards the objective of explaining, while the Marxisms employed by reformist projects are shaped at the axis of the act of understanding, - of course not in every case. The structural implication of mode of production (mode of production as a structure) makes reference to the accumulation of material wealth (institutional and organizational accumulation), the capacity of knowledge to develop and to be used in the production process, the state of productive forces in a given time and space, distribution of means of production, the processes of obtaining subsistence (equipment and accumulation required by reproduction), in brief, numerous determinants that shape class statuses. The actional implication of mode of production (mode of production as set of actions) applies to the productive actions of subjects both in the field of reproduction and the production processes, and at the same time, to the actions of subjects developed at the axis of exploitation as well their predatory actions during the acquisition of pre-produced surplus value (primitive accumulation). The other distinctive feature of the Marxist understanding of structure is the holistic effect, which the concepts of “productive forces” and “production relations” create in reciprocal relationship.10 These two concepts, which acquired different meanings in different temporal and spatial practices of the Marxist theory, can be set forth in terms of their relationship. In their relationship, the order of precedence changes according to the different periods and spaces of the Marxist theory. Let’s begin with the content of the productive forces: the productive forces are based on the togetherness of a series of elements having material, social and intellectual aspects. The material and social elements of these forces are comprised of the organized and institutionalized forms of common social actions of working women and men in order to meet the requirements of production and reproduction. That is to say, the material and 10 The studies of Aglietta (1979), Balibar (1994), Creaven (2000) and Saad-Filho (2006) were referred to for the analysis of the concepts of productive forces and production relations. The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 23 social elements of the productive forces involve a certain work organization and social and technical division of labor that corresponds to it. In this context, while material elements involve concrete raw materials, means of production and energy facilities, social elements refer to the types of forming relationships and relations represented by the concepts such as organization, institutionalization and efficiency. Intellectual elements include: a-Technical and scientific knowledge needed to carry out a certain activity; b-Organizational knowledge used to perform the combination of labor and means of production. However, the relationship of cognitive abilities, which comprise intellectual elements with other cognitive abilities that ensure organized class violence and the manufacture of social consent and with movements made mostly unconsciously (habitus) is complicated. The boundary between the dominant ideology and the types of knowledge, which is considered valid (selfevident) in a given society is usually vaguer than it is thought to be. Production relations correspond to the dominant political and economic structures of the society. More specifically, relations of production are those that govern the control of the production process and the distribution of products. In capitalist societies, these relations predetermine unequal distribution of means of production and thus, the conditions of the exploitation of surplus value. That is to say, wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the laborer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production (Marx, 1986). Adding to the working-time for the owner of means of production refers to the collective social aspect of the phenomenon of exploitation, i.e. its inheritance in the social structure. Exploitation is the acquisition of part of labor of men and women excluded from the control and/or possession of means of production by another social class. When this relation takes center stage in social production and reproduction (when becomes dominant), it determines formations of 24 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration social class in such away so as to also include workers, who do not produce surplus value in the production process and those unable to work. However, the functions of relations of production are not limited to this: these also play major role, along with the exploitation of surplus value as the leading form of the capitalist exploitation, in the shaping of domination relations existing in other modes of production and formation of primitive accumulation processes. Thus, the fundamental elements of the Marxist understanding of structure have been examined. The remaining part of the study will investigate the common points of tasks assigned to the concept of structure in different Marxist modalities of conceptualization. The inclusion of independent causal effect of social relations constitutes the axis of the Marxist thought of structure. At this point, Marxism has a shallow common center with the Durkheimian sociology (or Marx has a deep influence on Durkheim): Both approaches take the relation as basis. However, while the Durkheimian approach defines structure as a set of law-like regularities among social facts, the Marxists derive social structure from relations of production (Benton and Craib, 2008). The Durkheimian understanding does not deem the content of the elements of structure very important (for the sate of the theory) as long as the structure of relations is preserved. Marxism has always showed determination to trace the non-discourse (the content of social domination) even at times it accepted the deepest influences from non-Marxist Structuralism (mainstream). The inclusion of the issues such as the materialization of capitalist production, the analysis of its conditions, primitive accumulation, labor force and reproduction of all types of domination that keep labor force out of possession and/or control of means of production in the analyses forms an ocean of analyses, which transcend the horizon of self-evident Durkheimian conceptualization of structure. In this context, social structure mostly makes reference to the axis on which the relations between social classes develop. Social class is defined as collectives of individuals, who are distinguished according to The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 25 their status in the relations of production in a given society and time. The question of what is considered and what is not considered cause for the Althusserian Marxism11 and Critical Realism that are regarded as Structuralist, contrary to their founders’ will, which we primarily examine here, is specifically important. The Structuralist Marxist approach does not welcome the inclusion of a cause that has currently no effect in the theoretical calculations: If there is no effect, then there is no cause. In this context, causes, which histography derives from the texts, in more general sense, efforts of the historicist approaches towards diachronic interpretation of causes they derive from arbitrary correlations among the points they choose from history cannot find a place for themselves in the Structuralists’ conceptualization of cause (see: Althusser, 2007b: 346). The thought developed in this manner does not consider structure as the environment, where actors, in ontologically a priori circulation, act. Moreover, an ontology consisting of the synchronic relationship among the elements of structure excludes psychologism as well. Thus, the constructive effect, entirely differing from that of Giddens’s idealistic approach, who we have introduced with his emphasis on norms, becomes the trademark of the Structuralist Marxist understanding of structure. In this case, while “structure” used by the US-based approaches has 11 The founders of the Structuralist Marxism never accepted being defined as structuralist. Therefore, structuralism remained as a term used by the criticals or external interpreters. In the meantime, structuralism passed into the political science literature, a literature owing its the major part of its foundation terminology to structuralism, as a coat, which its supporters cannot or would not like to take off to the extent it cannot ignore structuralism. Today, the meaning structuralism has assumed, following its loss of credibility as a political philosophy, involves more pejorative images than ever. This term will be used anyway. The reason is that the views produced by Althusser and friends could not be seriously refuted over their own internal consistencies. The “knowledge effect” they have produced (their style of taking concrete reality into their possession) in the context of ideology-science distinction non-human-centered (which human does not inscribe his own social relations in the knowledge of the object it examines) continues to be in a constant motion due to its structure, whuch is open (that knows to exclude the narrative, which the members of the related society have developed in order to explain themselves) and, which does not absolutize knowledge (that can distinguish concrete reality and the concrete in thought (Özdemir, 2008: 43-44). 26 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration merely constraint effect, “structure” of the Structuralists will be deemed to have both constraint and constructive effect. The Marxist sociology involves the theoretical means of production that will serve for comprehending the interaction of elements comprising a social system. In Marxism’s interpretations of Structuralism or in Critical Realism, mechanisms12 used in theoretical explanation constitute a non-empirical plane of reality: the only way to understand the reality of entities is not the database created by our emotions. From this perspective, not only the criteria acceptable in the establishment of reality, but also the meaning and content of causal analysis change. Causal analysis now is not only interested in how events are correlated (by saying there is causality if always event B comes after event A), but also in power possessed by mechanisms. In this way, causality transforms into a form of explanation that can be achieved at the end of the analysis of potential (constraint and or/capable sword) power of the relevant structure. It can be observed that in Marxism’s variants influenced by positivist epistemology, reality is approached on an absolute empirical plane. Against the tendencies of investigating social reality merely on empirical plane, different solutions were produced in Marxism’s Structuralist variants and variants of Critical Realism, which was deeply influenced by the Marxist variants. The structuralist variant, while rejects a concept of almighty structure, which is external to social relations, but which imposes itself to them - contrary to the mainstream Structuralism - on the one hand, propounds, starting from the fact that not relations, but their causes can be empirically observed in certain cases, the investigation of structures that sometimes coexist (usually in transition processes) on the other hand (Althusser, 2007a: 58-63). On the other hand, the Critical Realist variant makes a distinction between empirical (experiences and emotions), actual (interpretation of events and relationships, 12 Mechanism is the name given to the moving, effective and driving part, process or element within the system of concrete relations that constitutes the effect of structure; in its narrow sense, which is mostly used in the field of science, it refers to the process or technique that ensures the achievement of the desired state or result. The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 27 i.e. actual objects of direct experience) and non-actual (the enduring structures, mechanisms and tendencies) planes (Bhaskar, 1978). It should be noted that in both cases – as mostly misunderstood - , we face not with the denial of the role of the empirical one in knowledge production, but with the ascertainment that the empirical one does not constitute the whole of reality. If there is any plane or planes of reality other than the empirical plane, then how will be the interplane relations conceptualized? Just because deep structures involves the actual one, for example, will it be possible to explain societies with the terms of the previous plane and to reduce them to the aggregate of accumulation of psychological and biological knowledge about human beings? According to Critical Realism, although more complicated forms and planes of reality include more basic or less complicated planes (for example, societies include people), more complicated form cannot be explained by reducing it to less complicated one (societies cannot be explained based on people). Even though more complicated and complex involves the previous one, it has specific features: something new has emerged. This solution is close to that of the Structuralist Marxism. The Structuralist Marxism explains the intransitivity between the two planes by the concept of overdetermination13. Both approaches underline the need for 13 According to Althusser, the idea of conflict in general sense (that can also be said to be Hegelian) is to block a theoretical explanation, rather than clear the way for it. Instead, there are contradictions, some of which are heterogeneous. “of different origins, different sense, different levels and points of application – but which nevertheless ‘merge’ into a ruptural unity, we can no longer talk of the sole, unique power of the general ‘contradiction’ (Althusser, 2002:123). This means that if the ‘differences’ that constitute each of the instances in play ‘merge’ into a real unity, they are not ‘dissipated’ as pure phenomena in the internal unity of simple contradiction. The unity they constitute in this ‘fusion’ into a revolutionary rupture is constituted by their own essence and effectivity, by what they are, and according to the specific modalities of their action. In constituting this unity, they reconstitute and complete their basic animating unity, but at the same time they also bring out its nature: the ‘contradiction’ is inseparable from the total structure of the social body in which it is found, inseparable from its formal conditions of existence, and even from the instances it governs. “Contradiction is determining, but also determined in one and the same movement, and determined by the various levels and instances of the social formation it animates; it might be called over-determined in its principle” (Althusser, 2002: 124). Overdetermination is the common social product of these contradictions, whose existence becomes the product of their activities. 28 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration explaining the plane under discussion by purifying it from the terms of the previous one. Once it has been established that society cannot be reduced to people, the condition of any intended social action should be sought in non-individual actors and social forms. Logically, society and social forms come before the individual. That is to say, all social activities depend on the existence of social forms. In this context, it will be possible to speak about an autonomy specific to social forms. The reality of social forms can be derived from their causal power (see: Aglietta, 1979). All social practices are positioned both in actional and structural d6imensions. The subject-structure dilemma is shaped based on the emphasis laid on the determinant element in the reciprocal interaction of action and the structure it is included in. Different solutions to the subject-structure dilemma are determined according to your stance about social ontology. In this context, studying social objects and facts will be possible primarily by analyzing the enduring relations among different planes of action, which not only constitute social life, but also influential on it. For example, the worker-employer relationship will be meaningful only if when the relational status of the one against the other and the capitalist production relations they both are involved in are taken into consideration. The ontological difference and interdependencies between people and structures constitute the basic starting point of the variety in the Marxist analyses. Our social existence is constructed by relations, and our social actions presume the existence of these relations. This network of relations constitutes the structure of the relevant society, and maintains its existence - by constantly transforming by the effect of dynamics of change and new network of parallel relations that emerges as a response to new situations – even though the individuals, who occupy positions. The Structuralist Marxism shunts aside the search for deep structures/canons that will help us to follow the transformation in the network of relations, and gives prominence to the synchronic study. Other Marxisms highlight diachrony as well. If the subject is a thing, which is formed or constructed by The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 29 the effect of objective relations it takes part in it will not be possible to wholly separate the subject from the structure it is included in, or to analyze their relationship considering them ontologically preestablished. Now we are at a point far from the US-based structural sociology. Moreover, when we emphasize the connection of social construction with the capitalist production relations, and design social construction as a posteriori function, we have also moved away from Giddens and his followers’ sociology, who give prominence to the meanings (the cultural ones) that are socially formed and are ascribed by actors to the objects against the material one. We have two interdependent, but separate theoretical objects: subject and structure. The ontological separation between people and structures constitutes the basis of the relation and separation of these two concepts: people are not relations: societies cannot be considered human-like organisms. They are not whole like a living being; they not become sister or brother, enemy or relative. In order to achieve a perfect analysis, the relationships between society and individual, and structure and object should be given prominence. While the Structuralist Marxism tends to accept individual as an entity, which is constructed by the system of social relations and which is the supporters (Trager) of these relations14 (Althusser, 2007b: 465-466), Critical Realists (though they accept that the individual is constructed in a discoursive manner) assert that the individual is a self-contained entity, which enables him/her to think about the relationship between fragmented subject and discourse; this state of being self-contained involves the potential of making decision freely about future ac14 “the fact that the structure of the relations of production determines the places and functions occupied and adopted by the agents of production, who are never anything more than the occupants of these places, insofar as they are the ‘supports’ (Träger) of these functions. The true ‘subjects’ (in the sense of constitutive subjects of the process) are therefore not these occupants or functionaries, are not, despite all appearances, the ‘obviousnesses’ of the ‘given’ of naïve anthropology, ‘concrete individuals’, ‘real men’ – but the definition and distribution of these places and functions. The true ‘subjects’ are these definers and distributors: the relations of production (and political and ideological social relations). But since these are ‘relations’, they cannot be thought within the category subject” (Althusser 2007b: 465-466). 30 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration tions; so, it is not possible to consider a person merely a supporter (Wight, 2006: 209-210); therefore, we need concepts that will serve as mediation between structure and subject (Bhaskar, 1979: 147). Critical Realists, who have adopted this Bhaskarian approach that influenced the sociology in a different way15, emphasize that person/agent can neither be regarded as the resource of social relations, nor the product of social constraints externally imposed, thus claming that they have cracked the door for a theory of subject free from essentialism (Porpora, 2001: 284). The validity of this assertion depends on the fact that the intermediate concepts used serve the comprehension of mutual interdependence between the aspect of subject shaped via relations of production and the state that structure can become active only through the actions of agents.16 Bhaskar searches for a connection point between subject and structure, an explanatory for the positioned practices (1979: 51). There is a close unity of discourse, method and purpose between Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Bhaskar’s “positioned practices”. The concept of habitus, which Bourdieu developed to overcome Structuralism’s Trager, and the concept of social field should be considered together. Social field makes reference to the network of objective relations among objectively defined positions. In this context, social field refers to the structured system of social positions occupied by individuals and social forms. Their nature defines the state of their supporters/occupants. Habitus (positioned practice) constitute the connection point, where the mediation between subjective world of individual and the socio-cultural world the individual is 15 Giddens did not include social relations in his conceptualization of structure. 16 Even though the thesis of mutual determination of structure and subject (duality of structure) is helpful in overcoming some theoretical constraints, in practice, it turns into a tautology that undermines the act of explaining, which can be summarized by the formula “that determines that, this determines this”. Therefore, the concept of overdetermination as a concept, which emphasizes the difficulty of calculating close to impossible, due to the plurality of factors determining subject, but which does not block the theory, seems more appropriate. The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 31 born into and shares with others. Here, the actor acts with the help of directly conscious actions as well as semi-conscious patterns of behavior such as habits. The source of habits and actions made without thinking lies in the socialization process that starts from the individual’s early childhood. Not direct education, but experience plays major role in learning patters of behavior that fall within the scope of Habitus. Here, routines rather than integrated knowledge are determinant: habitus, in this aspect, can be seen as the space of internalization of social structures and externalization of internal world. Structure re-expresses itself in the realization process of the action formed in itself. Then, let’s ask: “Isn’t there structure, if there is no action?”17 The answer of the question presented in the previous paragraph depends on whether or not social structures exist other than in the actions they manage. The answer of this question is very important, as it determines the boundary between the Giddens sociology-oriented approach known as constructionism and Marxism. The assertion that social structures do not exist except in acts/actions they manage implicitly involves the claim that things that are not actualized, put into action or applied in social world cannot exist as well. At the first sight, the definition that derives the productive forces from the organized and institutionalized forms of social action - as given above seems to support this approach. Likewise, defining relations of production as the relations governing the control of the production process and distribution of products also seems consistent with the assertion that social structures do not exist except in actions they manage. It was also maintained in theoretical practice that the Gramsciah approaches to international relations comply with the definition of constructive structure (Wight, 2006: 138). 17 Despite a wide range of references for Bourdieu, for a comprehensive and clear explanation of the issue discussed in this paragraph, see: Bourdieu (1977; 2003). 32 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration The constructive approach’s argument is after all same with saying “If you have not fired a gun, you cannot assert that that gun has the power to kill”. Yet, the potential to kill itself, i.e. power that has not been tried is a power by itself. If you have a gun, under convenient conditions, you can get many results, which you normally cannot achieve even without drawing it from its holster. From the same vein, there is also a connection between the forms of social explosions and reactions and the powers, organization and attitude of the police. In states of stability or sustainable instability, states keep a capacity of violence, which they do not use, in their institutional stocks. Even though this capacity is not used, it produces effective results as in the gun example. Social structures incorporate unactualized or unapplied powers, and these powers are effective means of social order (via actual implications arising from their potential of applicability). This situation indicates that structure can exist by itself - apart from as the outcome of actions. Up until now, the Marxist approaches to the concept of structure have been examined. In conclusion, structure is inherent in relations of production, which themselves also correspond to a certain stage of the development in the productive forces (or vice versa). The class-based production relations, while gathering the ownership of certain means of production or control technologies apart from ownership in the hands of few number of non-producer position holders, grant these people the capacity of possessing surplus value, (and in its forms as formulated by the post-World War II Marxist theorizations) social surplus - on top of that, without being restricted to the boundaries of national state -. The power exercised by capitalists and their allies over living conditions and physical activities of others as well as on the products of these activities comes, according to your place in the Marxist theoretical tradition, from the ownership-oriented control of means of production in general, thus, the power gained over the organization and coordination of production, the privileged representations of the interests of capitalists within the social forms, the control capacity of this class over knowledge production, or the social The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 33 structure that allows for all these powers and capacities (from the effects of structure). However, whatever tradition you prefer, class struggle is the product of the objective structure of class relations. This structure exists outside the action as well. Then, it can be said that an idea of an objective structure free from action is inherent to Marxism. Tendential laws such as “every time a capitalist society emerges, these tendencies will prevail” gain meaning only in this context. The thought of objectivity of structure does not denote the denial of the basic difference between knowledge of social world and knowledge of nature. Objectivity of structure refers to the existence of social relations independent from the views of those interpreting and inquiring them. That is to say, - even though social sciences produce concept-dependent analyses objects of social sciences exist independent from the views of those, who interpret and inquire them; they are intransitive (Bhaskar, 1979). Accordingly, though meanings given by individuals to their actions are very important in terms of certain theoretical traditions,18 they will not be determinant in respect of the effects of structure. Many people are unaware that they produce contradictory propositions within themselves on the conditions of domination and exploitation that determine their life. On the other hand, a consistent explanation by the Marxist Theory to these people on the said conditions does not spontaneously create desire for revolution. First of all, the transformative practices, which we call revolution or reform, are not issues that are only related with political or educational activities. Numerous structural elements ranging from the conditions related to production and circulation of knowledge to irrational factors that shape class struggle step in this process. Even though the role of agent in the reproduction of structures cannot be overlooked, the concept of intransitivity can be used as the indicator of self-contained existence of structure. 18 Along with constructionism, hermeneutic tradition also remained incapable in drawing conclusions from the wrongness of the thoughts and concepts that constitute the basis for the thoughts of the acts of the subject (see: Eagleton, 2004a). 34 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration Self-contained existence of structure determines the position the Marxist theory takes in the relation, which it establishes with reality: it is possible to say that the Marxisms’ emphasis on the self-contained existence of structure takes them to the line of ontological Structuralism. The Marxist theory’s emphasis targets capitalism and structure consisting of capitalist production relations, rather than local or international political system. The fields of politics and culture are not simple derivatives of this structure. However, this structure determines their specific development axis. The theory, even when primarily speaking about alliances, blocs and thus, the autonomy of politics, presumes a structure, where all these chains of agents and actions find opportunity. In that case, it can be said that when subject is emphasized, then we face with a specific combination of historical and structural explanation.19 As a result of the use of the said combination in the theory, dialectic is placed at the center of the Marxist effort to interpret and explain. Marxism, in its structuralist variants, rejects the elements specific to Hegelian interpretation of dialectic such as essence and telos. Here, contradictions (that determine the evolution of an essence from the past to the future) are addressed with a dialectic approach that underscores, rather than the idea of telos, the capacity of social relations to form unlimited combinations and the founder role of contradictions arising from capitalist production relations in this combination (overdetermination). At the point, where dialectic meets with the logic of structure, another material inherent to Marxism emerges: change/transformation. In this stage, we can leave aside the debates on whether change requires a continuity or discontinuity. But, it should be noted briefly that here, the Marxist Structuralism leaves the linguistic model, from which it is deeply in19 For example, the concept of historical structures comes into prominence in the studies of Bieler and Adam Morton, who produced solutions for the subject-structure problem, following the footsteps of Robert Cox (Bieler and Morton, 2004). The historical structure involves a method that positions the connections between the material world, which restricts the things people are capable to do and their thoughts about the related activity and spiritual/intellectual framework that enables social actors to enter into practice. The Concept of Structure in Social Sciences 35 fluenced: while the linguistic model is limited to the internal analysis of all relations comprising structure, arguments of Marxism have never excluded the intervention of external structure relations. Otherwise, the concepts, which are related with relations of production as much as with capitalist production relations like socialist international division of labor and unequal development, (thus, the effect of extra-discourse) could not be included in the theoretical calculations. Therefore, it seems not possible to assert that the Marxist concepts of structure read the structure of capitalist system as the outcome of the positioning of ontologically pre-existing units. As a result of the existence of dialectic thought, in none of the Marxisms is structure considered as the environment, where actor is subjected to effects he cannot change: It rather gives the impression of a set/sets of relations involving necessary capacities for action, which transforms with materialization of action. At this point, it should be underlined that actors can be essential or constructional/derivative according to the relevant Marxist approach. CONCLUSION Your manner of conceptualizing structure is important. The ideas generated on structure have meaning beyond being merely a macrosociological exercise. Conceptualizations of structure have a wide variety of consequences from changing the world to providing the existing disciplines with content in the field of social sciences. Arguing from the very beginning that the effort of changing the world is not meaningless or is meaningless; once being involved in such effort, identifying the elements significantly contributing to the maintenance of inequalities of the current system; being able to take and to assign responsibility require a certain type of conceptualization of structure. If you do not want to change the world, but to analyze, explain or understand it, again, you face the same chain of obligations: what is the influence of international corporations on global policies? In what ways does ideology interfere in the order of everyday life? Looking from the perspective of international relations theory or international political economy, is 36 TODAĐE’s Review of Public Administration possible to render the state and government equal? What is subject/actor? Is the state a subject or structure? How can be a discipline of international relations, where the state is not considered subject? Can we address the state both as a structure – comprising of structures – and subject under the same approach? If the state cannot be subject, what will happen to the distinction between the political science and international relations? When the answers to all these questions are directly affected by the qualities we ascribe to the concept of structure, in most cases, the contents of the concept of structure are overlooked. Knowledge (including knowledge of structure) is a social product, which is put into circulation after being produced within physical conditions. Even though we will always maintain our epistemic doubts arising from its time and space dependence, we have still ground for speaking about the science of the society in the face of objectivity of structures. Production of subject by structure does not prevent subject to return and become effective in the production of structure within its own actions: the prominence of Structuralism may not always result in an intensive determinism. Even in the Structuralist approaches that reduce subject to the status of supporter (trager), the concept of overdetermination causes the charge of determinism to become objective. What makes a systematic effort of knowledge production a science is not its procedures (inspectors) for finding the truth, contrary to the assertions of positivism, but the openness of its procedures for producing solutions to public evaluation and its determination to meet the criterion of consistency in the face of the knowledge of its age. The tendency to enrich the explanatory content is the sign of deficient but constant efforts of a discipline to access knowledge. In scientific research, this effort should be prominent, rather than method. 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