The Contrasting Suppositions of Giddens's Theory of Structuration

Giddens's programme of a theory of structuration aims to develop an original perspective that constructively reformulates some of the central assumptions of social theory. This project results in a series of innovative propositions and it has elucidated the basic social theory problem of the relationship between structure and action. Giddens's starting point is, then, the problem of the sociological dichotomies that Habermas tackles in the guise of distinguishing between lifeworld and system. The inherent problems of Habermas's attempt to simultaneously distinguish and connect these two categories give some indication of the difficulty of the problem Giddens confronted and underlines why his theory of structuration warrants serious consideration. Held and Thompson (1989) distinguish between the strand of Giddens's writings concerned with the provision of a substantive account of modern societies from those whose focus is the resolution of more general problems of social theory. Yet, the interlacing of these strands is probably the location of some of Giddens's core insights. One of the major intentions of the theory of structuration is to pare back sociological concepts to their elementary meaning. At the same time, this intention coincides with Giddens's aspiration of introducing, as Tucker observes, ‘a conceptual vocabulary which can illuminate contemporary social changes in late modernity’ (Tucker 1998, 3).

The theory of structuration has been pursued through the synthesis of a multitude of perspectives, which has certain parallels with Habermas's theory. In Habermas's case, the epistemic requirements of theoretical synthesis have been the subject of more systematic reflection and justification (Habermas 1984a). Like Habermas's theory, Giddens's work has been criticized as eclectic, however, he argues that such a critical perception ignores the systematic intent of his distillation of significant insights from different approaches and the structuration theory reformulation of them (see Hirst 1982; Therborn 1971).