Eric gives me the chance to ride this hobby horse again. I think I agree that structure and agency is an unproductive duality but because it poses the wrong question. The discussion so far assumes that agency belongs to individuals and the question becomes what is the relationship of the individuals to the structure. A deeper question is who are the agents in the social model. Institutionalists see no conflict between agency and structure precisely because it is the institutions who are the agents of activity in institutionalist theory. In Marxism the agents are the classes. It is only in neoclassical theory that the agents are individuals and the question is posed in its current form. It is only in the context of particular institutions that the question of individual agency even poses itself and only in a subset of these institutions would it be given the dialectical equality that Eric (and Giddens) gives it with social structure. It seems to me that the institutionalist position that the vast majority of what any of us does is institutionally determined is quite evident and is only obscured by the common sense of the age that the individual is the basic unit of society. Would anyone seriously attempt an individual choice theoretic (even path dependent) explanation of why we are communicating in English on this list? Admittedly, the institutionalist position that it is institutions which drive institutional change is not particularly intuitive, but it is not an impossible argument. In any case, Marxism doesn't have this problem because it is class struggle which drives institutional change. The fact that it is class struggle which constitutes classes as E.P. Thompson points out is only a challenge to concrete historical explanation. Such circularity is in any case inherent in any attempt to explain the dynamics of history from within history and introducing individual agency cannot escape this problem unless the individuals are somehow pregiven outside of history. The question is not one of whether individual agency causes some aspect of history. It clearly does (as in Eric's Bill Gates example or the favorite one about Hitler). But then again so does geography, weather, disease, anatomy, etc. The question cannot be whether we can locate a causality for the individual in history. The question is whether individual actions and decision are responsible or partly responsible for the basic dynamic movements of history. Only in this case can they be considered determinative and elevated into the kind of explanatory dialectic with structure which Eric is (perhaps tentatively) claiming for them. Otherwise they remain contingent causes of history, in much the same way as an earthquake might be, and therefor outside the realm of investigation by the science of history. Like earthquakes they may be explained through the application of other sciences. Terry McDonough
