Study Guide 12 – Agency Structure debate
(Please remember to only use your own words in all your answers!)
Ritzer – Chapter 14 – “Micro-Macro and Agency Structure Integration” – Sociological Theory
1. Please describe in your own words what Ritzer means by micro-macro extremism.
2. Does agency always refer to individual human actors?
3. What does Anthony Giddens mean by reflexivity?
4. What does Giddens mean by rationalization?
5. What is the basic point of Giddens’ structuration theory?
6. What was one of the main goals of Bourdieu’s theoretical work, according to Ritzer?
7. What did Bourdieu mean by “practice” and how does this concept help to resolve the
agency-structure debate?
8. What is “habitus” from Bourdieu’s perspective?
9. What did Bourdieu mean by “field?”
10. What is “symbolic violence” according to Bourdieu?
11. What did Bourdieu see as the relationship between theory and research?
12. What is the “life-world” according to Habermas?
13. What did Habermas mean by “system?”
14. What does it mean to say that the system is colonizing the life-world?