Reproducing the social structure: a Marxist critique of Anthony Giddens's Structuration Methodology

Brian O'Boyle

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2013, vol. 37, issue 5, 1019-1033

Abstract: Marxist criticism of Anthony Giddens's sociology tends to fall into one of two camps. On one side, numerous authors have criticised Giddens's methodological writings for their failure to properly elucidate the relationship between agency and structure. Giddens's refusal to accept a role for structural causation has been the primary concern in these methodological appraisals as the upshot is a conception of social relations without any efficacy. On the other side have been the numerous critiques of Giddens's purported renewal of social democracy. Here the criticism tends to focus on Giddens's shift to the political right, but it is rarely noticed that there is also a methodological critique waiting to be developed. Giddens's early work is nothing if not a celebration of the agent with structure demoted to little more than an epiphenomenon. The later writings are, in contrast, almost entirely built around the structural omnipotence of neo-liberal capitalism, and this paper sets out to elucidate the incongruence between these two positions. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Date: 2013
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