Paper Summary:

This paper discusses and compares the social theories of Anthony Giddens, Jurgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu. The writer explains that according to Giddens, Habermas, and Bourdieu, the agency serves a very specific purpose for the individual within society. Giddens in 1984 in his "Constitution of Society," proposed the social theory of structuration, using structural perspectives such as agency/structure and subjective/objective. The writer explores how Bourdieu and Habermas add to Giddens' theory and perspectives and how each theorist diverges in their approach to the humanistic side of the structuration. Giddens identifies the structuration process overall as an organic and autonomous process arising from the conventional forces in society, Habermas distinguishes three categories of the influence of human cognition on the structuration process in society, and Bourdieu, the most philosophical of the three, identifies the means by which the subjectivity of man gives rise to an ordering that results in a society's bureaucratic and hierarchical formation.

From the Paper:

"Giddens agrees with Habermas as far as the individualized approach to social structure, demonstrating the means by which certain bureaucratic qualities are imparted and specifically designed to address the forward progress, evolution, and social development that is being inculcated with the development of society. While Giddens acknowledges the social structure as specifically maintaining overarching social tendencies within the social bureaucracy, he sees structuration as a combination between the development of ideals of the human intellectual instinct as well as the social forces within the environment."

Sample of Sources Used:

• "Anthony Giddens: The theory of structuration." 2007: http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens2.htm
• Bourdieu, Pierre. "Classes and classifications." 1979: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/bourdieu.htm
• Bourdieu, Pierre, translated by Nice, Richard. Distinctions. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. 1984: Harvard University Press, 1984.
• "The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas." 2007: http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/danowner/habcritthy.html
• Wacquant, Loic. "Pierre Bourdieu." May 2006: http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/wacquant/wacquant_pdf/PIERREBOURDIEU-KEYTHINK-REV2006.pdf

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