Developing a theoretical framework to understand teacher’s subjectivities and emotionality
2.3 Subject formation and the structure-agency dialectic
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subjectivity refers to the conscious and unconscious description and understanding of ourselves, formed by participating in discourses, and determines, for example, the choices teachers make regarding what to teach, what not to teach and how to teach. Teachers’
subjectivity is therefore dynamic, fluid and conflicting as they constantly constitute their sense of self and engage with discourses. Weedon’s (1997) notion of subjectivity as contradictory and in flux coheres with the notion of subjectivity adopted in this study since it encompasses broader social influences on subjectivity, as well as the pivotal role of emotions.
Debates about the structure - agency dialectic are significant to understand subject formation and subjectivity, which I elaborate upon in the following section. This discussion provides a useful backdrop or description of how teachers constitute their ‘selves’; understand who they are and how social structures influence their life experiences, actions and practices.
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2.3.1 Bourdieu and Giddens on the structure-agency dialectic
Bourdieu’s (1990) notions of structure and human action sought to overcome the opposition between objectivism and subjectivism or the individual and society. His theory instead focuses on practice, which he views as being the product of the relationship between agency and structure. Of interest to Bourdieu was the dialectic between social and mental structures and how individuals construct social reality. According to Bourdieu, individuals occupy given positions in social space which orient and guide their social positioning and practices.
In other words, individuals practically anticipate the social meaning and significance of their chosen practice based on their distribution in social space. His unique sociological perspective draws on structuralist and constructivist, subjective notions and is described as constructivist structuralism, which maintains that individuals construct and adapt social phenomena by means of their thoughts and actions, but these constructions take place within inevitable structures.
Bourdieu (1990) outlines his theory of practice, which provides an account of how to understand and analyse human action and the social world. Central to his theory of practice, are his notions of habitus, field and capital. To Bourdieu, habitus refers to ‘mental and cognitive structures’ or internalised schemes, through which individuals come to appreciate, interpret and evaluate their social world. He points out that an individual’s biographical experience produces a system of dispositions (ways of acting and thinking) or habitus, which varies for different individuals. The second concept that Bourdieu (1990) elaborates upon in his theory of practice is that of ‘field’, which he views as an objective complement to his notion of habitus.A range of fields constitute the social world such as religion, philosophy, politics, education and art. The amounts and types of capitalthat agents possess, Bourdieu argues, result in them occupying dominant, subordinate or equivalent positions in the field.
Therefore, agents experience power differently depending on their distribution of capital and position in the field.
Bourdieu extends the notion of capital beyond material assets or economic capital, to social, cultural and symbolic capital. Capital, Bourdieu (1993) argues, can be converted from one form into another. For Bourdieu (1993), the school as an institution creates a habitus which significantly influences accumulation of cultural capital throughout one’s lifetime. He
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contends that the curriculum in schools influences the attitudes, values and habits learned which reinforce differences in cultural values, and could facilitate or limit one’s opportunities. Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his notions of habitus, field and capital offer valuable conceptual tools to better understand the dialectics of structure-agency and the complexity of social practice. His theory therefore integrates both the influence of objective structures on thinking and action, as well as agency which leads to variation in social structures.
Unlike Bourdieu, who believes that structures constrain individuals’ actions (agency), Giddens suggests that agency can be constrained as well as enabled by structures. Giddens (1984; 1990) renounces theoretical perspectives which fail to examine the relationship between agency and structural parameters of social contexts. He proposes an innovative and insightful theory which moves beyond the dichotomy of structure and agency and makes key contributions towards understanding the relationship between them, and the role of actors in the production of their social reality. In contrast to Bourdieu, who views structures as deterministic, external and constraining human action, Giddens (1984, p. 25) reconceptualises structures as “recursively organised sets of rules and resources” that constrain and enable human action. While Bourdieu conceptualises agents as complicit with limited reflexivity and agency, Giddens believes that human social agents are reflexive, knowledgeable and resourceful.
For Giddens (1984), structure and agency are inextricably linked in everyday human practice.
Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory is based on hermeneutic frames of thought and draws attention to the role of agents in producing their social reality. Structuration, Giddens (1984, p. 25) contends, refers to “conditions governing the continuity or transmutation of structures and therefore the reproduction of social systems”. Central to Giddens’ structuration theory are the concepts of structure, system and ‘duality of structure’. Structure, for Giddens (1984, p. 377) refers to:
rules and resources, recursively implicated in the reproduction of social systems. Structures exist only as memory traces, the organic basis of human knowledgeability, and as instantiated in action.
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Systems, Giddens (1984, p. 25) contends, are “reproduced relations between actors or collectivities, organised as regular social practices”. In other words, social systems (social units or ‘societies’) are constituted by bounded social practices, and manifest as ‘reproduced social practices’. Therefore, while functionalist and structuralist theories regard structure as rigid, determined, mechanical and external to individuals (such as, the ‘skeleton of an organism’ or ‘girders of a building’), in contrast, Giddens’ theory of structuration regards structure as a process and not as a static, inflexible entity. For Giddens (1984), structures comprise rules and resources that individuals or agents draw upon in their social practice or interaction. Rules, Giddens (1984, p. 21) posits are “techniques or generalisable procedures applied in the enactment/reproduction of social practices”, while resources refer to
“structured properties of social systems, drawn upon and reproduced by knowledgeable agents in the course of interaction” (Giddens, 1984, p. 15).
Duality of structure is the final concept of Giddens’ triad in his structuration theory. He presents a convincing argument that the constitution of structures and agents should not be viewed as separate, opposing components of a dualism; instead, these elements should be regarded as complementary concepts of a ‘duality’ which mutually constitute each other. By
‘duality of structure’ Giddens (1984) means that while social structures are constituted by social action or agency, at the same time, structures provide the medium for this constitution.
Put simply, “structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organise” (Giddens, 1984, p. 25).
As mentioned earlier, in contrast to functionalist and structuralist perspectives which view structures as ‘external’ to individuals, structuration theory views structures as ‘memory traces’ or ideas or schemas, which in a sense make them more internal than external to their social practice. Therefore, structures should not only be associated with constraint, but as both constraining and enabling. Giddens conceptualises human agents as ‘knowledgeable’,
‘reflexive’ and ‘enabled’, which assumes that they are capable of interacting in innovative and resourceful ways. For Giddens, the duality of structure provides the key foundations for continuities in social reproduction in time and space and presumes that agents constitute their selves by reflexively monitoring their daily social activity.
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Subjects constitute their sense of ‘self’ or ‘I’ as they are positioned in discourse or language acquisition with an ‘other’. Giddens challenges the ‘I’ as “a sort of mini agent”; instead, he views ‘self’ as ‘me’. He argues that ‘The use of ‘I’ develops out of, and is therefore associated with, the positioning of the agent in social encounters. As a term of a predicative sort, it is “‘empty’ of content, as compared with the richness of the actor’s self-descriptions involved with ‘me’” (Giddens, (1984, p. 7). By this he means that subjects constitute their sense of ‘self’ as they are positioned in conversation with an ‘other’, and dismisses notions of
‘I’ as a core, private self. In itself, ‘I’ has no meaning; it only acquires meaning positioned in discourse or dialogue with an ‘other’.
Like Bourdieu’s theory of practice, Giddens’ theory of structuration aims to transcend the objectivist-subjectivist, structure-agency dichotomy, and is based on the premise that all social action is influenced by structures. The preceding discussion delineating the structure- agency dialectic offers valuable conceptual contributions to understand how subjects are constituted and describes how the social world is reproduced.
Next, I delineate Foucault’s theory of power and technologies of the self as an analytical framework to analyse subject positioning and how modes of power or power differentials influence subject formation and subjectivity of teachers. This analytical tool theorises how power and resistance or modes of domination and resistance influence how teachers position themselves as subjects, that is, their subjection, in their everyday interactions and teaching in their classrooms. Foucault’s theory of power and technologies of the self as an analytical framework enabled me to make sense of data and illuminate how teachers position themselves as they constitute their identities, as well as the multiple subject positions they adopt in the spaces of their classrooms while teaching about HIV and AIDS, this is discussed in Chapter 5.