Margaret E Archer

Margaret Archer

Margaret Archer (born January 20, 1943) is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK, since 1973. She is best known for coining the term ...

Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach

Margaret Archer develops here her morphogenetic approach, heralded in Culture and Agency (CUP, 1988), and applies it to the problem of structure and agency, that is, how we both shape society and are shaped by it. Her aim is to capture the interplay between these two processes rather than collapse t...

Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order (Social Morphogenesis)

This volume examines how generative mechanisms emerge in the social order and their consequences. It does so in the light of finding answers to the general question posed in this book series: Will Late Modernity be replaced by a social formation that could be called Morphogenic Society? This volume ...

Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenic Society (Social Morphogenesis)

This volume examines the reasons for intensified social change after 1980; a peaceful process of a magnitude that is historically unprecedented. It examines the kinds of novelty that have come about through morphogenesis and the elements of stability that remain because of morphostasis. It is argued...

Critical Realism: Essential Readings (Critical Realism: Interventions)

Critical realism is a movement in philosophy and the human sciences most closely associated with the work of Roy Bhaskar. Since the publication of Bhaskars A Realist Theory of Science, critical realism has had a profound influence on a wide range of subjects. This reader makes accessible, in one vol...

The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity

This book completes Margaret Archer's trilogy investigating the role of reflexivity in mediating between structure and agency. What do young people want from life? Using analysis of family experiences and life histories, her argument respects the properties and powers of both and presents the 'inter...

Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory

This is a revised edition of Margaret Archer's Culture and Agency (CUP, 1988), a seminal contribution to social theory and the case for the role of culture in sociological thought. Described as "a timely and sophisticated treatment", the book showed that the "problems" of culture and agency and stru...

Being Human: The Problem of Agency

The human subject is under threat from postmodernist thinking that has declared the "Death of God" and the "Death of Man." This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human ...

The Relational Subject

Many social theorists now call themselves 'relational sociologists', but mean entirely different things by it. The majority endorse a 'flat ontology', dealing exclusively with dyadic relations. Consequently, they cannot explain the context in which relationships occur or their consequences, except a...

Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory

Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory

Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach

Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach

Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory

Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory

Making Our Way Through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility

Being Human : The Problem of Agency