Structure, Function and Contradiction

Abstract

When social theorists deal directly with ‘structure’, the mutuality of structure and action as two ways of seeing the same thing is well behind them. The orderliness of structures realised and reconstituted in actions which mobilise resources as power, is a poor description of the diverse and confusing social world they confront. In this chapter, we shall trace the ways in which the social scientific fallacy is offered as a means of dealing with explanatory deficiencies. We shall show the connection between the vertical and horizontal forms of the fallacy by demonstrating how answers offered in one form call up the other form as they fail.