ABSTRACT
Gewirtz et al. (1995: 87) argue that, in order to begin to conceptualise the operation and effect of quasi-marketisation, a multi-level analysis is needed. From the morphogenetic approach such levels are not heuristic (that is, they are not observational ordering devices) but are sui generis real. The analysis of the interplay of structure, culture and agency is possible because socio-cultural properties pre-date the agency that transforms or reproduces them. The realist methodological device of analytical dualism employed here is due to the fact that any socio-cultural change is the outcome of a temporal sequence, whereby such change post-dates the action(s) that led to it. Such action itself was conditioned by an anterior context. The realist (morphogenetic) approach to theorising about the interplay of structure, culture and agency was elaborated and defended (in contradistinction to Giddens’ structuration theory) in Part I, applied historically in Part II, and contemporaneously in Part III. One of the key problems of structuration theory is its
…tight binding of structure and agency to avoid structural reification [that] does not allow a judgement to be made about particular structures working on human beings in particular ways, i.e. some are more binding than others, and some act in a more coercive way and to different degrees. Indeed, depending on circumstances and context, they may not coerce at all. Conversely, the degree of enablement in structural properties can only be determined by empirical investigation of particular activities embedded in particular contexts.
