ABSTRACT
The previous chapter introduced the basic conceptual framework for statistical and relational descriptions. In the realm of social research those concepts can be used to provide descriptions of people and their living conditions. Further questions concern dependency relations: How are people dependent on social conditions? Arguments often employ notions of structure; for example:
“Structure” is one of the most important and most elusive terms in the vocabulary of current social science. [. . .] The term structure empowers what it designates. Structure, in its nominative sense, always implies structure in its transitive verbal sense. Whatever aspect of social life we designate as structure is posited as “structuring” some other aspect of social existence – whether it is class that structures politics, gender that structures employment opportunities, rhetorical conventions that structure texts or utterances, or modes of production that structure social formations.
