ABSTRACT
This approach to the structure/agency problem was evolved in Bhaskar’s predialectical work (Bhaskar, 1979, 1998). However, his work of the early 1990s argues that this analysis provides a basis for, indeed necessitates, a dialectical reinterpretation. Here we come to the idea of entity relationism, where the lines between structure and agency blur. The dialectical quality of being-in-structure means that human life should be seen as a social and relational ‘flow, differentiated into analytically discrete moments’ with each moment seen as ‘subject to multiple and conflicting determinations and mediations’ (Bhaskar, 1993, p 160). The primary category in this social flow of individual being is that of dialectical connection. This describes a situation in which ‘entities or aspects of a totality ... are in principle distinct but inseparable, in the sense that they are ... internally related, ie both ... existentially presuppose the other’ (Bhaskar, 1993, p 58). The domain of dialectical connection is one in which there is the existential constitution, or permeation, of one social entity by another.
