ABSTRACT
In the introduction of this book I wrote that an elaboration of the reasoning underlying the arguments and interpretations pursued in the first three chapters would be left until Chapter 4. This was so, I asserted, because it was not always helpful to view the true world, and what we read, through our academic constructs. By these academic ‘constructs’ I mean the assumption – fundamental to so much social science of both the modern or post-modern tradition – that there exist forces or structures which, though produced by individuals, now shape or even determine individual action. This assumption – sometimes made explicit and sometimes implied – is shared so completely by what might be broadly termed culturalists and the institutionalists, that the point at which culture ends and the institution begins is unclear. And so, while the culturalist sees a need to disaggregate institutions into their cultural elements, those who see in institutions generic, even universal, processes believe that it is to those institutions we must look to understand society, and that culture itself may be strongly influenced by the institution. It has been no difficult thing, then, for there to emerge the view that culture nestles within global structures, each mediated through the other, each subtly altered, but neither subsumed, by the other. The question is no longer whether, but the extent to which, culture, structure and institution exert an influence. The individual is now secondary or residual consideration, or, a mere fiction in extremis.
