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Margaret S. Archer, Being Human: The Problem of Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 323 pp.
This book is the last in Archer's trilogy dealing with culture, structure and agency. In the previous two books, Culture and Agency (Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge University Press, 1995) Archer makes the argument that structure and culture can be shown to have distinctive properties and powers. In this book the same case is made for agency. In this work, Archer is concerned with establishing the sui generis properties and powers of human agents. The key to "being human" is found in the realisation of self as an "emergent relational property" (p.123) that is pre-linguistic and tied to practical activity in the world.
Archer begins her account with a critique of what she regards as the dissolution of humanity in recent social theory. She takes to task both rational choice theories that leave us with "Modernity's Man" and social constructionist theories that produce "Society's Being." "Modernity's Man" is a rational but soulless opportunist and "Society's Being" is a malleable "grammatical fiction" (p.4). Neither of these theoretical positions take account of the continuous sense of self that all humans have that emerges from practical activity in the world. Archer's dense critique of rational choice theory and social constructionism, especially the latter's reliance on linguistic theory, is elegant and compelling. Archer demonstrates clearly how the "emotional lobotomy" (p.85) of Modernity's Man and the disembodied entity of Society's Being deny the creative self.
Archer uses Merleau-Ponty's point that the "sensed bodily envelope" is critical to the development of a sense of self distinguishable from others (p.131). This sense of self...