Aktörer, strukturer och sociala konstruktioner

Abstract

Actors, structures, and social constructions. The relationship between actors and structures is an important ontological aspect in social sciences. Today, the notion that this relationship should be seen as categorized by mutual interdependence, and consequently that both actors and structures should be considered primary ontological categories, is not a very controversial one. More controversial, however, is the phenomenon in social as well as natural sciences commonly known as social constructionism (or constructivism). In this article, the actor-structure thinking is related to different constructionist conceptions. In connection with this, it is argued that if constructionism is primarily seen as an epistemological approach, it is in fact a natural consequence of the actor-structure thinking. From the actor-structure perspective then, the constructionist advocacy for contextualism—i.e. the ambition to accentuate the temporally and spatially distinctive character of reality in the analysis — can be viewed as an important methodological guideline.