SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION: DEVELOPING THE DISTINCTION

Author(s): Margaret Archer

Source: Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 4 (November 1996), pp. 679-699
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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SOCIOLOGY Vol. 30 No. 4 November 1996
679-699

SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION:

DEVELOPING THE DISTINCTION

Margaret Archer

Abstract This paper underlines the importance of the distinction be

and 'system' integration (agency and structure) introduced by David L
1964. Its four sections (i) examine the original difficulty of maintain
tinction between the 'parts' of society and its 'people' against the socia
Individualism whose proponents argued that the former must always b
the latter as individuals were the ultimate constituents of society, (ii
collectivist opposition held 'systemic factors' to be indispensable in so
explanations, but could not substantiate their ontological status against
reification whilst empiricism held sway, (iii) explores how once the indivi-
dualist/collectivist debate was superseded, Lockwood's distinction was redefined in
structuration theory, where insistence on treating structure and agency as mutually
constitutive effectively denied their independent variation and thus reduced the
'social' and the 'systemic' to differences in the scale of social practices; (iv) argues
that social realism's ontology, in which 'structures' and 'agents' belong to different
emergent strata of social reality, avoids reducing one to the other or eliding the two.
Instead it supplies the ontological grounding for Lockwood's distinction and enables
it to be developed into an explanatory programme - analytical dualism - whose
central tenet is the need to explore the interplay between these two irreducible
constituents of social reality in order to account for why things are 'so and not
otherwise' and in a manner which is of direct utility to practical analysts of society.

Keywords : Lockwood, social and system integration, social ontology, analytical

dualism.

The distinction between 'social' and 'system' integration was emphasised by

David Lockwood in 1964 with the clear intention of increasing our ability to
account for social change. It was used to define those states of the social
system which enabled social conflict to be transformative, compared with those
which constrained even profound social conflict to systemic reproduction.
Correspondingly, it defined when social antagonism was a necessary but in-
sufficient condition for transforming social structures and why a system could
remain unchanged, despite containing tensions and contradictions, if not
subjected to conflictual pressures.
The fourteen pages which spelled out the distinction contained all the
elements of a nascent research programme: one which would be progressive,
because it cut through the contemporary deadlock between partisans of
normative functionalism (with their epiphenomenal view of over-socialised
agency) and of conflict theory (where systemic features were seen as the inert

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680 MARGARET ARCHER

effects of agential interaction); propo

why things were so and not otherw
historically and comparatively, at the
levels. Yet, above all, it would be prog
between the 'parts' and the 'people' in
interplay between 'structure and agenc
a new form of non-conflationary theo
from treating their properties as sepa
the locus of intensive investigation, sin
determined. Such a programme could
dualistic because distinguishing the 'p
order to examine their interplay, but
dualism since neither element can exis
are responsible for their mutual elabor
accentuating the distinction).
Yet the research programme was slow
to tracing through the difficulties co
advancing the distinction in the first
it in an empiricist environment, host
against distorting redefinitions, intende
which is explicitly opposed to analyti
subsequent developments in the philo
Social Realism, now furnish it with se
utility was never seriously at issue).
Lockwood's prime aim was to improv
explanation necessarily involves ontol
logy endorsed plays a powerful regulatory role towards the explanatory
methodology adopted because it conceptualises social reality in certain terms,
thus identifying what there is to be explained, and also rules out explanations
in terms of entities or properties which are deemed non-existent (as atheists,
for example, cannot attribute their well-being to divine providence). On the
other hand, regulation is mutual, for what is held to exist cannot remain
immune from what really, actually or factually is found to be the case.
Therefore, the fact that Lockwood was primarily concerned with explana-
tion did not mean that issues of social ontology could be by-passed, and, at
the time, these were dominated by the rival claims of Individualism versus
Collectivism. It is worth revisiting this traditional debate to demonstrate that
the very terms in which it was conducted in the 1950s and 1960s were
extremely hostile to establishing the distinction between 'social' and 'system'
integration.

Advancing the distinction - in opposition to Methodological Individualism

Lockwood began by distinguishing the 'parts' from the 'people' and then

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 681

examining their combination in order to account for variable o

otherwise eluded theorisation. The increase in explanatory pow
from concentrating upon neither element, but rather from fo
tions in terms of their variable combinations. In an explicit rejection of
methodological individualism in the form of 'conflict theory', his concern was
to show that 'social (mal) integration' is a necessary but insufficient basis
upon which to account for social change, unless this is complemented by
examining its interplay with 'system integration'.

While social change is very frequently associated with conflict, the reverse does not
necessarily hold. Conflict may be both endemic and intense in a social system
without causing any basic structural change. Why does some conflict result in
change while other conflict does not? Conflict theory would have to answer that this
is decided by the variable factors affecting the power balance between groups. Here
we reach the analytical limits of conflict theory. As a reaction to normative func-
tionalism it is entirely confined to the problem of social integration. What is missing
is the system integration focus of general functionalism, which, by contrast with
normative functionalism, involved no prior commitment to the study of social
stability (Lockwood 1964:249).

Opposition was guaranteed from Individualists whose commitment to

empiricism reassured them that, however complex social structure might
seem, there are only two possible ways in which it can be construed: either
social organisation is constituted by things which are manifestly real or by
reified entities, and of the two the former must be correct. Thus Watkins
states: if "methodological individualism means that human beings are
supposed to be the only moving agents in history, and if sociological holism
means that some super-human agents or factors are supposed to be at work in
history, then these two alternatives are exhaustive" (Watkins 1968:271).
Ontologically then, social structure could only refer to the human or the
super-human, as no other contenders then seriously figured on the lists. With
empiricist confidence the Individualist thus insisted 'that the social environ-
ment by which any particular individual is confronted and frustrated and
sometimes manipulated and occasionally destroyed is, if we ignore its physical
ingredients, made up of other people , their habits, inertia, loyalties, rivalries
and so on' (Watkins 1968:278).
This is simply an ontological assertion which requires demonstration. Yet
demonstrating that the social context is epiphenomenal entails showing that
every reference to it in explanations of social life (and no-one wishes to deny
that we are influenced by our social environment) actually refers to 'other
people' (under the 'inflated' description particular to Individualists).2 Speci-
fically this means showing that, in relation to people, social structure is not: (i)
autonomous or independent, (ii) pre-existent, (iii) causally efficacious.
Collectivists argued that they fail on all three counts, and their arguments are
persuasive.

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682 MARGARET ARCHER

(i) If autonomy is to be withheld from

denied any independence from people,
vindicate the claim that it can be treated
individuals, which as such has no indepe
fore our social environment is constitut
follows that if the 'social structure' is
becomes synonymous with 'the social' to the Individualist. Here the
Collectivist queries whether in studying society we are, can, and should be
confined to the study of 'groups'. When we examine a kinship structure, for
example, we are not just investigating how that 'group' does intermarry,
transmit property, have particular obligations towards specific others and so
on, but what rules govern their inter-marriage etc. Comparison of kinship
structures is to compare different rules not different groups, for the rules
regulate what the members do. Certainly, the continued salience of any rule
depends on people continuing to adhere to it (this is merely a statement of
activity-dependence) but their adherence is not what makes the rule, otherwise
rules just become descriptions of what people do and have no regulatory or
constitutive function. The identical point can be made about all other social
or cultural institutions.
The same Collectivist argument serves to show the defects entailed in viewing
environmental influences as nothing but 'interpersonal relations'. It insists that
in dealing with the social context we are not paradigmatically concerned with
groups at all. Roles, as Collectivists have often pointed out, are more important
for understanding what is going on between landlords and tenants or bank
cashiers and customers than their relations as persons. Moreover the role has to
be granted some autonomy from its occupant or how else do we explain the
similar actions of a succession of incumbents, or that when promoted to bank
manager our original cashier now acts quite differently? Once again the fact that
roles are necessarily activity-dependent is insufficient to deny them the
independent capacity to structure individuals' activities.
(ii) Yet the Individualist argues that 'no social tendency exists which could
not be altered if the individuals concerned both wanted to alter it and
possessed the appropriate information' (Watkins 1968:271). Thus the social
context has become the effect of contemporary other people. For it follows that
whatever makes up our environment (such as enduring roles, positions and
distributions e.g. of material, cultural and human capital) are all things that
the 'people concerned' now do not want to change/do not know how to
change or do not think about changing. In other words, whatever the origins
of the social tendencies and features we observe, their present existence is due
in some way to the people present. Therefore, explanation of the social
structure is always in the present tense and responsibility for everything
present lies firmly on the shoulders of those here present. Now pre-existence,
the fact that we are all born into an on-going social context, constrained to
speak its language, take our places in a prior distribution of resources, be

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 683

sanctioned by its laws and confront its organisations is a powerfu

the Collectivist for the existence of constraints and enablements which stem
from properties of society. The internal and necessary relationships between
social positions (landlord and tenant, MP and constituent, husband and wife)
have developed from past interaction but form a context within which we hav
to live. Only if their persistence can be attributed to the sustaining behaviou
of 'other people' may they be assigned an epiphenomenal status.
However, if we take the example of a demographic structure (which should
be agreeable to Individualists since it is made up of N people of different
ages), then the relevant population, that is those of child-bearing age who
could change it, cannot significantly modify it for several years nor eliminate
all its effects for many more. Yet more significantly, they themselves are
constantly influenced by it since it has determined the size of this initial
'relevant population' to which they belong. Many distributions have this same
property of taking time to change, even if all people present are consensually
dedicated to their transformation. Their very resistance shows that they are
not epiphenomenal. Moreover, desires for persistence or transformation (and
knowledge of how to effect them) are not randomly distributed, but shaped by
the advantages and disadvantages which the pre-existent property distributes
differentially throughout the population - and cannot be understood
independently of them.
(iii) Denial of the pre-existence of social forms was intended to deprive
them of any causal efficacy, yet this claim also fails if such properties are
resistant to change or take a considerable time to alter. Although many of
them may eventually be changed by human action, nevertheless while such
environmental factors endure, they can constrain and facilitate different
activities and may have consequences which are not trivial for future social
change. The Individualists, however, make the opposite assumption. In effect
they argue that because such social tendencies are ultimately reversible,
nothing of importance will happen before they are reversed. Matters of this
kind cannot be decided by theoretical fiat.
This was the whole burden of the Collectivist critique, namely that
references to these structural properties were often unavoidable and they were
therefore necessary to adequate causal accounts. As such, this was a purely
methodological critique which concluded that ' explanatory emergence' must
be endorsed contra Individualist reductionism, but one which did not move
on to question the ontological foundations of the Individualist programme.3
Yet why stop there, winning the methodological point but conceding the
ontological one, especially as the two are so closely intertwined?

Sustaining the distinction in the face of Empiricism?

Writing in 1964, Lockwood shared the difficulties of Collectivists in

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684 MARGARET ARCHER

establishing the existence of non-ind

society. Thus he stressed that 'the vit
'component elements' of social system
contradiction?' (Lockwood 1964:250). T
namely what conceivable kinds of pr
which exert any causal effects whats
exerting an independent influence upo
the time was that Lockwood had diffi
could and did justify the explanatory
but could not supply an ontological account of how it was possible to
differentiate systemic properties from people and attribute causal powers to
them.
This left the 'component elements' employed open to the charge of
reification from the uncharitable, or their construal as heuristic devices by the
more charitable. Lockwood was clearly aware of the difficulty: his first inclina-
tion was indeed only to be advancing heuristic claims, maintaining that his
distinction is a 'wholly artificial one' (Lockwood 1964:245). (This interpret-
ation has become widely diffused in the literature).4 Yet five pages later
artificiality gives way to the ontological and methodological claim that the two
are 'not only analytically separable, but also, because of the time elements
involved, factually distinguishable' (p. 250). Once accepted as being real, the
attribution of causal or generative powers to the 'component elements' quickly
follows; 'there is nothing metaphysical about the general notion of social
relationships being somehow implicit in a given set of material conditions'
(p. 251). The problem remains and is becoming more pressing now that
specific causal powers are being attributed to ontologically ungrounded 'com-
ponent elements' whose mode of influence is also methodologically un-
specified. However Lockwood remained crystal clear that his question could
not be answered at the level of observable events and entities. Thus he rightly
dismissed the 'institutional patterns' used by normative functionalists as an
inadequate solution.
The irony of Collectivism was that whilst it defended the methodological
indispensability of 'structural factors', no overall conception of social structure
was advanced ontologically . Its over-riding concern is with explanation and
particularly with the deficiencies of the Individualists' programme of
reductionism. In criticising it, the Collectivists' case rests largely on the fact
that references to the social context have to be included for explanatory
adequacy. Otherwise accounts break down short of the goal (through failure
of composition laws) and 'societal properties' are then needed to supply the
deficit. Although the point is also made that 'chaps', their dispositions and
their doings cannot even be identified, (i.e. described as 'believers' or 'voters'
etc.) without further resort to the social context, this is not used to issue an
ontological challenge to the Individualists' concepts of 'structure' and
'agency'. Consequently, Collectivists deal with the 'social structure' in the

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 685

most fragmented way, as a disparate collection of facts or factors, only

adduced when Individualism fails. Yet when they are, Collectivists cannot
evade the vital question which Lockwood had posed about their ontological
status. Here the fear of reification made the Collectivist response as circum-
spect as possible.
Gellner, for instance, speculated that the patterns we are capable of
isolating in our environment and reacting towards are not merely abstracted',
not simply mental constructs. Instead, "The pattern isolated, however, is not
'merely abstracted' but is as I am somewhat sheepishly tempted to say ' really
there ' " (Gellner 1968:264). The origins of this 'sheepishness' are important
for they were responsible for withholding full ontological status from 'societal
properties' for decades. Tentativeness is rooted in two spectres of reification
and the seeming difficulty of affirming the existence of 'societal properties'
without invoking one of them. The first was J. S. Mill's (1884:573) old fear,
namely that to acknowledge them was to countenance the existence of a new
'social substance'. The second was that talk about 'societal properties' was
also talk about things produced or generated by Society, independently of the
activities of people and therefore superordinate to actors.
Collectivists were perfectly clear that they were making no such claims; they
were defending the irreducibility of 'societal facts' whilst also upholding their
activity-dependence. Thus Gellner underlined that where properties of social
complexes are concerned, 'these latter can indeed exist only if their parts
exist - that is indeed the predicament of all wholes - but their fates qua fates
of complexes can nevertheless be the initial conditions or indeed the final
conditions of the causal sequence' (Gellner 1968:263). In exactly the same
vein Mandelbaum maintained that 'one need not hold that a society is an
entity independent of all human beings in order to hold that societal facts are
not reducible to individual behaviour' (Mandelbaum 1973:230). Although
such statements clear their advocates of reifying Society, it remained im-
possible to substantiate the existence of any non-observable societal property
within the confines of an empiricist epistemology, where knowledge comes
only from sense-experience.
For Individualists to conclude that, because of their observability, indivi-
duals were the only conceivable 'moving agents' (i.e. real and really causally
efficacious) was pure empiricism. Instead Collectivists rejected the human and
the super-human as exhausting the possible 'moving agents' in history and
argued for the existence of a third type. 'Societal facts', referred to forms of
social organisations, to social institutions, to persistent roles, that is to
systematic and enduring relationships . In short, these were neither human nor
super-human in nature but relational , and relations depended upon people but
at the same time exerted an independent influence over their activities.
However, given such a relational conception, 'one can still legitimately ask
what sort of ontological status societal facts can conceivably possess if it is
affirmed that they depend for their existence on the activities of human beings

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686 MARGARET ARCHER

and yet are claimed not to be identical

1973:230). The question is answerable, b
framework of empiricism. Moreover, C
was 'emergent properties', for Mandelb
emergents' and Gellner mentions the
explicating their inner constitution. Sig
footnotes, conveying the impression t
reception, possibly withering Collectiv
attack upon the explanatory inadequacie
Most likely they were correct, for th
depends upon overturning empiricism
reality coming to us through the 'hard
of 'emergence' implies a stratified social world including non-observable
entities, where reductive talk about its ultimate constituents makes no sense,
given that the relational properties pertaining to each stratum are all real, that
it is nonsense to discuss whether something (like water) is more real than
something else (like hydrogen and oxygen), and that regress as a means of
determining 'ultimate constituents' is of no help in this respect and an
unnecessary distraction in social or any other type of theorising.
To talk about 'emergent powers' is to refer to a property which comes into
being through social combination. They exist by virtue of inter-relations,
although not all relationships give rise to them. Thus the increased pro-
ductivity of Adam Smith's pin-makers was a power emergent from their
division of labour (relations of production) and not reducible to personal
qualities like increased dexterity which did not account for the hundred fold
increase in output (mass production), i.e. the relational effect. By contrast the
Ladies' Sewing Circle was doubtless a social relationship but not one which
generated the emergent power of mass production, since each confined herself
to her own work. In the development of such 'emergent powers' there is
nothing mysterious, neither is there any mystery about their constituents and
certainly no invocation of dubious 'social substances'.5
Such were the ontological implications of the insights which the
Collectivists already had, but failed to pursue. And their reason for this was
their full awareness that such efforts would come straight up against the brick
wall of empiricist epistemology. Yet Gellner had seen a way round the
epistemological difficulty constituted by non-observables, a method of
securing the reality of relational concepts not on the perceptual criterion of
empiricism, but through demonstrating their causal efficacy, that is employing
a causal criterion to establish reality.
What precluded its exploitation was that the empiricist conception of
causation, in terms of constant conjunctions at the level of (observable)
events, constituted another brick wall. The trouble with 'internally related
structures' is that their powers may not always be exercised because other
contingencies intervene in society, which is necessarily an open system and

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 687

can never approximate to laboratory conditions of closure. Beca

'emergent properties' will not necessarily or usually be demonstr
regular co-variance in observable events. Hence despite their roles, bank
tellers sometimes hand over money to masked-raiders and ideologies may be
masked by tokenism. In other words, emergent properties rarely produce
constant conjunctions in society and therefore generally fail Hume's test for
they are usually incapable of predicting observable regularities.
On Humean terms, such 'structural properties' as could just earn their
keep were ones which did make a contribution to accounting for a constant
conjuncture, though most of the time, in open social systems, regularities at
the level of events are just what emergent features do not generate. Therefore,
those structural elements which can pass the Humean check-point only do so
on an ad hoc basis, as fragmented 'variables', and, ironically, are also atypical
'of their own kind'.
Only after the empiricist hegemony had been challenged and the closely
associated domination of positivism was similarly undermined did siding
neither with Individualism nor Collectivism become a genuine option. Not
only were the terms of the old debate between them rejected, but the debate
itself was re-cast in entirely different ones. Nevertheless it remained a debate,
with two new protagonists replacing the old pair, but one in which
Lockwood's distinction was still entangled.

Defending the distinction against distortion : ontologica I elision and redefinition

The new 'ontology of praxis' as put forward in Structuration theory is

intended to transcend the traditional debate through replacing the two sets of
terms in which it was conducted by the notion of 'the duality of structure', in
which agency and structure can be conceptualised only in relation to one
another. From this, it follows methodologically that neither the reductionism
advocated by Individualists nor the anti-reductionism defended by
Collectivists can play any part in the Structurationists' approach to
explanation - which takes up the novel position of areductionism. This is the
direct logical consequence of their re-defining structure and agency as
inseparable. Whilst this frees either from being an epiphenomenon of the other,
it does so by holding them to be mutually constitutive (which is why this
position is termed Elisionist here).
To treat 'structure' and 'agency' as inseparable is central to the notion of
'duality', and, as a method of transcending dualism it then produces an
ontology of 'social practices' which are held to be the ultimate constituents of
social reality. There is a decentering of the subject here because human beings
become people, as opposed to organisms, only through drawing upon struc-
tural properties to generate social practices. There is an equivalent demotion
of structure, which becomes real, as opposed to virtual only when instantiated

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688 MARGARET ARCHER

by agency. These ontological assumpt

tical social theorising, for their corollary
have independent or autonomous or an
ties which are manifested in and repr
practices'. In other words, the very a
'structure and agency' is incompatible
and the people', which is being defen
the continued use of the terms 'socia
only retained within Structuration theor
Now, the view defended throughout
an error in social theory. The deficie
'downward' (Collectivist/Holist) versio
that structure and agency respectively
could thus be reduced to one or the oth
structuration theory deprives both ele
through reducing one to the other, b
inseparably. Yet this very compression
strength - a method of conceptualisin
rupture or disjunction between the m
structures which are necessarily repro
everyday living. We do not intend to
time we generate a grammatically correct sentence in it, but this is the
inexorable consequence of our so doing. Enter the knowledgeable actor and
exit the cultural dope; enter structure as a medium of action and exit
structural properties as constraints upon it - these are the attractions of
central conflation.
Since 'inseparability' is held to be a step forward it is important to note
what this reconceptualisation has left behind. In particular it means that
Elisionists deliberately turn their backs upon any autonomous features which
could pertain independently to either 'structure' or 'agency'. Otherwise such
features could be investigated separately, their distinctive properties would
potentially make a difference and because of this the nature of their com-
bination would become problematic, in view of which their interplay would
require examination - and dualism would once more be the name of the
game. In avoiding this turn of the wheel, 'structure and agency' become even
more closely compacted together. Because 'structure' is inseparable from
'agency' then, there is no sense in which it can be either emergent or autonomous or
pre-existent or causally influential These implications derive directly from the
assertion of the mutual constitution of structure and agency, where the
"production and reproduction by active subjects are the constituting processes
of structure. There cannot be one without the other . . . [because] They
cannot refer to separate processes or separate structures" (Layder 1981:75). It
thus remains to be seen why Giddens finds such virtue in his major premiss
about inseparability as contained in the notion of the 'duality of structure'

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 689

when for his critics it merely throws a blanket over the two c
'structure' and 'agency', which prevents investigation of what i
beneath it - and where structuration theory leaves Lockwood's
(Archer 1982; Smith and Turner 1986; Thompson 1989).

Lack of emergence and lack of autonomy

Basically the answer lies in what Giddens hopes to wrest social
from - the reified notion (in his view) of emergent properties, a
with relative autonomy from action, and the reductionist conc
view) of individuals, with personal properties which are indepe
detachable from the social context of their formation and expr
proposal is that all of this can be transcended by substituting a s
of praxis. Thus to Cohen, there is a real virtue in the idea that
emergent description of the structural properties of systems, all
way or another to the central notion that institutionalised pract
tions may be regarded as more basic constituents of order than either
individuals or the properties of collectivities' (Cohen 1990:42).
'Social practices' therefore are also the bedrock of 'institutions', for the
latter are held to be nothing more than such regularised practices as struc-
tured by rules and resources. When 'structural properties' are drawn upon in
routinised fashion an institution becomes 'sedimented' as a clustering of the
practices constituting it. In turn this means that 'institutions' are never some-
thing concrete to which we can point but are essentially processual; ever in a
fluid process of becoming and never in a (temporally or temporary) fixed state
of being, because all structural properties and all actions are always potentially
transformational. Practical social analysts may want to insert their own ques-
tion mark over how the investigation of processes within and surrounding an
institution can proceed without the capacity to identify a relatively enduring
institutional context through properties which are necessary and internal to it
being what it is (while it lasts). Many of these would not be content to
substitute a study of 'routinised practices' on the grounds that they would first
need to invoke a structural context - e.g. educational or medical - to know
which practices to examine.

Pre-existence denied
The only permissible way of examining the 'parts' and the 'people' apart from
one another is via the artificial exercise of 'methodological bracketing'.
Institutional analysis brackets away strategic action and treats structural
properties as 'chronically reproduced features of social systems' (Giddens
1979:80). On the other hand, to examine the constitution of social systems as
strategic conduct, Giddens brackets institutional analysis and studies actors'
mobilisation of rules and resources in social relations. His justification would

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690 MARGARET ARCHER

be that since both recursiveness and ch

then this merely reflects the inherently
what most of us seek instead of this tr
when and where reproduction rather th
prevail - a specification which would en
'structure' and 'agency', as Lockwood h
refuses to give on principle because to
entail dualistic theorising. Yet, ironical
other than traduce this very principle, sin
the theoretical to the methodological l
indispensability.
More importantly, this bracketing exercise has serious implications
concerning time which contradicts the stated aim of making time integral to
explaining society and its properties. To Giddens what is bracketed are the
two aspects of the 'duality of structure', institutional analysis and strategic
conduct being artificially separated out by placing a methodological epoch
upon each in turn. But, because they are two sides of the same thing, the
pocketed elements must thus be co-existent in time. The symmetry of the
epochs confines analysis to the same poque . And it follows directly from this
that temporal relations between institutional structure and strategic action
logically cannot be examined . Thus Lockwood's fundamental insight is jetti-
soned, namely that it was their spacing across different tracts of time which
enabled the two to be differentiated and their interplay examined - this insight
becomes a victim of elisionism itself.

Withholding causal efficacy

Because of the commitment to inseparability, no state of the system can vary
independently from that of agency. Since the 'system' merely refers to
relations between larger numbers occurring at a distance, then 'the basic
definition of social integration is the reciprocity between actors; of systems
integration, reciprocities between groups and collectivities' (Craib 1992:58).
In other words, while Lockwood saw considerable explanatory advantages
deriving from distinguishing between 'social' and 'system' integration, insisting
that the two could vary independently and that different combinations of
them made for stability or change, this is explicitly precluded by elisionism.
On the contrary, in structuration theory, they must co-vary because they are
inseparable.
Hence Giddens writes that 'the systemness of social integration is funda-
mental to the systemness of society as a whole ' (Giddens 1979:77). Cohen
reinforces the point and in so doing, underlines the fact that this is a direct
consequence of the 'ontology of praxis'. Thus he argues that whereas
Lockwood maintained 'that for certain purposes system integration may refer
to holistically conceived properties of systems, Giddens preserves his pivotal

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 691

emphasis upon structured praxis by maintaining that system

involves social reciprocities between agents at a distance' (Coh
Indeed he does, but some of us still want to question the pric
loss of the explanatory power which Lockwood's analysis suppl
one to distinguish between ubiquitous social conflict which generated no
change, due to 'high system integration' (not, pace Cohen, conceptualised
holistically, but in terms of emergence), and conflict issuing in transformation
through actualising a systemic contradiction. This loss is the cost of sustaining
'duality' by focusing exclusively upon the amalgam of 'social practices' -
which elides structure and agency or the 'systemic' and the 'social'.
Ultimately the price of redefining the distinction in line with the notion of
'duality' is the abandonment of any attempt to advance the theorisation of
social change. For to Giddens, 'there is little point in looking for an overall
theory of stability and change in social systems, since the conditions of social
reproduction vary so widely between different types of society' (Giddens
1979:215). Thus instead of a research programme devoted to precisely that
goal by exploring the interplay between 'social' and 'system' integration, the
'duality of structure' merely presents a 'sensitisation device' and never a
corpus of propositions.

Upholding the distinction - grounding it in Social realism

The realist ontology furnishes that which Collectivism lacked, an activity-

dependent concept of structure, which is both genuinely irreducible yet in no
danger of hypostatisation, and a non-atomistic conception of agents, to rectify
the deficiencies of Individualism's individual - without, however, regarding
the two elements as part of an inseparable 'duality'. Thus in place of all three
forms of conflationary theorising, the Social Realist substitutes analytical
dualism. Because the social world is made up, inter alia , of 'structures' and of
'agents' and because these belong to different strata of social reality, there is
no question of reducing one to the other or of eliding the two and there is
every reason for exploring the interplay between them.
The differences between the Elisionists and Emergentists have often been
obscured by their common rejection of the terms of the traditional debate, but
what the two replace them by are grounded in antithetical conceptions of
social reality - precisely because Structuration theorists explicitly disavow
emergence itself. Such a viewpoint stands in the starkest contrast with the
Realist assertion that 'it is just in virtue of these emergent features of societies,
that social science is possible' (Bhaskar 1979:25).
When he first advanced the concept of 'system integration', it is clear from
the examples given that Lockwood had systemic emergent properties in mind.
Thus his examination of how Weber treated patrimonialism shows that he was
acutely aware of dealing with the incompatibilities between internal and

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 692 MARGARET ARCHER

necessary relations at the system level, th

where the realisation or containment of the potential for breakdown is
dependent upon the interplay with 'social integration'. Thus, 'the relationship
between bureaucracy and taxation is a highly interdependent one' (Lockwood
1964:254) since the efficiency of the bureaucracy depends upon the effective-
ness of its taxation system; and the effectiveness of the taxation system
depends upon the efficiency of the bureaucratic apparatus. Thus the strategic
problem is 'one of maintaining a taxation system that can effectively meet the
material needs of a bureaucracy in the context of a subsistence, or near
subsistence, economy. The centralising goal of bureaucratic institutions is
constantly liable to sabotage by the potential social relationship structure of the
subsistence economy which favours the decentralisation and "feudalization"
of power relationships' (Lockwood 1964:254; my italics). Here we have the
crucial notion that the fate of 'systemic' tendencies is at the mercy of their
confluence with 'social' integration, resulting in containment and stability in
the cases of Egypt and China but in breakdown of the later Roman Empire,
where the defence mechanisms strategically introduced by the bureaucracy
actually intensified the trend towards the subsistence economy and actualised
the potential for decentralised relationships. All the other examples presented
in the article indicate the same ontological affinity with social realism.
A realist ontology which regards structural and cultural systems as emer-
gent entities is at variance with the Elisionists' view which holds, (a) that such
properties possess a 'virtual existence' only until, (b) they are 'instantiated' by
actors, which (c) means these properties are neither fully real nor examinable
except in conjunction with the agents who instantiate them, and only then
through the artificial bracketing exercise since the two are inseparable in
reality.
On the contrary, their insistence upon the differentiation and stratification
of the social world leads Social Realists to separate the 'parts' and 'people' in
order to examine their distinctive emergent properties. As Bhaskar noted of
Peter Berger's early and idealist version of an elisionist theory, its fundamental
error is that 'People and society are not . . . related "dialectically". They do
not constitute two moments of the same process. Rather they refer to radically
different things' (Bhaskar 1979:33). Precisely the same criticism can be
levelled at later versions like Structuration theory.
Hence the separability/inseparability issue represents the ontological parting
of the ways between Emergentists and Elisionists. For the Emergentist, 'The
importance of distinguishing, in the most categorical way, between human
action and social structure will now be apparent. For the properties possessed
by social forms may be very different from those possessed by the individuals
upon whose activity they depend'. Hence the need 'to distinguish sharply then
between the genesis of human actions, lying in the reasons, intentions and
plans of human beings, on the one hand; and the structures governing the
reproduction and transformation of social activities, on the other' (Bhaskar

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 693

1989:79). Why? Not simply because ontologically they are indeed

entities with different properties and powers, but because metho
is necessary to make the distinction between them in order to ex
interplay and thus be able to explain why things are 'so and not
society. Conversely, from the stand-point of Elisionism it becom
to talk about the stringency of structural constraints versus degrees
freedom, for in theories based upon central conflation, causation
joint and equal responsibility of structure and agency and nothing
attributable to one rather than the other, at any given point in time.
The central argument of this paper is just the opposite, which
vital to maintain Lockwood's distinction. It is only through anal
processes by which structure and agency shape and re-shape one
time that we can account for variable social outcomes at different times. This
presumes a social ontology which warrants speaking about pre-existence',
'relative autonomy' and 'causal influence' in relation to these two strata
(structures and agents) and an explanatory methodology which makes such
talk practicable for the practising social theorist.
In relation to the latter, the argument is that 'analytical dualism' provides
the most powerful tool in practical social analysis, yet one which has been slow
to develop and whose full potential in terms of its theoretical purchase and
practical utility have still to be fully recognised. The reasons for this delayed
development are basically that both elements, that is analytical separability and
temporal distinction , were needed in combination. Any attempt to make temporal
distinctions without a complementary notion of the emergent nature of
structural entities was ontologically ungrounded, leaving those who did so
open to the charge of reiflcation from others and themselves puzzled about
what it was that they held to be prior to action or consequent upon it.
Similarly, the reverse, that it is to endorse analytical separability without
simultaneously recognising that any activity took place in a context of prior
emergent structures and that determinate activities were antecedent to specific
structural changes, missed perhaps the most profound methodological
consequence of emergentism itself.
Until the analytical separability of structure and agency was explicitly
acknowledged to entail temporality rather than simultaneity, realists did not
radically recast the form of theorising about the relations between structure
and agency. Instead they tended to be quite similar to central conflationary
approaches.6 The tardy development of analytical dualism was due to the fact
that the necessary recognition of the temporality of emergence was so long
coming.

Temporality without emergence and emergence without temporality

What is of particular significance here was Lockwood's awareness that the
distinction between 'social' and 'system' integration is more than an analytical

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694 MARGARET ARCHER

artifice when temporality is taken into a

possible due to temporality. Because 'str
different tracts of time, this enables us to
terms of the former being prior to the
exerting a causal influence upon it. In ot
integration' conditioning 'social integra
former, and similarly we can speak of sy
particular sequence of social interaction.
Lockwood's insight was that '(t)hough d
integration are not only analytically separab
involved, factually distinguishable ' (Lock
using the distinction for explanatory pu
independent variation of the two in tim
Marxist example he stresses that 'it is p
theory, to say that at any particular point
social integration (e.g. relative absence
degree of system integration (mountin
my italics). Indeed the generic explanat
puts forward rests upon the historical c
properties of structure and those of age
temporally co-variant, examination of t
becomes a new source of explanatory po
Lockwood himself was fully aware of th
namely what exactly was the nature of
analytically and temporally distinguished
However, when a form of realism, spec
respect to social reality, developed in th
this strong ontological defence of emergen
social world was not initially accompani
of the temporal distinction possible b
structure and agency (Harr and Seco
Keat and Urry 1975; Bhaskar 1978; Ou
distinction' between structure and agenc
Social Realism itself. For it is precisely b
are, with creativity, innovativeness and ref
emergent properties, that the social
(laboratory) conditions of closure. Ther
constantly intervene, interfering with the
the exercise of their properties and pow
for the generative powers of structure
society) is that the latter are 'normally o
which actually occur' (Bhaskar 1979:9) b
follows from this that the two cannot be c
phase is, of course, identical with the d

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 695

between 'system' and 'social' integration, and used to such powerful

explanatory effect.
Thus when Bhaskar maintains that in social theorising, 'the relations one is
concerned with here must be conceptualized as holding between positions and
practices' (1979:4), it must be the case that such an analytical separation
always entails the temporal distinction between positions and practitioners,
roles and their incumbents, the systemic and the social or structure and
agency. Certainly this has not been common practice in social analysis.
Generations of sociologists have made present tense distinctions between
offices and their holders or formal role requirements and informal doings, but
these are confined to the empirical level, they are based on observable current
affairs and this will not do for the realist since it omits, inter alia> the powers of
many role structures to pre-determine who was eligible to be an occupant and
the powers of incumbents reflectively to re-monitor their activities. The
former introduces the past tense and latter the future tense, but neither is
observable in the present tense, if they are observable at all. Thus arises the
necessity of the temporal distinction to the Social Realist. Structures (as
emergent entities) are not only irreducible to people, they pre-exist them, and
people are not puppets of structures because they have their own emergent
properties which mean they either reproduce or transform social structure,
rather than creating it. To explain which occurs, the realist examines the
interplay between the two (endorsing and utilising separability) and in both
cases, reproduction and transformation necessarily refer to maintaining or
changing something which is temporally prior to these activities, and whose
change itself is posterior to them (thus entailing temporality).

Undermining resistance to temporality

Why, then, has the temporal strand remained so implicit and underworked
amongst Emergentists in general? Even Lockwood, who made great and
important play of the temporal distinction between the 'systemic' and the
'social', actually confined his analysis to showing how the 'parts' and the
'people' varied independently of one another over time but in fact made little
play of their being themselves prior and posterior to one another in time.
Perhaps the reluctance to advance 'analytical dualism' forcefully was due to
the enduring spectre of reification and to what has rightly been construed as
the main bulwark against it, namely an insistence upon the activity-
dependence of each and every social structure as indispensable to a non-
reified ontology of society. However, what seems to have escaped notice is an
extremely simple though profoundly important question which in no way
challenges or weakens this ontological commitment, namely whose actions ?
The assertion of pre-existence, far from nullifying activity-dependence,
actually specifies upon whose activities the development of a particular
structure depended, in contrast to those later agents who cannot be held

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696 MARGARET ARCHER

responsible for its genesis, but only fo

ultimate abolition. Activities of the lat
structural elaboration which, in turn, th
realities. No-one would seriously deny
whose activities generated the relations
perialism, political parties, a state educ
service, were quite different people fr
society made up of these structures amo
The crucial element of this insight is
important aphorism that the majority
resistance to exploiting it which rests on the following argument about
activity-dependence: (a) society is consistently dependent upon action and
there can be no moment in time when action is suspended, therefore, (b) talk
of the separate activities of generations or groups is only a heuristic artifice
since generations overlap and groups are continuous despite the death and
even complete replacement of their members. I want to contest the supposed
derivation of (b) from (a) - for to challenge (b) in the above argument does
nothing to impugn (a), the premiss that all aspects of the social world are
activity dependent. Instead it usefully adds greater precision to it by
specification of elements like 'whose' activities, 'when', and 'where'.
What needs to be rebutted here is the assertation that, whilst it may be true
for each individual that a structure pre-exists them (a teaching post must exist
before someone can be a teacher) or even for whole cohorts (schools have to
exist before pupils can enrol), it is not true for 'the group'. Critics maintain
that 'groups' can have greater permanence than structures, through replace-
ment of their members, and therefore it makes no sense to talk of a structure
pre-dating such a group. However my counter argument asserts that a position
necessarily has to exist before someone can fill it and this remains the case even
where certain individuals or groups have been able to define such things as
new roles (or institutions) for themselves. Because here too the defining precedes
the occupancy and occupation then embroils the incumbent(s) in a network of
relations, their unintended and emergent consequences. Action is undeniably
continuous (though it is not an unbroken flow of activities ), but more im-
portantly, 'the group' itself is discontinuous. For what I am criticising is the
(implicit) notion that the 'group' remains fundamentally the same> that is, it
refers to the same entity. If this were the case, as seems quite persuasive at first
glance, then it would indeed prevent one from ever talking about a pr-
existent structure and would also effectively demolish 'analytical dualism' by
removing its temporal mainstay which is what makes events tractable to
explanation. Thus we would be back to the simultaneity model of central
conflation.
However this case is fatally flawed by the naive nominalism with which 'the
group' is treated. It supposes that just because we can use the label 'working
class' over three centuries of structural changes in Britain, we are talking

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 SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 697

about the same 'group'. We are not, any more than this is histori
for 'teachers' or 'doctors' after the elaboration of educational and health
systems. Nominally one could still use the same words, 'teachers' and
'doctors', and practically some individuals made the transition, but none of
that means that one is really talking about the 'same group', even if one is
talking about some of the same people. For the group has changed pro-
foundly, witness change in employer, accountability, activity and profes-
sionalisation, new vested interests, forms of organisation and values. In other
words, as it reshapes structure, agency is ineluctably reshaping itself, in terms
of organisation, combination and articulation, in terms of its powers and these
in relation to other agents. Thus nothing but obfuscation attaches to regarding
any group as continuous, simply because it bears the same name, yet
regardless of all that which makes it anything but 'the same'.

Envoi: Analytical Dualism

To defend temporal separability where structure and agency are concerned, to

state that some structures are pre-existent to determinate agents and their
activities has no ontological priority over emphasising that specific agents are
themselves prior to later structural elaboration. Thus the key point under-
pinning 'analytical dualism' is that it is fully justifiable to refer to structures
(being irreducible to individuals or groups) as pre-existing them both, just as
it is equally legitimate to refer to determinate agents being prior to the
structures they transform, (though in the process they themselves are literally
re-constituted as new groupings, whatever their nomenclature).
The importance of these two fundamental propositions of 'analytical
dualism', that structure necessarily predates the actions which transform it
and that structural elaboration necessarily postdates those actions is not
confined to considerations about social ontology alone. Because what social
reality is held to be necessarily influences how it is explained, then maintaining
the distinction between the 'parts' and the 'people' simultaneously rules out
any reductionist or conflationary programme of explanation. If structure and
agency are indeed entities which possess their own properties and powers,
then this precludes any explanatory framework which compacts them together
or treats either as the epiphenomenon of the other.
Instead, developing the distinction which Lockwood ushered in between the
'social' and the 'systemic' has very different implications for practical social
analysis. Once it is accepted that social transformation/social reproduction can
only be explained by examining the interplay between two sets of emergent,
irreducible and autonomous causal powers pertaining respectively to structure
and agency, this introduces a non-conflationary approach in both theory and
methodology.7 Thus analytical dualism represents a new explanatory frame-
work where specific temporal sequences of structural conditioning social

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 698 MARGARET ARCHER

interaction -> structural elaboration (preceded by anterior sequences and

postdated by subsequent ones) account for why things are 'so and not other-
wise', in the full range of substantive areas which constitute society and its
transformations.

Notes

1 . Conflationary theories and those which elide structure and agency in one of the
three directions. Upwards conflationists regard social structure as the aggregate
product of individual action without properties of its own. Downwards con-
flationists view social structure as dominant and agency as orchestrated by
holistic properties. Both of these therefore hold structure and agency respectively
to be epiphenomenal. However, there is a third and central version of conflation
which does not entail epiphenomenalism. Instead both structure and agency are
regarded as mutually constitutive, such that properties of the one are dependent
on properties of the other and neither can be examined separately (nor therefore
can their interplay be examined). Conflation is therefore regarded as the more
generic fallacy than epiphenomenalism. The thesis behind this paper is that any
version of conflationary theorising will be unproductive, precisely because
conflation precludes the examination of the interplay between structure and
agency, i.e. their sui generis properties.
2. Predicates acceptable to the Methodological Individualist can include "state-
ments about the dispositions, beliefs, resources and inter-relations of individuals"
as well as "their situations . . . physical resources and environment" (Watkins
1968:270). Since I would argue that none of these aspects of social reality are
about either individuals or their dispositions, it would follow that these should not
be construed as facts about individual people. To do so is to encumber the
person with part of society and of nature.
3. Hence Gellner's well known summary of where the debate stood: 'Perhaps in the
end, there is agreement to this extent (human) history is about chaps - and
nothing else. Perhaps this should be written: History is about chaps. It does not
follow that its explanations are always in terms of chaps' (1968:268).
4. See Nicos Mouzelis, 'Social and System Integration: Habermas's View', British
Journal of Sociology , 43, 1992. Also Anthony Giddens, Social Theory and Modern
Sociology , Stanford University Press, 1987, p. 250. Derek Layder makes the same
point about Lockwood's distinction but continues to argue that 'social' and
'system' integration are both analytic and real aspects of society (1994:201-2).
5. For a clear exposition of 'emergent properties' see Sayer 1992.
6. Note the numerous sources which consider there to be marked resemblance
between Bhaskar's 'transformational model of social action' and Giddens's
'structuration theory'.
7. For the development of this idea and of Lockwood's distinction as the b
research programme, (see Archer 1995).

References

Archer, M. S. 1982. 'Morphogenesis versus Structuration'. British Journal of Sociology

33:4.
Archer, M. S. 1995. Realist Social Theory -The Morphogenic Approach. Cambridge
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Bhaskar, R. 1978. A Realist Theory of Science. Brighton: Harvester.
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Bhaskar, R. 1989. Reclaiming Reality, London: Verso.

Cohen, I. J. 1990. 'Structuration Theory and Social Order: Five Issues i
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the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan.
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and H. W. Hirsch (eds.) Explorations in Social Change. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Mandelbaum, M. 1973. 'Societal Facts' in John O'Neill (ed.) Modes of Individualism
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Outhwaite, W. 1983. 'Towards a Realist Perspective in Gareth Morgan (ed.) Beyond
Method. London and Beverly Hills: Sage.
Sayer, A. 1992. Method in Social Science. London: Routledge.
Smith, J. W. and Turner, B. S. 1986. 'Constituting Social Theory and Constituting
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Biographical Note : MARGARET ARCHER completed her postgraduate research at

the London School of Economics and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris.
Whilst teaching at Reading University she produced Social Conflict and Educational
Change in England and France , 1789-1848 (with M. Vaughan) and edited Contemporary
Europe : Class , Status and Pozver and Contemporary Europe: Social Structures and Culture
Patterns (both with Salvador Giner), as well as Students , University and Society. After
moving to Warwick in 1973 she completed her Social Origins of Educational Systems
followed by Culture and Agency: the Place of Culture in Social Theory. Her latest book
which consolidates her approach to Social Theory, is entitled Realist Social Theory: the
Morphogenetic Approach , (1995). She was the first woman President of the Inter-
national Sociological Association and is the only British member of the newly created
Pontifical Academy for Social Science.

Address : Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL.

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