The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781107605275)

This book completes Margaret Archer's trilogy investigating the role of reflexivity in mediating between structure and agency. What do young people want from life? Using analysis of family experiences and life histories, her argument respects the properties and powers of both and presents the 'internal conversation' as the site of their interplay. In unpacking what 'social conditioning' means, Archer demonstrates the usefulness of 'relational realism'. She advances a new theory of relational socialisation, appropriate to the 'mixed messages' conveyed in families that are rarely normatively consensual and thus cannot provide clear guidelines for action. Life-histories are analysed to explain the making and breaking of different modes of reflexivity. Different modalities have been dominant from early societies to the present and the author argues that modernity is slowly ceding place to a 'morphogenetic society' as meta-reflexivity now begins to predominate, at least amongst educated young people.

Author: Margaret S. Archer
ISBN-10: 110760527X
ISBN-13: 9781107605275
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/03/2012
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.60d