Kategoria afordancji a problem relacji struktury i sprawstwa

Mateusz Tofilski

doi:10.21697/spch.2024.60.A.04

Published: 2024-07-31

Vol. 60 No. 1 (2024)

The Category of Affordances and the Problem of the Relationship Between Structure and Agency

Mateusz Tofilski

Studia Philosophiae Christianae

Section: Papers

https://doi.org/10.21697/spch.2024.60.A.04

Abstract

This article examines the use of the category of affordances in sociological concepts addressing the relationship between social structure and individual agency. It focuses on two sociological concepts that attempt to capture this relationship in a coherent
theoretical approach and without falling into social determinism and excessive individualism. These are critical realism and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. This paper argues that the category of affordances is a useful tool for describing the relationship between the subject and the environment, allowing one to focus on material factors in the study of social structures, while recognizing the active role of the subject in their co-creation. Particularly promising here is the integration of affordances into the concept of distributed cognition, used in sociology to study sociotechnical structures.

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Received: 30/04/2023. Reviewed: 15/02/2024. Accepted: 24/04/2024.

Keywords:

affordances, distributed cognition, structure and agency, habitus, critical realism

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Tofilski, M. (2024). The Category of Affordances and the Problem of the Relationship Between Structure and Agency. Studia Philosophiae Christianae, 60(1), 101–120. https://doi.org/10.21697/spch.2024.60.A.04

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