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Within the structure-agency debate the works of Margaret Archer and Anthony Giddens represent opposite opinions of the society-person connection and the status of social types. Their views are defined, respectively, by an adherence to dualism or duality. Whilst Archer's theory requires ontological proof that social structures, as emergent phenomena, exist sui generis Giddens' argument, based on a commitment to hermeneutics and pragmatism carries no such ontological baggage. I argue that the demands of Archer's and Bhaskar's realism are unmet and that duality is the most plausible position to hold in the structure-agency debate. In Chapter One I set out Giddens' theory and note his rejection of relativism in favour of pragmatism. In Chapter Two I argue that the bedrock of Archer's theory, Bhaskar's naturalism, when carried to the social sciences, is flawed by the inability to 'close' systems. In Chapter Three I show how realists have modified Bhaskar's realism in order to separate structure from agency. However, as with past attempts at basing realism on the concept of emergence this raises the spectre of reification. In Chapter Four I discuss and demonstrate the ways in which the concept of supervenience may or may not be helpful in proving the sui generis status of social facts. In the first half of Chapter 5 I make a distinction between morphological and cultural types and demonstrate that separating 'ideas' from those individuals who hold them is nonsensical and therefore dualism is fundamentally flawed. In the second half of the chapter I argue that there are logical grounds for rejecting the transposition of realism from the natural to the social sciences. In Chapter Six I defend Giddens' thesis against criticisms concerning voluntarism, the clarity of the notion of social structure and its relationship to system.

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A science of action has traditionally been associated with a range of methodological problems. Parsons' exposure to German idealism gave him an awareness of such problems. The question examined by this study is how Parsons addresses and attempts to resolve three methodological problems in a science of action; the nature of subjectivity, the relationship of normative entities and action and the place of values in knowledge. Central to the argument pursued here is that Parsons formulates and answers these problems within the interrelated framework of his analytical conception of science and his voluntaristic metaphysic. Chapters II and III are concerned with The Structure of Social Action, In the first, Parsons' general methodology of science is outlined leading up to his understanding and reasons for 'structural analysis': the importance of systematically articulated schemes of general elements of action. In chapter III Parsons' voluntarism is analyzed before examining the three problems noted above and showing their relationship to the analytic/voluntaristic framework. Chapters IV and V follow through these themes into Parsons’ work between 1938 and 1950 when he explicitly adopts a structural functional approach. Chapter IV returns to general methodology and Parsons’ rationale for structural functionalism but notes a number of anomolies in this which lead to chapter V in which structural functionalism is considered in the light of methodological problems of a science of action. Here the close relationship between voluntarism and structural functionalism is stressed. In conclusion alternative interpretations of voluntarism are critically assessed and a closing comment on Parsons’ contribution to sociological theory is offered.

1) If men define their situations as real, they are real in their consequences 2) It is not the consciousness of men which determines their being, but rather their social being that determines their consciousness. If (1) is true, societies are social products inexplicable except in terms of their definitions. But these vary with time and place. Many men are aware of the possible real consequences of definitions alternative to those prevailing, which hence are associated with potential conflict and necessarily have evaluative aspects. Hence Weber asserts "The concept of culture is a value concept". This implies (i) any social situation which is described has a value to those described and to the describer; (ii) any theory used to compare and explain social situations will also have evaluative implications. Sociology is concerned with investigating prevailing definitions with a view to providing "better" ones. If (2) is true it contradicts (1), since it implies the superficiality of definitions in social change. But this depends upon the sense of "determines". It cannot mean "directly determines", because action mediates consciousness, "Determines" is thus weakened to mean that men's ideas start from their habitual social practice; hence consciousness must be seen in relation to social being. This still allows the importance of human definitions in their consequences for social reality and in social change. If being determined consciousness directly, change could come only through changes in the physical situation. (2) therefore only implies the existence of continuities between changing definitions. Hence sociology must always recognize and cannot ultimately objectively transcend the actors’ definitions. It can only explain social reality as it currently exists. It cannot predict change except by predicting those fresh definitions which will implement it, and it cannot predict these though it may sometimes be able to indicate their general nature. Sociology is thus partially dissimilar to natural science.

Sociologists have tended (a), to assume art as a 'given', and, (b), to attempt to relate art to society' , thus conceptually separating the two. I argue that art is a social phenomenon, and that, historically, until the Renaissance, painting and sculpting were no more nor less 'art' than houses, building or saddle-making. The sociologist should, therefore, examine the conditions under which painting, and sculpting came to be constructed as art, and the social relations through which art is reproduced and maintained as an ideology and practice. Taking William Morris's analysis of art and the division of labour under capitalism as a starting point, I examine and develop his analysis in four areas. First, I examine the development of state intervention in the arts in Britain in the period 1830-1975. Second, I examine the ideological preconditions for, and assumptions implicit in, the present day art market. Third, I examine the impact of the ideology of art on the working classes. Fourth, I examine the present position and experiences of the producers of art, craft and design. Through examining these four areas, I attempt to show not only the usefulness of Morris's analysis, but also the way in which the ideology of art is bound up with the class divisions and work relations of 19th and 20th century British society. Furthermore, I show that the producer of art, while being in control of the production of his work, is not generally in control of how it is defined, presented, bought, sold and valued.

The thesis is concerned with engendering formal models in the sociology\of knowledge and literature that will aid the analysis of the development of aspects of world view from class elements, and the expression of world views in literature. After an introduction which reviews the general methodological approach, Part I examines theories in the sociology of knowledge (including principally those of Mannheim, Goldmann, Scheler Pareto, Parsons, and Berger and Luckmann) in the light of an analytical substructure-superstructure distinction, in order to establish the various possible modes of development of consciousness from meaningful action. Part II develops a general model for one area of the sociology of knowledge after refining the concepts of 'class' and 'world view', it traces the ways in which aspects of world view may develop from class elements. Impart III, the general model of the development of world view from classis applied to the special case of literary world views. The literary role is examined, both in terms of authorship as a class role and in terms of the non economic aspects of the author role. The literary act of authorship is investigated through the predominant conceptions of art as communication and expression, and the sociology of expression is found to be an important adjunct to the sociology of knowledge. Where attempts are made to analyse the meanings ‘expressed' in literature, it is suggested that various aspects of literary form require recognition. Part III concludes with an examination of methodological issues that emerge from a critique of Goldmann's sociology of literature. In Part IV, the formal models developed in the earlier Parts are applied to the undertaking of two case studies that focus upon Charlotte and Emily Brontë and their novels.

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