Margaret Archer's Culture and Agency was first published in 1988, and proved a seminal contribution to social theory and the case for the role of culture in sociological thought. Described in Sociological Review as 'a timely and sophisticated treatment', the book showed that the 'problems' of culture and agency, on the one hand, and structure and agency, on the other, could be solved using the same analytical framework. In this revised edition of Culture and Agency, Margaret Archer contextualises her argument in 1990s cultural sociology and links it explicitly to her latest book, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
1. The myth of cultural integration; Part I. Rejecting Cultural Conflation: 2. 'Downwards conflation': on keys, codes and cohesion; 3. 'Upwards conflation': the duality of culture; 4. 'Central conflation: the duality of culture; Part II. Reconceuptualizing Cultural Dynamics: 5. Addressing the Cultural System; 6. Contradictions and complementarities in the cultural system; 7. Socio-Cultural interaction; 8. Elaboration of the Cultural System; 9. Toeards theoretical unification: structure, culture and morphogenesis; 10. 'Social Integration and System Integration'
