Page 101 - Cultural Theory

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••• John Scott •••

transformation of the existing rules. Similarly, social change more broadly results
from actions that, whether consciously or not, disregard existing rules or introduce
new ones. Social change, then, rests upon a cultural change. This is not to imply that
Giddens holds to an idealist view of social change, as he also invokes – but does not
properly theorize – the part played by resources. It is the interplay between cultural
rules and material resources that determines the direction of social change.

Culture as Lifeworld

On the basis of his first concept of culture – culture as structure – Giddens builds an
account of larger systems of action. His theory of ‘structuration’ is the means
through which encultured, rule-following, agents are able to produce and reproduce
the cultural and other systems that figure in more conventional ‘structural’ sociolo-
gies. Through their socialization into their culture, people acquire those dispositions
that form the structure, or habitus; through the routinized actions generated by these
dispositions, they reproduce their whole way of life.
There are, according to Giddens, three types of disposition and these underpin the
three ‘structural dimensions’ along which social actions and social systems vary.
These dispositions comprise the semantic, the regulative, and the transformative
capacities of human agency. While these operate closely together in all real situa-
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tions, they are analytically distinguishable because of the different types of rules that
inhere in them.
The semantic capacity in human agency operates through processes of
communication and signification to establish shared meanings and definitions in
social interaction and to build, at the system level, symbolic orders, interpretative
schemes, and modes of discourse. It involves rules that have a ‘constitutive’ or
semantic significance – rules that make it possible for people to understand one
another and to constitute social reality as meaningful. Through this capacity, signs
are established for use in the communication of meaning and for the production
of mutual knowledge. The regulative capacity of human agency operates through
processes of sanction and legitimation to establish expectations and obligations in
social interaction and to build, at the system level, various forms of normative regu-
lation, such as custom and law. It involves rules that have a ‘regulative’ or moral
significance – rules that make it possible for people to control one another and
ensure the continuity of established social patterns. Through this capacity, concep-
tions of validity are established for use in the normative sanctioning of actions
through moral judgements (Giddens, 1976b: 104–13; 1979: 81–111). These semantic
and regulative capacities are, of course, closely related to each other, and rules can-
not be sharply divided into two completely distinct categories. Indeed, they combine
together to form what Giddens has called a ‘common culture’ or ‘form of life’. They
are central to culture in that narrower sense that Habermas (Habermas, 1981a;
1981b) has referred to as the socio-cultural lifeworld.
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