Analysing Social Structures

Although social structure might seem the most important concept in sociology, and one of the major concepts in social science more generally, it is something of an ‘absent presence’ with many theorists addressing the issue only tangentially and with sustained attention to conceptual understanding of the nature of social structures attended to by only relatively few authors (Crothers, 1996). The history of the concept of social structure in sociology (and outside) is a topic addressed briefly here only to indicate the historical development of conceptual work on it (see Callinicos, 2007; Crothers, 1996, 2004).