Introduction

In this chapter I consider the incorporation of time–space relations within structuration theory: the way in which Giddens conceives of what he calls the time–space constitution of social life. There are obvious dangers in disentangling one thread from such a dense and developing argument, and so I want to begin by putting some limits around my own discussion.

A number of commentators are evidently uncomfortable about the status of structuration theory. They claim that its first formulations were pitched at forbidding heights of abstraction, whereas its later arguments have moved towards a more concrete terrain. In consequence, they say, it has become difficult to determine the scope of structuration theory with any precision. In my view, however, it makes most sense to treat Giddens's writings as a research programme developed through a continuous dialogue between the theoretical and the empirical. The term derives from Lakatos, of course, but I use it in a somewhat different sense because Giddens's project is not linear: one proposition does not succeed another in a unidimensional, unidirectional sequence. What I have in mind is closer to Hesse's network model of science. Structuration theory then appears as a loose-knit web of propositions, some more central than others, some spun more tightly than others. In contradistinction to networks in the natural sciences, structuration theory is clearly not directed towards the discovery of ‘laws’; but, as Hesse suggests more generally, its development has been determined – though less formally than some of its critics seem to think – by both coherence rules (relating to the structure of the network) and correspondence rules (relating to empirical observations).