STRUCTURE AND AGENCY

Theory Of The Dialectic Of Structure And Agency

Theory Of The Dialectic Of Structure And Agency

Introduction

Sociological and epidemiologic research on the life course has provided breakthrough insights into the long-term consequences of early adversity on adult status, health, and well-being. A bad start in life, perhaps due to low birth weight, an inauspicious label, or socioeconomic strain (Hayward and Gorman 2004), can have enduring consequences on life chances. Early life course events and experiences are the seedbed for lifelong human development, and life course scholars are bringing fresh insights into how negative conditions during childhood and adolescence compromise adult well-being (Amato & Loomis, 1995: 895).

Missing from most of this research, however, is explicit attention to how people interpret the course of their lives in light of the adversity they have experienced. Most previous studies on the topic identify the negative early-life exposures and seek to link these to outcomes during adulthood and later life. This genre of research is exemplary to aid our understanding of the life course, and the priority on structural disadvantage is well placed (Bushway & Johnson , 2007: 151). At the same time, human agency plays an important role in how people interpret and respond to early adversity. Some people face major disadvantages but fare rather well by mobilizing resources, choosing wisely, and/or expending extraordinary effort. This is not to diminish the influence of structural disadvantage but to recognize the important role that human agency plays in facing adversity (Dannefer , 1987: 211). As several recent papers demonstrate, how people interpret their experience of adverse events is critical for either the maintenance of well-being or optimization of life chances.

From an interactionist point of view, people actively interpret and define lines of action, and reflective processes provide intrinsic motivations for behavior (Gecas and Burke 1995). Few studies, however, have examined how people fit together lines of actions over the life course to understand the ebb and flow of life sequences (Dube & Anda, 2002: 713). To that end, this article systematically examines how adversity during childhood affects the way in which adults understand their past, present, and future—whether things are getting better, growing worse, or staying the same. We examine a straightforward measure, general life evaluations, investigating how temporal appraisals are related to actualized futures and whether early adversity has long-term consequences on life evaluations.

As beings that often construe events in narrative form, humans interpret life in a way in which circumstances in the past, present, and future constitute an understandable and unified story. These cognitive schemas are of interest to social psychologists interested in mental health but also to sociologists who argue that perceived life trajectories are closely linked to the process of cumulative inequality (Ferraro, Shippee, and Schafer 2009). Individuals' interpretations of their lives are rooted in structural systems of advantage and disadvantage, but the interpretations also shape the future through goals, expectations, and/or self-fulfilling prophecies (Haveman & Wolfe, 1995: 1829). Though beliefs about the modifiability of life trajectories are an essential ...