El pensamiento de Ernesto Che Guevara como objeto de estudio: su forma teórica

Even though Bourdieu’s theory provides powerful insights into the way in which the social structure shapes people’s practices, it has been criticised for being over- deterministic. The fact that ‘the true explanation for actors’ behaviour is seen to reside in the mysterious, murky depths of the habitus and, as a consequence, ‘choice’ is largely underplayed’ (S. Williams 1995, 588) leaves little space for agency, innovation or resilience. Williams argues that according to Bourdieu’s theory, ‘change’ is only

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possible within the limits of the habitus, in other words, when people are disposed to do so; when change occurs, it happens in line with the habitus (S. Williams 1995, 591– 592). Therefore, it would not be expected for individuals to engage with health-related practices that do not make sense within their habitus.

Understood in this way, this approach implies that social phenomena may be explained by making exclusive reference to society and neglecting the role, meanings, or motivations that individuals may have to engage or not with certain practices, in other words, it suffers from what Archer calls ‘downward conflation’ (Archer 1995). Thus, social action would be subsumed and determined completely by social structure, ‘whose holistic properties have complete monopoly over causation, and which therefore operate in a unilateral and downward manner’ (Archer 1995, 3). The power of agency and the reflexive nature of human beings would disappear under the action of social structure, which is a miscomprehension of human nature and society according to Archer, who argues that the power of agency that human beings have must be included in any social theory since it is has the potential to modify social structure:

People are indeed perfectly uninteresting if they possess no personal powers which can make a difference. Of course, if this is the case then it is hard to see how they can offer any resistance, for even if it is ineffectual it has to stem from someone who at least amounts to the proportions of an irritant (and must thus be credited minimally with the personal power of challenge) (Archer 2000, 19)

According to Archer (1995), a strong representative of critical realist approach (discussion in Chapter 3), structure and agency must be considered as different

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dimensions. Due to the fact that each of them has autonomous emergent properties, i.e. ‘powers or liabilities which cannot be reduced to those of their constituents’ (Sayer 1992, 199) they cannot be considered simultaneous or co-extensive in time. This implies a relation between these two dimensions that could be described in the following way:

… systemic properties are always the (‘macro’) context confronted by (‘micro’) social interaction, whilst social activities between people (‘micro’) represent the environment in which the (‘macro’) features of systems are either reproduced or transformed [author’s emphasis] (Archer 1995, 11)

In this sense, both dimensions are different but not independent from each other. In accordance with this approach, structure and agency are interdependent; social structure sets the necessary context and space for human actions to develop, and these actions are responsible for setting the necessary conditions for structure to continue existing, be it in the same way (reproduced) or in different forms (transformed). This would mean that it is people’s actions that have the power to change or reproduce ‘habitus’, rather than habitus reproducing itself. However, this structure influences the possibility of agency by defining the context in which people’s practices are enacted. Alternative social theories argue that the adoption of health-related practices may be understood as an individual free choice according to the possibilities that people face daily, that is, their ‘capabilities’ (Sen 1999). The possibility to choose a ‘minimally good, flourishing and non-humiliating life’ , i.e. the capability of being healthy, would depend on the internal dispositions of the person, and the constraints and autonomies that social arrangements imply (Nussbaum, 2011a, 2011b). Hence, the adoption of certain practices related to health would depend on the freedom to choose that agents

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have within the limits of the opportunities guaranteed by societies. However, this theory would not provide an answer to Bourdieu’s conceptualization of practices, which as explained previously state that the logic for people’s actions remains in the unconscious of individuals and are not a matter of reflexion or questioning (Bourdieu 1990). This is the reason why this research turns to Archer’s approach on the structure- agency debate.

Archer’s analytical dualism poses a criticism to Bourdieu’s conceptualization of practices, which as explained previously state that the logic for people’s actions remains in the unconscious of individuals and are not a matter of reflexion or questioning (Bourdieu 1990). Archer's opposing argument states that practice is:

‘the source of differentiation (of the self, subject/object, subject/subject), then the source of thought (the basic principles of logic, namely identity and non- contradiction), and thus makes practice the fons et origo of language and the discursive domain in general’ (Archer 2000, 151).

This implies that practices are closely related to human reflexivity and hold meanings which are comprehensible to human beings and are not determined by the context, even though contextual dimensions influence the possibilities of action that people have. This means that even when it would be correct to suggest that habitus has an important impact on agency, it would be a mistake to believe that habitus may only be reproduced by itself. The social structure – habitus – is modified or reproduced by people’s actions – agency.

With the conceptualization of structure and agency, the dimension of temporality is useful in order to comprehend their relationship. Since the structure is considered the context in which human action takes place, it is implied that structures ‘pre-exist’

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people This does not mean that individuals are determined by the structure, since they are able to modify or reproduce it, but it does set limits to the possibility of actions (Archer 1995, Danemark et al. 2002). This criticises Giddens’ theory of structuration which also tries to bring the concepts of agency and structure together. His theory states a duality between agency and structure by arguing that these dimensions are placed in a reciprocal relationship in which neither of them can exist independently from the other (Giddens 1984). Agency and structure would not only have autonomous emergent powers, but they would also have a time gap between them, they would not be simultaneous in time. Therefore, this model of interpretation resolves the tension between structure and agency by recognising their interdependency through the incorporation of time, and states that the proper way to study their interaction is through a social scientific analysis (Danemark et al. 2002).