West Crystal A, Petrovskaya Olga
School of Nursing, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Nurs Philos. 2025 Oct;26(4):e70040. doi: 10.1111/nup.70040.
Agency and structure are notable concepts in nursing philosophy and research. In this paper, we revisit two articles by Stuart Nairn which contrast selected theoretical perspectives exemplifying different positions within the structure-agency debate. Nairn's chief argument in 2009 was that nursing scholarship overemphasized the role of agency while neglecting the concept of social structure. The goal of Nairn's articles was to remedy this asymmetrical perspective. Building on his analyses of Lévi-Strauss, Parsons, Giddens, Archer, and Bourdieu, and the nursing examples he employed, we critique and extend Nairn's contributions by situating the structure-agency debate within the broader context of sociological theory. We suggest that his included theoretical perspectives largely assume agency to be an exclusively human attribute. Recent developments in critical posthumanism challenge this anthropocentric view, conceptualizing agency as distributed across human and nonhuman actors. Recognizing that differing approaches to structure and agency carry distinct implications for nursing knowledge and practice, we call for nurse scholars to make explicit their theoretical commitments when engaging these concepts in research and theorizing.
能动性与结构是护理哲学和研究中的重要概念。在本文中，我们重新审视了斯图尔特·奈恩的两篇文章，这两篇文章对比了一些理论观点，这些观点体现了结构 - 能动性辩论中不同的立场。奈恩在2009年的主要论点是，护理学术过于强调能动性的作用，而忽视了社会结构的概念。奈恩文章的目的是纠正这种不对称的观点。基于他对列维 - 斯特劳斯、帕森斯、吉登斯、阿彻和布迪厄的分析以及他所采用的护理实例，我们通过将结构 - 能动性辩论置于更广泛的社会学理论背景中来批判并扩展奈恩的贡献。我们认为，他所纳入的理论观点很大程度上假定能动性是人类独有的属性。批判后人类主义的最新发展对这种以人类为中心的观点提出了挑战，将能动性概念化为分布于人类和非人类行为体之间。认识到对结构和能动性的不同研究方法对护理知识和实践有着不同的影响，我们呼吁护理学者在研究和理论化过程中涉及这些概念时明确他们的理论立场。
