Episode 29 Class(room) struggle

Is the individual determined by society? Or is the individual an autonomous actor, making the most of structural resources to navigate through society? These questions are familiar to Structured Visions listeners, but this week I attempt to make the debate a little less abstract. I replace the notion of ‘society’ with the image of the classroom, and the ‘individual’ with anyone who’s ever told a story about entering into one. I use these stories to suggest a third way of understanding the individual in relation to society. Let’s personify both entities to produce characters in a drama, I say. And let’s see these characters as co-constituting, co-creating reality. Better yet, let’s envisage this relationship through the metaphor of a bar magnet surrounding by iron filings. The individual ‘magnetises’ the components of social structure, such that they form a pattern around the individual. How about that for a promising metaphor?