Morphogenesis in Complex Adaptive Sociocultural Systems: Before and After Archer

ABSTRACT Margaret Archer's widely cited work on the structure/agency problem draws upon the concept of ‘morphogenesis’, which she borrows (with full acknowledgement) from Walter Buckley's theory of complex adaptive sociocultural systems. In this paper, I revisit Buckley's original formulation and argue that it is both different from and better than Archer's later version (though she makes an interesting methodological contribution to it). Archer's version is shaped by her desire to avoid ‘conflating’ structures and agents, as she believes Anthony Giddens' structuration theory does. It is sometimes appropriate to draw an analytic distinction between structures and actors, as she suggests and as Giddens himself occasionally does, but she goes beyond this in practice, arguing for a more substantial distinction different to cannot be defended. Buckley rightly rejects any such substantial distinction. His position is closer to Giddens' in this respect. However, his approach differs significantly from that of Giddens too, avoiding the problems that Archer identifies with structuration theory. Buckley thus affords a preferable alternative to both Archer and Giddens, a middle path that combines the strengths and avoids the weaknesses of their respective approaches.