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4 unusual facts about Margaret Archer


Cultural system

Margaret Archer (2004) in a revised edition of her classic work Culture and Agency, argues that the grand idea of a unified integrated culture system, as advocated by early Anthropologists such as Bronisław Malinowski and later by Mary Douglas, is a myth.

Margaret Archer

At the 12th World Congress of Sociology, she was elected as the first woman President of the International Sociological Association, is a founder member of both the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences.

Social structure

Other recent work by Margaret Archer (morphogenesis theory), Tom R. Burns and collaborators (actor-system dynamics theory and social rule system theory), and Immanuel Wallerstein (World Systems Theory) provided elaborations and applications of the sociological classics in structural sociology.

Structure and agency

The critical realist structure/agency perspective embodied in the Transformational Model of Social Action (TMSA) has been further advocated and applied in other social science fields by additional authors, for example in economics by Tony Lawson and in sociology by Margaret Archer.


European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences

The awardees are selected by a jury currently consisting of Margaret Archer, Allessandro Cavalli, Salvador Giner, Joachim Israel, Michel Maffesoli, Carlo Mongardini (chair), Birgitta Nedelmann, Helga Nowotny, and Piotr Sztompka.


see also