Structure,Agency and Ideology: A Response to Zeba Crook

Abstract

Responding to Zeba Crook’s essay on ‘structure’ and ‘agency’, and his critical remarks on my Ethnography of the Gospel of Matthew, this article first addresses Crook’s criticisms of my work, arguing that it is not rightly characterized as an ‘all agency’ approach. It then discusses Crook’s own proposals concerning the different ratios of agency and structure in different cultures. My response argues that all cultures involve agency, and all cultures involve agents acting in structured ways, and that a better focus might be on the importance of hierarchy, power and ideology within social structures, since the ability of individuals to exercise transformative agency depends on their position. Literature, as I argued in my Ethnography, provides a significant way in which the marginal or weak can exercise a form of agency, as is the case within Matthew’s specifically constructed literary world.