From Archer, 2007, Making our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility: Reflexivity is defined here as "the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa". As such, it is the process through which reasons become causes of the courses of action adopted by social subjects.

[i] The central problem of social theory is 'structure and agency'. How do the objective features of society influence human agents? Determinism is not the answer, nor is conditioning - as currently conceptualised... What it completely neglects is our personal capacity to define what we care about most and to design courses of action to realise our concerns in society... the internal conversation is seen as being the missing link between society and the individual, structure and agency.

p.1 How does structure influence agents? To ask the question invites social theorists to advance a process, that is a causal mechanism linking the two... How structures are variously held to influence agents is dependent upon what 'structure' and 'agency' are held to be.

p.2 Ontologically, 'structure' and 'agency' are seen as distinct strata of reality, as the bearers of quite different properties and powers. Their irreducibility to one another entails examining the interplay between them.

p.2-4 Central to realist social theory is the statement that 'the causal power of social forms is mediated through social agency'... Obviously, the word 'through' requires unpacking before the process of mediation has begun to be conceptualised.
 However, the unpacking has been far from complete. Generically, it has consisted in replacing the word 'through' by the process of 'social conditioning'. Since to condition entails the existence of something that is conditioned, and because conditioning is not determinism, then this process necessarily involves the interplay between two different kinds of causal powers - those pertaining to structures and those belonging to agents. Therefore, an adequate conceptualisation of conditioning must deal with the interplay between these two powers. Firstly, this involves a specification of how structural and cultural powers impinge upon agents, and secondly of how agents use their own powers to act 'so rather than otherwise', in such situations.

Realist social theorising... has been almost exclusively preoccupied with the first problem... It has concentrated upon the question of transmission, or how it is that structural properties can impinge upon agents so as potentially to be able to condition their actions. Frequently, this has been answered by construing these influences as 'constraints' and 'enablements'. They are transmitted to us by shaping the situations... in which we find ourselves, such that some courses of action would be impeded and others would be facilitated.

p.4 Constraints require something to constrain, and enablements something to enable... Only because people envisage particular courses of action can one speak of their constraint or enablement, and only because they may pursue the same course of action from different social contexts can one talk of their being differentially constrained and enabled.

p.5-6 There are no constraints and enablements per se, that is as entities. These are the potential causal powers of structural emergent properties... they have to constrain or facilitate something. As with all potential causal powers, they can remain unexercised because it is a wholly contingent matter whether they are activated. In other words, constraints and enablements do not possess an intrinsic capacity for constraining or enabling in abstraction. For anything to exert the power of a constraint or an enablement, it has to stand in a relationship such that it obstructs or aids the achievement of some specific agential enterprise. The generic name given to such enterprises is 'projects'.

p.6 Obviously a project is a human device, be it individual or collective, because only people possess the intentionality to define and design courses of action in order to achieve our own ends. [JLJ - Ms. Archer should consider the case of a cleverly designed Artificially Intelligent entity that self-develops and maintains projects based on derived semiotic material] ...a project involves an end that is desired, however tentatively or nebulously, and also some notion, however imprecise, of the course of action through which to accomplish it.
 This is the reason why constraints and enablements are terms in social science, which refer to causal powers that can be exercised in society, but are not terms employed in natural science.

p.6 constraints and enablements... can operate through anticipation. Reflexive agents can sometimes foresee the impediments that certain projects would encounter and thus be deterred from pursuing them. Equally, they may anticipate the ease with which other projects could be advanced, and the benefits that would accrue, and thus be encouraged to adopt them.

p.6 when a project is constrained or enabled during its execution, agents can act strategically to try to discover ways around it or to define a second-best outcome (where constraints are concerned). Equally strategically, they can deliberate about how to get the most out of propitious circumstances, which may mean adopting a more ambitious goal, so that good fortune is turned into a better one (where enablements are concerned).

p.7 constraints and enablements derive from structural and cultural emergent properties. They have the generative power to impede or facilitate projects of different kinds from groups of agents who are differentially placed. However, the activation of their causal powers is contingent upon agents who conceive of and pursue projects upon which they would impinge. Otherwise, constraints and enablements remain unexercised... In sum, the activation of the causal powers associated with constraints and enablements depends upon the use made of personal emergent properties to formulate agential projects.

p.9 'constraints and enablements' only indicate the difficulty or ease with which certain projects could be accomplished, ceteris paribus, by groups of people standing in given relations to (part of) society. They tell us absolutely nothing about which projects are entertained, even if they can inform us about who has an objective material or ideational interest in adopting a maintenance project rather than a transformatory one. Much more is involved; agents have to diagnose their situations, they have to identify their own interests and they must design projects they deem appropriate to attaining their ends. At all three points they are fallible: they can mis-diagnose their situations, mis-identify their interests, and mis-judge appropriate courses of action. However the fundamental question is not whether they do all of this well, but how they do it at all. The answer to this is held to be 'via the internal conversation'. This is the modality through which reflexivity towards self, society and the relationship between them is exercised. In itself it entails just such things as articulating to ourselves where we are placed, ascertaining where our interests lie and adumbrating schemes of future action.

p.14 'structure' and 'agency' constitute two distinctive and irreducible properties and powers, and... human reflexive deliberations play a crucial role in mediating between them.

p.15 My aim will be to convince fellow realists, as well as other social theorists, that human reflexivity is central to the process of mediation.

p.32 The first stage of paying attention in so-called 'introspection' is a process of discursive diagnosis... Generically , we 'introspect' when we interrogate ourselves: be this practically... or meditatively... or speculatively... Most important of all, our 'internal conversations' are evaluative... through inner dialogue, we prioritise our 'ultimate concerns', with which we identify ourselves. Simultaneously, we accommodate other, ineluctable concerns to a subordinate status within an overall modus vivendi, which we deem worthy of living out and also one with which we think we can live... Dialogical reflexivity thus integrates ourselves around what we care about most.

p.33 Thus I am in full agreement with Gerald Myers, for both of us are advocating replacing a concept of introspection, which is based on perceptual observation, by one which refers instead to the 'inner conversation'.

p.33-34 In this section, three propositions have been advanced and defended. First, it was maintained that there is a domain of mental privacy within every conscious human being... The main activity... was reflexive deliberation. Through it, people exercised their powers as 'strong evaluators' to define where they stood in relation to external reality... our reflexivity... defined... what is of ultimate concern to us in the world. Secondly, this life of the mind was held to be inaccessible to outside inspection... Finally, this private life of the mind was... an active process in which we continuously converse with ourselves, precisely in order to define that we do believe, do desire and do intend to do. In other words, it is the personal power that enables us to be the authors of our own projects in society.

p.35 The previous section introduced a matter which all normal people are fully familiar with. In fact, ironically, they are most likely to be more familiar with it and agreed upon its existence than about any other aspect of reality. This is the fact that they all enjoy a lively inner life of the mind.

p.37 any agent can choose to make public a stylised version of their inner dialogue; all they need for this is a diary or a publisher. [JLJ - or a website, such as this one... welcome Mr. reader, to my internal conversation.]

p.39 Consciousness is self-consciousness. This, of course, is only the case for human beings. A computer can be programmed to monitor its own responses, as in error-correction, but lacks consciousness as a machine. [JLJ - if we program a practical simulation of consciousness we might be able to approach (as a result) what we get (as output) from a human consciousness...]

p.41 In Being Human (ch.7) I maintained that it was by monitoring and then prioritising our concerns that we acquired our personal identities. This process was seen as being firmly embedded in the internal conversation and entailed the three stages of 'discernment', 'deliberation', and 'dedication'.

p.46 our reflexive deliberations have causal efficacy because they derive from us, that is from certain of our mental states. If that is the case, then logically we have to include them in proper explanations of action.

p.49 the internal conversation... is very much concerned with clarifying our 'dispositional states': what do we believe and desire and what our attitudes are. Indeed, this clarificatory process was precisely what was deemed to make the 'observational' model of introspection inappropriate

p.53 Social theory, as a whole, is not rich in resources for modeling reflexivity, which is why the debate about introspection proved so long-lasting.

p.65 Not only did he [Peirce] advance the internal conversation as modelling our thinking, but also endorsed the three principles of the life of the mind... interiority, subjectivity and causal efficacy.

p.65-66 [Peirce] 'the principle function of internal reflection... resides in engaging in an inner dialogue - indeed an inner drama - and in judging the outcome of the dialogue or drama'.

p.72 Fundamentally, semiosis advances a general three-part scheme, involving an 'object' (back-referent), a 'sign' (which represents it to something else) and an 'interpretant' (that upon which an effect is exerted).

p.76 Not everything is talk, there is also the visual imagery of daydreaming, of mentally projecting the self into new situations, such that the mind rehearses and thus acclimatises itself to the new patterns of action it would then adopt. Peirce is emphatic about the efficacy of these musings, or what he called 'musement'.

p.77 "More than all that is in thy custody, watch over thy fantasy," said Solomon. "For out of it are the issues of life." ...in imaginative anticipation, we review and rehearse how we would act under novel circumstances and these action plans prepare the future self to execute them when a similar real conjuncture arises.

p.77 rather surprisingly, neither Peirce, nor Mead after him, gives us one line of dialogue from an internal conversation.

p.86 the life of the mind is just as intensively social as all that can be seen to go on outside it... one party to the internal dialog, the 'Me' or 'generalized other', is society's representative in the parliament of the mind.

p.97 we often ask ourselves questions... But questions invite answers and we appear to have no difficulty in supplying ourselves with (fallible) answers. This means that we are now having a conversation with ourselves... The everyday ability we all possess, namely to respond to our own questions, was not something that James introduced.

p.98 it is argued, when we talk to ourselves we alternate between subject and object in the turn-taking process - but a moment of simultaneity between them is still maintained.

p.100-101 Our musings... Some person, situation, or idea that has been encountered may prompt them, or they may be triggered by the task in hand.

p.101 Musings are exploratory; they are ways of clarifying our aspirations and ambitions, our hopes and our fears, our orientations and intentions... through our musings certain goals can be privately scratched from our personal agendas or they can internally reinforce our determination to see something through.

p.102 Fundamentally, 'discernment' consists in the subject-self surveying those enterprises in the natural, practical and social orders to which it feels drawn, in terms of their worth and attractiveness. It then crystallizes these projects (usually in the plural) into clear conceptions of them as ways of life. The object-self 'hold up' these scenarios, unfurled in detail and embellished with imagery, drawn from direct past experience or from the public domain, as an attempted concretisation of what these ways of life would be like and feel like. Since these are thought-experiments, nothing ensures their reliability or validity. They are best guesses, fleshed out by the imagination.

p.103 Internal dialogue is the practice through which we 'make up our minds' by questioning ourselves, clarifying our beliefs and inclinations, diagnosing our situations, deliberating about our concerns and defining our own projects.

p.107 'I says to myself says I' cannot be bettered, although is has needed extending to include 'I responds to myself responds I.'

p.110 Certainly, the past is alive and influential in the present as memories, routines, inclinations and orientations.

p.130 What is advanced throughout this book is a concept of the 'internal conversation', by which agents reflexively deliberate upon the social circumstances that they confront.

p.130 Because they [JLJ - agents] possess personal identity, as defined by their individual configuration of concerns, they know what they care about most and what they seek to realise in society. Because they are capable of internally deliberating about themselves in relation to their social circumstances, they are the authors of projects that they (fallibly) believe will achieve something of what they want from and in society. Because pursuit of a social project generally spells an encounter with social powers, in the form of constraints and enablements, then the ongoing 'internal conversation' will mediate agents' receptions of these structural and cultural influences. In other words, our personal powers are exercised through reflexive interior dialogue and are causally accountable for the delineation of our concepts, the definition of our projects, the diagnosis of our circumstances and, ultimately, the determination of our practices in society.

p.130 Reflexive deliberations constitute the mediatory process between 'structure and agency', they represent the subjective element which is always in interplay with the causal powers of objective social forms.

p.131 Indeed, it is what agents seek to do, the precise projects that they pursue, which are responsible for the activation of the causal powers of constraint and enablement; otherwise, structural and cultural properties which are constitutive of situations remain real, but their causal powers are unexercised. Yet once an agential project has activated a constraint or an enablement, there is no single answer about what is to be done, and therefore no one predictable outcome. Conditional influences may be agentially evaded, endorsed, repudiated or contravened. Which will be the case and what will be the outcome only become intelligible by reference to the agent's own reflexive and therefore internal deliberations.

p.132 the first stage in the conceptualisation of the mediation of structure to agency consists in specification of how the powers of structural and cultural emergent properties impinge upon us; namely by shaping our situations such that they have the capacity to operate as constraints and enablements.

p.132-133 there is a distinct second stage in the mediatory process during which our general potentialities and liabilities as human agents, necessarily inhabiting a social environment, are transformed into specific projects which agents, both individual and collective, seek to realise in society... In sum, structural and cultural factors... exert causal powers... in relation to our emergent powers to formulate social objectives.

p.133 there is necessarily a third stage to the mediation process. This is the stage... where agents... do indeed deliberate about their circumstances in relation to their own concerns... We survey constraints and enablements, under our own descriptions (which is the only way we can know anything); we consult our projects which were deliberately defined to realise our concerns; and we strategically adjust them into those practices which we conclude internally (and always fallibly) will enable us to do (and be) what we care about most in society. Thus, the progressive specification of concrete courses of action, which involves the trajectory concerns → projects → practices →, is accomplished through internal conversations.

p.138 (Constraints and enablements become activated in association with) agents' own constellation of concerns, as subjectively defined in relation to the three orders of natural reality - nature, practice and society

p.141 Courses of action are produced through the reflexive deliberation of agents who subjectively determine their practical projects in relation to their objective circumstances.

p.142 Through reflexive deliberation, we accomplish three things. Firstly, we delineate and prioritise our concerns, which is what enables us to achieve strict personal identity, as previously discussed. Secondly, we have to survey our objective circumstances and make discretionary judgements about the course of action that we both deem to be desirable and with which we think it feasible that we can live... the third point. Reflexively, the evaluation of our concerns and the assessment of the courses of action we believe are feasible in our particular circumstances, have to come together and come to a point. That point is, what specifically do we intend to do? In other words, which precise activities do we believe are both expressive of our ultimate concerns, yet are also within our means? Again, internal deliberations will engage to define our actual doings with some precision. [JLJ - we might instead be constructing a diagnostic test, the output of which will tell us what to do or what script to follow. We might instead be constructing a token ordering of options, with a choice being made only when we feel that we cannot delay any longer.]

p.143 If it is known what projects agents entertain, because they are 'strong evaluators' about their own ultimate concerns, then this is the sounding board against which the 'imports' of structural and cultural factors will reverberate.

p.144 What we are trying to do is to establish a modus vivendi in which our concerns always play a role, even under stringently restrictive circumstances.

p.147 I will begin with what seems to be the central proposition at stake; namely, that the form of the social is always and everywhere the product of 'structure', 'culture', and 'agency' in relation with one another. Without being fussy about definitions for a moment, leave out 'structure' and the contexts people confront become kaleidoscopically contingent; omit culture and no one has a repertoire of ideas for construing the situations in which they find themselves; without agency we lose activity-dependence as the efficient cause of there being any social order. Then either contingency or determinism would have a clear field - one cleared of social theorizing.

p.148 Even if people have one dominant concern, this cannot be their sole concern.

p.149 because we must necessarily have a constellation of concerns, then we must seek to establish a plurality of successful practices - compatible with one another and coherent with the ranking which we ourselves have assigned to them. In short, each and every agent strives to delineate a modus vivendi; a set of practices which, in combination, both respects that which is ineluctable but also privileges that which matters most to the person concerned... it is simply to maintain that the development of such a modus vivendi is required by the human condition.

p.150 The establishment of those successful practices, which together constitute a modus vivendi, involve both a realistic recognition of the multiple needs of the human condition and an intelligent, though fallible, interaction with those constraints and enablements which are activated during the pursuit of our concerns.

p.150 we can account for the practices out of which patterns of life in society are woven. Such accounts can only be advanced by exploring the nexus between the causal powers pertaining to social forms and the very different, because reflexive, causal powers belonging to and exercised by agents. This nexus consists of our internal conversations.

p.153 Substantively we know very little about the internal conversation. The American pragmatists alone took a sustained interest in it

p.154 the process must at least be imperfectly successful to account for... durable practices [JLJ - interesting concept which can be applied to a machine playing a game.]

p.167 Everyone is a reflexive being. This means that we deliberate about our circumstances in relation to ourselves and, in the light of these deliberations, we determine our own personal courses of action in society... Everyone has a domain of mental privacy from which they subjectively survey and evaluate their external circumstances, within which they savour their satisfactions or nurture their discontents, and through which they monitor their future doings. The vehicle for all of this is the internal conversation.

p.175 The 'communicative reflexive' needs to communicate.

p.184 The central proposition about stage 1 of the mediatory process was that structural and cultural properties objectively shape the situations which agents confront involuntarily.

p.201 The modus vivendi represents the ensemble of projects which an agent has established as expressive of her concerns.

p.210 The internal conversation of 'autonomous reflexives' is precisely that. It is the lone exercise of a mental activity, which its practitioners recognise as being an internal dialogue with themselves and one which they do not need and do not want to be supplemented by external exchanges with other people. In other words, the life of their minds is a private domain, because to these subjects their inner deliberations are self-sufficient.

p.235 the second proposition about the process of mediation between structure and agency... stated that the generative powers of constraint and enablement, which stemmed from the objective situations confronted by agents, were only activated in relation to agents' own configurations of concerns, as subjectively defined.

p.244 The final proposition about 'mediation' states that agents subjectively deliberate upon their course of action in relation to their objective circumstances. Reflexively they must seek to establish a modus vivendi at the nexus between their voluntarily defined priorities and the socially determined characteristics of the contexts that they now confront.

p.251 The 'autonomous reflexive' is an individualist who takes responsibility for his own actions; if these are flawed he takes the blame, rather than casting himself as the victim of circumstances.

p.253 Not only do 'autonomous reflexives' know more about society, but they also become more expert in understanding its workings. Constraints and enablements cease to be the forces like the weather, but become powers towards which an active agent can take a strategic stance.

p.255 Much of the internal conversation consists in asking ourselves questions and answering them.

p.256 All acts of self-monitoring are acts of 'meta-reflexivity'. Often these are task-oriented... The type of 'meta-reflexivity' examined here is different; it is 'self-oriented' - the subject is internally conversing about herself and not about her external actions.

p.258-259 'Meta-reflexives' are not good at permanent 'rooting' because there is always (eventually) something, if not many things, that they find wanting, undesirable or deleterious about a given context, which generically impedes the full expression of who they want to be... 'meta-reflexives' are amongst society's critics... 'meta-reflexives' are idealists... No existing social arrangements approximate to their ideal, nor ultimately does any institution or organization to which they are vocationally drawn. This is what makes them social critics... the 'meta-reflexive' has the greatest difficulties, during his or her life-course, in completing the sequence, "concerns → projects → practices", to his or her own satisfaction.

p.298 Reflexivity, exercised through the internal conversation, has been examined as the process that mediates the effects of structure upon agency. However, such mediation depends upon agents exerting their personal powers to formulate projects and to monitor both self and society in the pursuit of their designs.

p.299 their internal conversations enabled them to be 'active agents', that is people who exerted (some) control over their own lives. They are people who can help certain things to happen, especially ones that matter to them a great deal, rather than people to whom things merely happen. The latter defines a 'passive agent'.

p.300 Taking a 'stance' means that agents direct their own powers towards social powers in a systematic manner, which facilitates the achievement of their ultimate concerns... 'autonomous reflexives' acted strategically to them [constraints and enablements]... 'active', by virtue of having a 'stance' towards society... Agents monitor themselves within situations and initiate courses of action in the light of their concerns, including modifying their projects according to the circumstances that they confront... there is no implication that the 'stance' adopted entails a correct reading of the situation... An 'active agent' does not have to be right every time, any more than an active motorist has to be someone who never makes mistakes; in both cases they may pay heavily for their errors.

p.301 The only assumption which is made about the 'active agent' is that, in relation to his or her subjectively defined projects, the adoption of a 'stance' towards society, as developed through the internal conversation, also accords them a certain degree of control in and over their own lives. It is indeed the case that it is only because they have employed their personal powers to define projects in society that social constraints and enablements can impinge upon them. Yet the power of human reflexivity does not stop there. In addition, the three different 'stances' inform subjects about what to do in the light of the social powers that they can unleash upon themselves: respectively, take evasive action, take strategic action, or take subversive action.

p.342-343 Each 'stance' goes above and beyond the manner in which a given subject responds to any given constraint or enablement, and represents an overall pattern of response to the totality of structural powers.
 'Stances' are basic orientations of subjects to society. In other words, the 'stance' is ventured as a generative mechanism, at the personal level, with the tendential capacity to regulate relations between the person and her society... The ability to take a 'stance' towards society is itself a personal accomplishment. What it produces is the 'active agent'.

p.350 Through the (often lengthy) process of seeking to transform their own circumstances in order to realise their concerns and adjusting their projects in the light of their new circumstances, the 'autonomous reflexive' adopts a strategic 'stance' vis a vis constraints and enablements. The reflexive powers of deliberating upon what has been learned and then using this knowledge to anticipate the feasibility of potential courses of action allows this group to identify a satisfying and sustainable modus vivendi. This active and transformative achievement entails knowledgeably captialising upon relevant enablements and an equally knowledgeable circumvention of anticipated constraints. Since both are known fallibly, the strategic outcome may indeed be a way of life that is sub-optimal in objective terms.

p.353-354 to take up a 'stance' is... a commitment to a distinctive course of practical action in society... it is an acceptance of a particular way of being-in-the-world.

p.355 Adopting any 'stance' towards society always has internal causal effects upon those upholding it. This is necessarily the case because a 'stance' is an attempt by the subject to regulate the personal-societal relationship. Part of that regulation, and inevitably the larger part, consists in self-monitoring in relation to society - because the personal powers of the agent are more effective in generating self-change than societal change.