Structure and agency

Structure and agency are two ways of looking at how people give meaning to things. Structure is the external things in the world we can see that influence our decisions and how we live our lives. Examples of structure could be rules in our family, laws in our country, or customs in our community. Agency is our ability to make choices. It's how we decide to act, think, and feel in different situations. We can use agency to respond to the structures in our lives. For example, if there is a rule in our family that we have to stay in certain areas at a certain time, we can use our agency to decide how to respond; we can follow the rule or make our own choice.