The duality of systems: Networks as media and outcomes of movement mobilization

The notion of duality — which Anthony Giddens uses to describe the operation of virtual, generative structural rules and resources as both the media and the outcomes of human agency — can be extended to the analysis of spatio-temporally located sytems of reproduced relations. Rather than simply being the outcomes or byproducts of action organized by the duality of structure (as they are for Giddens), relational systems are also the media of action. I defend this claim through an analysis of the literatures on the recursive relationship between social networks and social movements. The arguments that some types of network ties facilitate the mobilization of social movements and that one outcome of social movement activity can be the expansion of network ties have been developed largely independently of one another and can be integrated through this new structurationist concept — the duality of systems.