Integrating the individual and the social, agency and structure, the temporal and the spatial has been a central yet thwarted project in contemporary social theory. Approaches that focus on the individual, such as Anthony Giddens’ (1991) notion of the ‘reflexive project of self ‘, or even Foucault's later work on the practices of existence, have been criticised for failing to relate the self to their social horizons (McNay, 2000), for downplaying the embeddedness of the subject (Scott and Scott, 2001; Plumridge and Thomson, 2003) and for universalising cultural forms available to some but not others (Skeggs, 2004). Conversely, accounts which emphasise the social and the structural tend to foreclose the temporal or aspects of it (Massey, 1994). For example, the classic criticism that has been levelled against the work of Bourdieu is that it portrays an overly synchronic (and thus static and determined) view of social relations (May, 1996: 126). It may be that a generous reading of all these authors would acknowledge that their perspectives privilege different elements of spatiality/temporality and individual/social, yet still recognise these elements as indivisible and mutually constitutive. Nevertheless, the challenge continues to be to find theories, methodologies and methods that represent this dynamic mutuality.

Margaret Archer has attempted to transcend these binaries by conceptualising the reflexive subject through the lens of critical realism. She argues that, in order to ‘accord reflexivity its due’, sociological accounts must acknowledge the following points about how we make our way in the world:

• 1. That our unique personal identities, which derive from our singular constellations of concerns, mean that we are radically heterogeneous as subject. Even though we may share objective social positions, we may also seek very different ends from within them.

• 2. That our subjectivity is dynamic, it is not psychologically static nor is it psychologically reducible, because we modify our own goals in terms of their contextual feasibility, as we see it. As always we are fallible, can get it wrong and have to pay the objective price for doing so.

• 3. That, for the most part, we are active rather than passive subjects because we adjust our projects to those practices that we believe we can realise. Subjects regularly evaluate their social situations in the light of their personal concerns and assess their projects in the light of their situations. (Archer, 2007: 22)