Captain Louis De Kotter Essay

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This essay will specifically focus on the excerpt of Captain Louis De Koster’s social biography as presented in Altbeker’s the Dirty Work of Democracy. Its main objective will be to engage in the structure-agency debate and how its major concepts are brought out in consideration of Captain Louis De Koster’s life and also to show how and where I stand in this debate.

I will begin by a definition of key concepts.Structure is the enduring orderly and patterned relationships between elements of society (Abercrombie et al, 1988:228) in short it is the social framework in which we exist. Agency is an individual’s ability to act make choices and plans and to make sense of or intepret their surroundings(van Huysteen,2003: page not known). A social …show more content…

However, just like any other individual Captain De Koster does not live in a vacuum that is devoid of a society. He works within a certain structure/ “framework.” And there are indeed multiple structures in his case; most of which he feels are working against him as a white policeman in Post Apartheid South Africa. These frameworks govern the conditions and setting in which he works and thereby are a major influence in his attitude towards his work. De Koster lives in an era where the Police Force in which he works is general being restructured through affirmative action to accommodate previously the oppressed black policeman. Since all this is being done at the expense of the white policeman and has meant a reduction in the standards at the Force De Koster has inevitably become indignant and bitter. His incessant complaining about the force are evidence of how this framework has affected him …show more content…

The major thing that Captain De Koster does is complaining. But is he complaining as a knee jerk response to the conditions or is he complaining as a result of a conscious choice to do so? One would argue that since De Koster isn’t finding his transfer so bad and since he’s doing his duties it is safe to say he is more comfortable and hence he is complaining as a conscious choice to do so. Hence this shows how agency also explains his

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