Introduction
In this assignment I conduct a life course case study of a seventy-four year old man, Mr. Gambina, in order to find out whether structure or agency has been most influential throughout his life. The agent is the person who actually performs the action, while structure refers to the main structures in society that influence the way the agents act. Most structuralists share a conviction that individual human beings function solely as elements of the (often hidden) social networks to which they belong.
The life course theory emerged in the 1960s out of the need to understand h…
