different sociological perspectives on the issue of agent and structure.

generally, there are four approaches to social phenomena in soial sciences: the agent-based approach, the structural approach, the functional approach, and the critical realistic approach. these approachs, with respect to their specific interpretation of social phenomena, concentrate on the behavior of agents or on the structural charctristics or on both to arriv at explanations. this article is to study the ontological basis and the weak and strong points of these four approaches.