Structure and agency: deals with agency. Synchrony and diachrony: deals with time. Lastly, sociological theory often grapples with a subset of all three central problems through the problem of integrating or transcending the divide between micro-, meso- and macro-level social phenomena. These problems are not altogether empirical. Rather, they are epistemological: they arise from the conceptual imagery and analytical analogies that sociologists use to describe the complexity of social processes. Objectivity and subjectivity The issue of subjectivity and objectivity can be divided into a concern over (a) the general possibilities of social actions; and (b) the specific problem of social scientific knowledge. In regard to the former, the subjective is often equated (though not necessarily) with "the individual" and the individual's intentions and interpretations of the "objective". The objective, on the other hand, is usually considered to be any public/external action or outcome, on up to society . A primary question for social theorists is how knowledge reproduces along the chain of subjective-objective-subjective. That is to say, how is intersubjectivity achieved? While, historically, qualitative methods have attempted to tease out subjective interpretations, quantitative survey methods also attempt to capture individual subjectivities. Moreover, some qualitative methods take a radical approach to objective description in situ. Insofar as subjectivity & objectivity are concerned with (b) the specific problem of social scientific knowledge, such concern results from the fact that a sociologist is part of the very object they seek to explain, as expressed by Bourdieu: Structure and agency Structure and agency (or determinism and voluntarism) form an enduring ontological debate in social theory: "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" In this context, agency refers to the capacity of an individual to act independently and make free choices, whereas structure relates to factors that limit or affect the choices and actions of the individual (e.g. social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, etc.). Discussions over the primacy of either structure and agency relate to the core of sociological epistemology, i.e. "what is the social world made of?", "what is a cause in the social world", and "what is an effect?". A perennial question within this debate is that of "social reproduction": how are structures (specifically structures that produce inequality) reproduced through the choices of individuals? Synchrony and diachrony Synchrony and diachrony (or statics and dynamics) within social theory are terms that refer to a distinction emerging out of the work