The displacement of tradition and the influence of distant events on local affairs enhances reflexive modernisation because the unpredictable and unknown effects of the risk society cannot be reconciled to the institutionalised standards or interpreted by the expert systems of the existing society's modernity. The theory of structuration states that the basic domain of social science study is neither the experience of the individual, nor the existence of any form of societal totality, but social practices. Through social activities people reproduce the actions that make these practices possible . The core of structuration theory lies in the concepts of structure, system, and duality of structure. Structuration refers to the conditions governing the continuity or transmutation of structures, and therefore the reproduction of social systems.
System refers to the reproduced relations between people organised as regular social practices.
Structuring properties makes it possible for discernibly similar social practices to exist across varying spans of time and space. Analysing the structuration of social systems means studying the modes in which such systems are produced and reproduced in interaction. The constitution of agents and structures are not two independently given sets of phenomena, a dualism, but represent a duality. According to the notion of duality of structure, the structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome. For structuration theory, the moment of the production of action is also that of its reproduction.