Showing papers on "Agency (philosophy) published in 1990"

Regulatory Capture, Public Interest, and the Public Agenda: Toward a Synthesis

Abstract: For at least 30 years, commentators have been engaged in a debate about what animates the regulatory process. Is the ultimate goal of regulation to pursue some conception of the general good, however mean-spirited, messy, and confused the process may seem at any given time? This hypothesis, widely known as the "public interest" theory of regulation, was dominant for many years, then left for dead by academics of the 1960s and 1970s, but has since been found alive, although in much weakened condition, in the 1980s. Or is regulation simply an arena in which special interests contend for the right to use government power for narrow advantage? This hypothesis, known variously as the capture theory, economic theory, or governmentservices theory of regulation, has been dominant for the past 25 years. Embedded in this question is another philosophically related one: What motivates a regulator-a legislator, commissioner, agency head, or bureaucrat-faced with a regulatory decision? Do such actors seek the "best" policy

Well-Being and the Extent of its Realisation in Poor Countries

Abstract: Two aspects of persons have alternatingly dominated the thinking of social philosophers over the centuries, each true in itself, but each quite incomplete without the other. One sees us capable of deliberation, having the potential capacity to do things. It details agency, choice, independence and selfdetermination, and thereby that aspect of our selves which fashions projects and pursues goals. The other views us as seats of utility or satisfaction; as loci of possible states of mind, attained by the extent to which desires are fulfilled, by the activities that are undertaken and the relationships enjoyed. If one vision sees us doing things, the other sees us residing in states of being. Where the former leads one to the language of freedom and rights, the latter directs one to a concern with welfare and happiness. These are related aspects of course, in fact so closely related that they have often been conflated into one without having caused any obvious damage. Consider for example that people often appeal to a category of socio-economic rights (that is, rights to certain scarce resources) when advocating policies which have an impact on the extent of absolute poverty in a society. Now, it is possible to use instead some notion of aggregate welfare and reach similar conclusions. We may, for instance, be considering the desirability of a nutrition-guarantee scheme. We could advocate it by invoking persons' wellbeing interests, such as certain types of positive rights. (See Section VI.) We could also commend it on grounds of aggregate utility. We could do this by noting first that nutrition intake is a determinant of individual welfare, that at low levels of intake it is a critical determinant, and that in the absence of such a scheme a sizeable fraction of the population would be vulnerable to food deprivation. We could thus argue that the level of aggregate welfare which

Implementation in Bayesian equilibrium: The multiple equilibrium problem in mechanism design

Abstract: Implementation theory links together social choice theory and game theory At a less abstract level, its application provides an approach to welfare economics based on individual incentives The underlying motivation for implementation theory is most easily seen from the point of view of a relatively uninformed planner who wishes to optimize a social welfare function that depends on environmental parameters about which relevant information is scattered around in the economy Thus, the planner wishes to both collect as much of this relevant information as possible, and, with this information, make a social decision (eg, an allocation of resources) This is the classic problem identified by Hurwicz (1972) In the twenty years since, we find numerous research agendas falling into the general category of implementation problems: the study of planning procedures, contracts, optimal regulation and taxation, agency relationships, agendas and committee decision-making, comparative electoral systems, non-cooperative foundations of general equilibrium theory, and even much of the recent theoretical work in accounting and the economics of law

Collaboration or Paradigm Shift?: Caveat Emptor and the Risk of Romance with Economic Models for Strategy and Policy Research.

Abstract: While the “formulation” or “strategy” side of business policy has always drawn appropriately from economic theory, we caution that, taken to its logical extreme, economic theory ignores the importance of implementation, implies lack of choice in organization decision-making, and makes the organization a nonentity In this paper, we outline the fundamental differences between behavioral and economic approaches to business policy These differences are highlighted by an illustration of their divergent perspectives on corporate “agency”

Leadership and Individuality in South Asia: The Case of the South Indian Big-man

Abstract: Although there has been great interest in how properly to conceptualize the person in Indian culture, few have explored Indian perceptions of leadership, achievement, and agency as valued features of individuality (Singer 1972; Mines 1988; Fox 1989). Indeed, since Dumont (1970a,b) forcefully argued that the values of equality and liberty that support the Western notion of the individual were absent from Indian society, the important roles that personal uniqueness, volition, and achievement play in Indian history have been largely overlooked or understated. This paper reconsiders an Indian sense of these roles by examining the south Indian concept of the “big-man” (periyar, periyavar), a notion of individuality and instrumentality that is central to the politics of south India and crucial to an understanding of the dynamic relationship that exists between action and organization in Indian society (cf., Fox 1989).

Feminist Second Thoughts About Free Agency

Abstract: This essay suggests that common themes in recent feminist ethical thought can dislodge the guiding assumptions of traditional theories of free agency and thereby foster an account of freedom which might be more fruitful for feminist discussion of moral and political agency. The essay proposes constructing that account around a condition ofnormative-competence. It argues that this view permits insight into why women's labor of reclaiming and augmenting their agency is both difficult and possible in a sexist society.

The Philosophy of Action: An Introduction

Abstract: Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Actions and Happenings. 2. The New Volitional Theory. 3. Some Remarks about the Ontology of Actions. 4. Meaningful Actions. 5. Agency and Intentional Action. 6. The Intentionality of Mind. 7. Intentionality and Science. 8. Laws and Explanation of Actions. 9. Laws and Prediction of Actions. 10. Davidson's Causal Theory of Intentional Action. 11. Wayward Causal Chains. 12. Intention and Intentional Action. 13. Davidson's Theory of Intention. 14. Agency and Physical Determinism. Conclusion. Notes. Bibliography.

Do Homeric Heroes Make Real Decisions

Abstract: Bruno Snell has made familiar a certain thesis about the Homeric poems, to the effect that these poems depict a primitive form of mindedness. The area of mindedness concerned is agency, and the content of the thesis is that Homeric agents are not agents in the fullest sense: they do not make choices in clear self-awareness of what they are doing; choices are made for them rather than by them; in some cases the instigators of action are gods, in other cases they are forces acting internally on the agent and over which he has no control. Homeric heroes act in the way Descartes thought an animal acts: agitur, non agit. Such agents ‘handeln nicht eigentlich (d.h. mil vollem Bewuβtsein eigenen Handelns), sondern sie reagieren’. The model of the agent which we nowadays have is roughly of a self which determines, rather than is determined to, action; the self arrives at this determination by considering available reasons for action in the light of its overall purposes, and it moves to action in full self-consciousness of what it is doing, and why. This model of action, Snell claims, is not met in Greek literature before the tragedians. I think anyone ought to concede that there is some difference between the way Homer portrays decision-making and the way it is portrayed in tragedy (with further differences among the tragedians themselves); but has Snell located the difference in the right place? I shall argue in this paper that he has not.

Modernism and Hegemony: A Materialist Critique of Aesthetic Agencies

Abstract: Modernism and Hegemony was first published in 1990. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.In Modernism and Hegemony, Neil Larsen exposes the underlying political narratives of modernist aesthetic theory and practice. Unlike earlier Marxist critics, Larsen insists that modernist ideology be approached as a "displaced politics" and not simply as an aesthetic phenomenon. In this view, modernism is broadly ideological project comprising not only the literary-artist canon but also a wide array of theoretical discourses from aesthetics to philosophy, culture, and politics. Larsen gives postmodernism some credit for the apparent breakup of modernism, and for exposing the philosophical and political nature of its aesthetic stance. But he parts company with its ideological and epistemological notions, proposing to change the terms, and thus the framework, of the debate.For Larsen, modernism is intimately linked to a crisis of representation that affected all aspects of life in the late nineteenth century - a period when capitalism itself was undergoing transformation from its "classical" free market phase into a more abstract, monopolistic and imperialistic stage. Larsen finds the resultant loosening of ties between individuals and society - the breakdown of social and historical agency - behind the growth of modernism. He employs speculative cross-readings of key texts by Marx and Adorno, an examination of Manet's "The Execution of Maximilian," and an analysis of modernism in a Third World setting to explain why modernism made special claims upon the aesthetic, and how it ultimately ascribed historical agency to "works of art."

Systems of Production and Social Discourse: The Skipper Effect Revisited

Abstract: We have argued that differences in success in Icelandic fishing are statistically explained more by technical and ecological factors than by personal qualities of skippers, the “skipper effect.” Research by other scholars has reopened the discussion of the skipper effect. We assess some of the statistical arguments, pointing out that while there may be a strong skipper effect in some societies, in other societies it is weak or negligible. We suggest that it is important to distinguish between the statistical reality of the skipper effect and its sociology and that the concept of skipper effect is of limited utility in comparative studies, since different researchers using it have not always been talking about the same phenomena and fishing success is conceived differently in different societies. The discussion of the skipper effect echoes debates on resource management and the authenticity of folk models, as well as larger debates in social theory on the relationship between the symbolic and the real and the role of history and agency. Folk theories of production, we argue, are best regarded as cultural accounts constructed in social discourse, in the context of production systems.

John B. Watson at J. Walter Thompson: The Legitimation of “Science” in Advertising

Abstract: This article, a cultural history, attempts to answer the question of how John B. Watson's presence at J. Walter Thompson “made sense” from the standpoint of the actors involved. At the time Watson joined the agency, he had achieved a national reputation as a psychologist, a researcher, and the leader of behaviorist psychology. His doctrine, which recognized prediction and control as the goal of psychology, meshed well not only with broader Progressive concerns of social control, but more particularly with the goals of the business community, and at J. Walter Thompson, with the goals of Stanley B. Resor. Watson's presence at the agency became a “mechanism” through which Resor could implement his philosophy into advertising practice. Watson's work was to help rationalize the advertising process, but at the same time, spoke directly to the admirers of science, legitimating a reality in which decision making based upon “scientific” methods assumed a role of prominence.

Integrating planning and acting in a case-based framework

Abstract: This paper presents an outline of a theory of agency that seeks to integrate ongoing understanding, planning and activity into a single model of representation and processing. Our model of agency rises out of three basic pieces of work: Schank's structural model of memory organization (Schank, 1982), Hammond's work in case-based planning and dependency directed repair (Hammond, 1989d), and Martin's work in Direct Memory Access Parsing (Martin 1990). We see this paper as a first step in the production of a memory-based theory of agency: the active pursuit of goals in the face of a changing environment, that can exist within the computational constraints of a computer model.

Making Distinctions: The Eye of the Beholder

Abstract: Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical and empirical analyses of the art world constitute a substantial component of his published work spanning more than two decades (Bourdieu 1968, 1971, 1980, 1980a, 1983, 1984, 1985f, 1987d, 1988b). His central interest in the formation and reproduction of symbolic practices has drawn him inevitably towards the intellectual fields of art and literature, traditionally neglected areas for sociological study. As with other fields discussed in this book, Bourdieu has used the fields of art and literature to demonstrate that the cultural practices which constitute the production, distribution and consumption of symbolic goods are comprehensible within a theory of practice which admits neither transcendental/idealist categories of individual agency, nor deterministic explanations drawn from formal structuralism.1 By analysing the literary and artistic fields in relational terms, he has been able to understand and demonstrate further the homologies between symbolic and economic production. Moreover, by the constant application of his own powerful explanatory metaphors, he has revealed the extant relations between aesthetic dispositions of individual agents and the objective systems of social differentiations within which acts of artistic creation and appreciation necessarily take place. He has shown that the attitudes which individuals assume towards works of art are manifestations of more pervasive dispositions from which all other attitudes of taste are derived. These dispositions are engendered by a social logic which relates the aesthetic choices (distinctions) made by individuals to the more general strategies of struggle by which groups maintain their social positions — see Chapter 1 for a discussion of general strategies of struggle.

Real things: Discourse, context and practice

Abstract: Discourse (language organized into sets of texts) and discourses (systems of statements within and through those sets) have a power. To say this is not to attribute agency to a system, but simply to acknowledge constraining and productive forces. There are forces of institutional disadvantage and division, for example, which do not flow from individual intentions, and the phenomena of power and ideology need not be traced to conspiratorial machinations. It would be dangerous to attempt to do so, and the unpleasant consequences particularly difficult to challenge if such investigation proceeded under cover of objective science. Discourse analysis unravels the conceptual elisions and confusions by which language enjoys its power. It is implicit ideology-critique. But there is more than language, and discourse analysis needs attend to the conditions which make the meanings of texts, and the research project which takes them seriously, possible.

Agency theory as ideology: A comparative analysis based on critical legal theory and radical accounting☆

Abstract: This paper explores the similarities in legal and accounting theory with reference to their foundations in neoclassical economics. Neoclassical legal theorists argue that governmental interference in employment should be minimized and that individual contractual arrangements are a superior means of resolving organizational conflict. Similarly, agency-based accounting researchers argue that the demand for accounting reports derives from, and should be based on, the equilibrium set of “free” market-determined contracts. Both critical legal theorists and radical accountants contend that the “market” concept and its theoretical derivatives are ideological constructs which obscure the biases of power inherent in economic organizations. When applied to organizational structure, critical theory and radical accounting mutually enrich the insights of the respective disciplines.

Property in Science and the Market

Abstract: A central theme in recent liberal arguments for the free-market has been an epistemological one. It is claimed that the free market is a solution to problems of ignorance, and that there are necessary limitations to the knowledge that any particular individual or subset of individuals in society can possess. Hence, there are limitations to the knowledge at the disposal of any central planning board in a planned economy. The economic liberal argues that in contrast to these limitations of centralized planned economies, the market overcomes the problems of human ignorance. There are two sources of these limitations to human knowledge that are particularly prominent in the work of economic liberals. The first is what Hayek calls "the division of knowledge" in society?that is, the dispersal of knowledge and skills throughout different individuals in society.1 Much of such knowledge takes the form of practical knowledge?knowledge how rather than knowledge that?which cannot be articulated in propositional form. Hence, such knowledge cannot in principle be passed on to a cen tralized planning agency. There will be knowledge dispersed throughout society of which any particular individual or subset of individuals will be ig norant. A second source of ignorance is the unpredictability of human needs and wants. This is in part a consequence of the fact that an individual's needs and wants often cannot be articulated. However, it also has another basis. Needs and wants change with the invention and produc tion of new objects for consumption. To quote a version of this point from a writer who is not an economic liberal:

Social workers in private practice: What are they really doing?

Abstract: At one level, private practice may represent a fairly evolved manifestation of the expanded professional growth and sophistication of the individual social worker who embarks upon this highly individualized proprietary enterprise However, on a larger scale, this widespread shift toward private practice may indicate a collective disenchantment with agency practice per se and represent a concerted attempt to redefine the fundamental aims and values of social work practice

Marotholi Travelling Theatre: towards and alternative perspective of development

Abstract: My concern in this account is with theatre rather than drama, and I think it is important for us to clarify the distinction from the onset. 'Theatre' here refers to the production and communication of meaning in the performance itself, in other words a transaction or negotiation of meaning in a performer-spectator situation. 'Drama' on the other hand, refers to the literature on which performances are sometimes based, the mode of fiction designed along certain dramatic conventions for stage representation. The kind of theatre I am concerned with here is development theatre, in particular the Lesotho group known as the Marotholi Travelling Theatre. The initial stage of any development activity is communication, and throughout the life of the activity communication continues. Without the essential social interaction through messages between 'development agents' and the people, the socalled beneficiaries of development actions, we cannot in any meaningful way talk of development. When we examine various development projects in Lesotho we find that in many cases communication is top-down. In other words, planners from outside the community decide what is good for the community and impose projects without finding out from the 'beneficiaries' what their needs are. More often than not such projects fail to realise their objectives because people lack the motivation to participate in the projects of which they feel they are not part. In our tours of the villages we have in fact discovered that the general attitude is that the responsibility for failure or success of such projects rests with the 'government' (by which it is meant any development agency be it government or non-governmental). People feel that things are being done for them, and it is up to the 'benefactors' to see to it that they succeed. They see themselves as mere recipients an attitude which reinforces dependency. For communication to be complete and effective it must be two-way instead of a top-down, one-way flow of information. However, for communication to be twoway it must take place among community members themselves. The need for a democratic vehicle to facilitate dialogue at community level gave birth to the use of

Towards Education for Citizenship

Abstract: The post‐war settlement sought to create the conditions for an educated public. The transformations since the mid‐1970s, however, are bringing into sharper focus the limitations of the social democratic polity. The idea of merely ‘delivering’ citizenship to a passive public was flawed in conception. Moreover, the changes are fragmenting the social and political order. The predicament of our time, therefore, is that while an active public domain is required—to constitute the just conditions for all to develop their powers and capacities—we lack the conditions for creating it. This paper seeks to establish the presuppositions for re‐creating an educated public: the possibility of agency in the development of the self but also in the regeneration of an active public domain. *This paper develops the first part of an argument presented to the BEMAS Conference in September 1989.

Schooling for work in New Zealand : reproduction, contestation and transformation in three high schools

Abstract: This study records messages given to students about work within three high schools in New Zealand. Attention was given to overt and covert messages, and to those messages embedded in the structure of schooling itself. The study contributes to the debate within the ‘new’ sociology of education in that it focuses on the relationship between schooling and the established order in society. The data collected show that generally, the form, con tent and pedagogy of schooling function to serve the needs of industry rather than those of democracy. While teachers are described as functioning in the reproductive mode, the contradictions and conflicts observed are highlighted to show that reproduction does not take place without contestation. This opens up spaces wherein students and teachers can exercise agency and autonomy to question ‐‐and formulate alternatives to ‐‐the structure.

Law, ideology and social change: An analysis of the role of law in the construction of corporate crime

Abstract: This paper explores recent efforts to theorize the potential of law as an agency for progressive social change in the context of the debate over corporate crime. Drawing on feminist experience with criminal law reform in the area of domestic violence, the author argues that the strategy of criminalizing corporate violations needs to be problematized, and that attention should also be focussed on exploring other avenues for progressive legal and political struggles aimed at the control of corporate crime.

Institutions, Agency, and Microscale Gentrification: A Tale of Two Neighborhoods

Abstract: Recent institutional analysis of gentrification has focused on the dialectical interplay of structure and manager choice. A shortcoming of this work is its treatment of managers as subordinate to structural factors. This study clarifies the role of managers by describing the organizational influence of individual agency. An analysis of gentrification in Indianapolis demonstrates: (1) managers import into and generate from within goals which intersect with organizational directives: (2) institutional contexts are instrumental in facilitating gentrification, and (3) random events propel the localization of such contexts. Human agency forges institutional support which itself structures the unfolding of gentrification.

The Embodiment of Ugliness and the Logic of Love: The Danish Redstocking Movement:

Abstract: oppositions themselves, they have a particular immediacy in our time, an immediacy which can be attributed, in dialectical logic, to a reaction against structuralism, politically and intellectually. (Ortner, 1984) The sense that we are presently at the end of something, as expressed in the terms 'postindustrial' and 'postmodern', is a sign of loss of confidence in the structures of the state, the political party, the labour union, and the established ways of doing and thinking. This same loss of confidence is also found in the laws, models, and theories of the social sciences, as expressed in the term 'poststructuralism'. Critiques from the right wing of the political spectrum of all manifestations of state power except those which support capitalism and critiques from the left wing of the state's support of capitalism, all speak of agency, either individual or collective, against structure. The bourgeois critique is essentially coherent. It is, simply stated, that any structure opposed to the orderly accumulation of capital is to be opposed. The left critique of structure is more theoretically problematic. How can one act within the system to oppose it without creating structures which simply negate the structures they oppose, that is, without creating mere antistructures? To escape the endless series of contradictions anti-antistructures one might pose anarchism as a political response or nihilism as an intellectual one. However, to the extent that we still consider ourselves to be social scientists, committed to problem solving, to abandon the project is not a very attractive prospect. Assuming one has not reached the highest state of antistructuralism, one's critique of it must take another form, both intellectually and politically.

Cataloging the Creatures of the Deep: "Billy Budd, Sailor" and the Rise of Sociology

Abstract: The task of interpreting American literary realism has always involved coming to terms with a poetics of sight.' Recently, critics have begun to specify the problem of realist seeing as part of the larger historical problem of subjectivity and agency in the late nineteenth century-how was individual (or collective) consciousness and action conceived in the era of realism's emergence? New Historicists who reassess the claims of historical reality upon literary works are drawn to American realism, and their analyses have led to new understandings of the realist subject. In place of the sobering recognitions or heightened political consciousnesses found in an earlier era of realist criticism, the subject in New Historicism is unconsciously positioned

Advancing the Chicago School of Pragmatic Sociology: The Life and Work of Tamotsu Shibutani*

Abstract: Tamotsu Shibutani is a contemporary proponent of the Chicago School of pragmatic sociology who has devoted his academic efforts to using the Chicago School of pragmatism to analyze problems of contemporary social life and to refine the theoretical tools available to the discipline of sociology. He has evaluated such topics as the Japanese relocation centers, the social construction of rumor, demoralization in Army life, the dynamics of ethnic stratification, and the resolution of ethnic tensions. Shibutani's books on social psychology and general sociology synthesize micro and macro variables, with careful attention to both agency and social control. His work is free of metaphysical puzzles and is true to the scientific method, clearly reflecting the essence of the Chicago School of pragmatic sociology.

"A Romantic Book": Moby-Dick and Novel Agency

Abstract: The quoted phrase of my title is a generic characterization; it might respond to a question like "What is Moby-Dick?" For in working on midnineteenth-century prose narrative for the Cambridge History of American Literature, I have found a generic approach the most useful. In pursuing such an approach in this essay, I will relate Moby-Dick to a kind of prose fiction typically troubled by the problems of agency and action, and I will then set this generic problem in the specific history of the United States. Along with theorists and scholars so different from each other as Northrop Frye, Alastair Fowler, and Fredric Jameson, I reckon it a fundamental task of the literary scholar to ask, "What kind of work is this?" and further, "How may our answer to this question help us relate this work to other works and to the conditions of literary production and reception?"1 In the study of mid-

Agency and revolution

Abstract: The societal myth of revolution and the sociological theory of revolution flourished in the nineteenth century - together with the idea of progress and reason - as cornerstones of the era of triumphant modernity. The myth was seriously challenged by the tragic experience of revolutions in the twentieth century; they never produced what they promised, and often replaced reason with irrational violence, and progress with crisis. With some inevitable time-lag, the theories of revolution were revised too. They abandoned developmentalist assumptions (of fatalism, finalism, utopianism, linearity), and focussed on the role of human agency (especially social movements) in bringing about revolutions; and on contingent, variable contribution of revolutions to social change (alternative scenarios of the future). New, agential theories of revolutions attempt to incorporate insights and hypotheses from a plurality of earlier theories. For this effort not to degenerate into eclecticism, it must be controlled by a more ...