Showing papers on "Agency (philosophy) published in 1997"

Realist social theory : the morphogenetic approach

Abstract: Building on her seminal contribution to social theory in Culture and Agency, in this 1995 book Margaret Archer develops her morphogenetic approach, applying it to the problem of structure and agency. Since structure and agency constitute different levels of stratified social reality, each possesses distinctive emergent properties which are real and causally efficacious but irreducible to one another. The problem, therefore, is shown to be how to link the two rather than conflate them, as has been common theoretical practice. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world. The morphogenetic approach is the sociological complement of transcendental realism, and together they provide a basis for non-conflationary theorizing which is also of direct utility to the practising social analyst.

Culture and cognition

Abstract: Recent work in cognitive psychology and social cognition bears heavily on concerns of sociologists of culture. Cognitive research confirms views of culture as fragmented; clarifies the roles of institutions and agency; and illuminates supraindividual aspects of culture. Individuals experience culture as disparate bits of information and as schematic structures that organize that information. Culture carried by institutions, networks, and social movements diffuses, activates, and selects among available schemata. Implications for the study of identity, collective memory, social classification, and logics of action are developed.

The Economics of Contracts: A Primer

Abstract: The theory of contracts grew out of the failure of the general equilibrium model to account for the strategic interactions among agents that arise from informational asymmetries. This popular text, revised and updated throughout for the second edition, serves as a concise and rigorous introduction to the theory of contracts for graduate students and professional economists. The book presents the main models of the theory of contracts, particularly the basic models of adverse selection, signaling, and moral hazard. It emphasizes the methods used to analyze the models, but also includes brief introductions to many of the applications in different fields of economics. The goal is to give readers the tools to understand the basic models and create their own. For the second edition, major changes have been made to chapter 3, on examples and extensions for the adverse selection model, which now includes more thorough discussions of multiprincipals, collusion, and multidimensional adverse selection, and to chapter 5, on moral hazard, with the limited liability model, career concerns, and common agency added to its topics. Two chapters have been completely rewritten: chapter 7, on the theory of incomplete contracts, and chapter 8, on the empirical literature in the theory of contracts. An appendix presents concepts of noncooperative game theory to supplement chapters 4 and 6. Exercises follow chapters 2 through 5. Praise for the previous edition: "The Economics of Contracts offers an excellent introduction to agency models. Written by one of the leading young researchers in contact theory, it is rigorous, clear, concise, and up-to-date. Researchers and students who want to learn about the economics of incentives will want to read this primer." -- Jean Tirole, Institut D'Economie Industrielle, Universite des Sciences Sociales, France "Students will find this a very useful introduction to the ideas of contract theory. Salanie has managed to summarize a large amount of material in a relatively short number of pages in a highly accessible and readable manner." -- Oliver Hart, Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Reconstructing Conceptions of Local Capacity: The Local Education Agency’s Capacity for Ambitious Instructional Reform

Abstract: In this article, the authors argue that the notion of local capacity needs to be rethought in light of the extraordinary demands for learning imposed on local educators by the current wave of instructional reforms. Confining their discussion to the local education agency (LEA), the authors argue that the LEA’s capacity to support ambitious instruction consists to a large degree of LEA leaders’ ability to learn new ideas from external policy and professional sources and to help others within the district learn these ideas. Drawing on a study of nine school districts, they identify three interrelated dimensions of this capacity—human capital, social capital, and financial resources.

Homo geographicus : a framework for action, awareness, and moral concern

Abstract: "This brilliant book, reflecting an original mind and years of preparatory research, is a major work of contemporary geographical scholarship. It is perhaps the most important theoretical work in human geography of the past thirty years. 'Homo Geographicus' provides a powerful intellectual broadside on behalf of reason as a faculty of mind that all humans share. This will be a controversial book that will stimulate much-needed debate about geographical agency, spatiality, and postmodernist claims. An exemplary book."--John Agnew, Syracuse University "Robert Sack is one of the most original theoreticians in geography today. In 'Homo Geographicus' he continues his project of identifying the geographical sources of social life, and takes an important step toward giving the geographic perspective an essential and central role in modern social theory."--J. Nicholas Entrikin, University of California at Los Angeles "Written in straightforward and unpretentious language, 'Homo Geographicus' refocuses thinking about the nature of the geographic and provides a framework for why and how the various domains of study within the discipline of geography are intimately linked." --Billie Lee Turner II, George Perkins Marsh Institute, Clark University In 'Homo Geographicus' Sack offers nothing less than a philosophy and theory of geography. He maps out how nature, culture, self, and such geographical factors as space, place, home, and world fit together, enabling us to see more clearly how we transform the world and how we are affected by that transformation. He also provides possible moral directions for us to pursue so that we can be more responsible for our actions and make better our places, our home, and the earth itself.

Citizenship: Towards a Feminist Synthesis:

Abstract: A synthesis of rights and participatory approaches to citizenship, linked through the notion of human agency, is proposed as the basis for a feminist theory of citizenship. Such a theory has to address citizenship's exclusionary power in relation to both nation-state ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’. With regard to the former, the article argues that a feminist theory and politics of citizenship must embrace an internationalist agenda. With regard to the latter, it offers the concept of a ‘differentiated universalism’ as an attempt to reconcile the universalism which lies at the heart of citizenship with the demands of a politics of difference. Embracing also the reconstruction of the public-private dichotomy, citizenship, reconceptualized in this way, can, it is argued, provide us with an important theoretical and political tool.

Inclusive education: romantic, subversive or realistic?

Abstract: This paper seeks to identify some of the key issues involved in the question of inclusive education. This includes conceptual, ideological and practical difficulties. Part of a realistic approach to the topic necessitates an understanding of the context in which the struggle for inclusion takes place. Particular consideration is given to the marketization of education and the challenges it presents to those seeking to remove exclusionary practices. The paper argues for an understanding that can contribute to change and thus advocates the urgent need for a theory of political agency.

How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education

Abstract: How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education, by David Labaree. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. 328 PP. $35.00 David Labaree adds to a very large body of literature that criticizes American schooling. In How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning he describes the relationship and contradictions between social mobility (private good), social efficiency, and democratic equality (public good). His thesis is that the pursuit of credentials (grades, degrees, etc.), as private good, has come to dominate and actually hinder students from acquiring knowledge and learning skills that would make them better citizens and better contributers to the capitalist economy. Labaree follows the earlier credential theorists, Boudon (1974) Collins (1979) and Brown (1995), adding information from his historical case study of an American high school. His arguments are clear and cogent, but for readers who anticipate new solutions to education's "crisis" there may be disappointment. In the final chapter, Labaree simply states: "Social mobility, I conclude, needs to be balanced by democratic equality and social efficiency, or else we wi ll continue to reproduce an educational system that is mired in consumerism and credentialism." The formula by which such a balance is to be achieved is not provided by Labaree. To be sure, credentialist theory has much to offer in describing the state of professionalism in American schooling today, and Labaree lays out its major themes clearly and concisely in his first chapter. In his next three chapters he focuses upon "the sorting and selecting of students within schools" by examining the historical roots, consequences, and implications of that process. This is followed by an analysis of education stratification from a market perspective. "From this perspective, the processes of selection and stratification that characterize education are the result not simply of societal needs but of individual demands, as individual consumers pursue symbolic advantages that will enhance their competitive position. The logic that governs these processes is that of the market." Labaree states that "arguments most often found in the literature [ldots] draw on either human capital theory or social reproduction theory," a practice he finds to be inadequate. But this is an unnecessary simplification of a large body of literature that has much to offer as well as to reject. Though he is rightly concerned about the slight of individual agency, Labaree's market individualism takes the other extreme, which is equally insufficient as an approach aimed at describing the "root causes" of education's woes. Consistent with liberalism, Labaree accepts the contradiction between corporate and democratic values as necessary and wants to promote both. That corporate capitalism undermines both political and educational democracy is well documented (e.g., Barrow, 1990; Callahan, 1962; Hollinger, 1996; Lustig, 1982; Ophuls, 1997; Weinstein, 1968). Rather than attempting to balance the conflicting goals by putting social needs above personal desires, a better solution is to make the two identical (Benedict, 1992). But Labaree gives no credence to the possibility of a democratic economic system that meets, as Bowles and Gintis (1992) phrase it, "the demanding criteria of fostering fundamental fairness, the dignity of the human person, and enhanced social participation" (p. 3). A major contention of Labaree is "that the central problems with education in the United States are not pedagogical or organizational or social or cultural in nature but are fundamentally political." Labaree claims a tie to Weber, but does not seem to appreciate that "class, status, and party" have to be grasped as phenomena of the distribution of power (Giddens, 1982). Thus, completely absent is any discussion of the influence of corporate power on schooling in particular and society as a whole (e. …

Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society

Abstract: Webb Keane argues that by looking at representations as concrete practices we may find them to be thoroughly entangled in the tensions and hazards of social existence. This book explores the performances and transactions that lie at the heart of public events in contemporary Anakalang, on the Indonesian island of Sumba. Weaving together sharply observed narrative, close analysis of poetic speech and valuable objects, and far-reaching theoretical discussion, Signs of Recognition explores the risks endemic in representational practices. An awareness of risk is embedded in the very forms of ritual speech and exchange. The possibilities for failure and slippage reveal people's mutual vulnerabilities and give words and things part of their power. Keane shows how the dilemmas posed by the effort to use and control language and objects are implicated with general problems of power, authority, and agency. He persuades us to look differently at ideas of voice and value. Integrating the analysis of words and things, this book contributes to a wide range of fields, including linguistic anthropology, cultural studies, social theory, and the studies of material culture, art, and political economy.

Social Structure and Managerial Agency in India

Abstract: In this paper, we argue the need to understand the relationship between mana gerial agency and social structure within a broad societal context. Managers are members of different social systems arising from both work and non-work related activities. These systems have various sets of rules and resources embedded within them which managers draw upon to create agency, which in turn can either reinforce or change social structure. Drawing upon sociological approaches to the study of human agency, we propose a framework to describe possible influences that social structure has on the shaping of managerial atti tudes in India. We then use this framework to provide the lens through which a specific Indian-government-initiated, information-technology project is ana lyzed. We see the approach that has been illustrated in this paper to have implications for management studies in three areas: the management of cross- cultural projects; management practice in India; and future research on man agement in organizations.

Sen's capability approach and Nussbaum's capabilities ethic

Abstract: The paper assesses Sen's more abstract version of capabilities theory, Nussbaum's more substantive Aristotelian version and attempts to apply such conceptions to women's lives. Sen's capability approach is a helpful intervention in the discourses of mainstream Western welfare economics and moral philosophy. To influence these, it retains some of their assumptions, and appears limited by its conceptions of the person and of agency. In both areas Nussbaum goes deeper, but her emphatically Aristotelian style is controversial and can short-circuit the debate she sought to advance. Priority areas for further work are: more adequate pictures of ‘culture’ and ‘the individual’ than she or Sen have used, to combine insights from communitarian critics with the strengths of the capabilities approach. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Illness as moral occasion: restoring agency to ill people

Abstract: While both medical sociology and clinical ethics have tended to ignore the moral dimensions of illness, some ethicists have called attention to how serious illness creates a moral imperative for th...

Sexual Dialectics, Sexual Selection, and Variation in Reproductive Behavior

Abstract: Evolutionary biologists are increasingly enamored with emerging “female perspectives” on social behavior. Yet, at this writing, to my mind, despite the pioneering work of Hrdy (e.g., 1981, 1986), we still have a way to go for full incorporation of proactive female agency in our hypotheses about social behavior. Here I outline some of the problems with our basic theories as I see them and suggest one alternative perspective that places females and their interests in the center of discussions about the evolution of social behavior. At the outset, I think it worth noting that I am not claiming that the ideas derived from the alternatives I see are cure-alls for our general theoretical and empirical failings in regard to females. I think these new perspectives are useful because the focus on females does suggest novel empirical approaches to investigations of the selective forces favoring this behavior or that. If this view has merit, more attention to variation among females will result. I see this effort as an ongoing process, and I look forward to the day when gender-neutral notions characterize our theories and empirical investigations. In this chapter I have tried to suggest gender-neutral ways to conceptualize some of the ideas that have appeared to short-shift females in the past, and some of the newer ideas that have enamored me about females and female agency.

Doing the right thing: Relief agencies, moral dilemmas, and moral responsibility in political emergencies and war

Abstract: In recent years a new generation of relief workers and relief agencies has become embroiled in the heat of civil wars and political emergencies, and the humanitarian community has had to revisit its fundamental principles and address the ethics of what it does. This paper sets out to continue this important debate by emphasising that ethical analysis should always be an essential part of humanitarian practice. The paper seeks to recognise the difficult moral choices relief agencies are facing today and gives some practical guidelines to relief agency staff when confronting the ethics of a given situation. In particular, it hopes to introduce some ethical principles into the debate about humanitarianism and contribute to the moral vocabulary which is being developed to improve relief agencies' ethical analysis. The paper starts by looking at the essential characteristics of a moral dilemma, and the way in which other types of tough choice can masquerade as moral dilemmas. It then introduces some basic moral principles surrounding the key ethical notions of action consequences and moral responsibility in an effort to show how relief agencies might begin to develop a process of ethical analysis in their work. Finally, it explores how relief agencies might develop a more intuitive form of ethical analysis based on an organisational conscience and moral role models.

The autopoiesis of administrative systems: Niklas Luhmann on public administration and public policy

Abstract: This article offers an introduction to Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems as it pertains to public administration and policy, as a first step towards both a critique and its empirical application to empirical reality. It reconstructs Luhmann’s early writings on bureaucracy and policy-making and shows how this early, more empirical work grounded his abstract theory of social systems in general and the political system in particular. The article also introduces some central concepts of Luhmann’s more recent work on the autopoietic nature of social systems and considers the latter’s consequences for bureaucratic adaptiveness and governmental steering in the welfare state. One of the main benefits of applying Luhmann’s theory to public administration, the article concludes, is that it conceptualizes the central concerns of public administration within a complex picture of society as a whole, in which both the agency that issues decisions and the realm affected by these decisions are included.

Theorizing Meaning Construction in Social Movements: Symbolic Structures and Interpretation during the Irish Land War, 1879–1882*:

Abstract: Though the process of meaning construction is widely recognized to be a crucialfactor in the mobilization, unfolding, and outcomes of social movements, the conditions and mechanisms that allow meaning construction and cultural transformation are often misconceptualized and/or underanalyzed. Following a "tool kit" perspective on culture, dominant social movement theory locates meaning only as it is embodied in concrete social practices. Meaning construction from this perspective is a matter of manipulating static symbols and meaning to achieve goals. I argue instead that meaning is located in the structure of culture, and that the condition and mechanism of meaning construction and transformation are, respectively, the metaphoric nature of symbolic systems, and individual and collective interpretation of those systems in the face of concrete events. This theory is demonstrated by analyzing, through textual anlaysis, meaning construction during the Irish Land War, 1879-1882, showing how diverse social groups constructed new and emergent symbolic meanings and how transformed collective understandings contributed to specific, yet unpredictable, political action and movement outcomes. The theoretical model and empirical case demonstrates that social movement analysis must examine the metaphoric logic of symbolic systems and the interpretive process by which people construct meaning in order to fully explain the role of culture in social movements, the agency of movement participants, and the contingency of the course and outcomes of social movements.

The Undersocialised Conception of the Embodied Agent in Modern Sociology

Abstract: Sociological reconceptualisations of the structure/agency divide have motivated important theoretical advances in the discipline, and the development of `structuration theories' and `analytical dualism' has promoted fresh thought about dominant views of the human agent. These approaches have sought to release sociology from any residual reliance on the oversocialised conception of the individual that formed part of the legacy of Parsonian sociology. It is the argument of this paper, however, that while structuration theory and analytical dualism focus on the creative powers of human reflexivity, as part of their rejection of the `oversocialised agent', the theoretical weight they place on consciousness neglects the socially shaped somatic bases of action and structure, and results in an undersocialised view of the embodied agent.If the relationship between socialisation and agency needs analysing in terms of embodiment as much as in terms of the cognitive internalisation of norms and values, however, ther...

Niche Diplomacy: A Conceptual Overview

Abstract: Amidst the major transformation of the global system after the Cold War, the study of international relations has maintained a predominantly top-down orientation. This apex-centred focus comes out most clearly in the important debates concerning the demise of the Soviet Union and the hegemonic role of the United States of America (USA).1 The same perspective is also evident in the preoccupation in the international relations literature with specific aspects of the post-Cold War settlement, namely German reunification, USA-Japanese and USA-European economic and strategic relations, as well as the questions of leadership in the evolution of regionalism in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.2 Given the marked capacity of the major powers to affect events and structure, this mode of analysis rests on a solid foundation. The rationale of this book, however, is that there is a need to stretch the parameters of scholarly attention away from the restrictive confines of this dominant approach. At the core of this argument is the salience of looking at alternative sources of agency in order to more fully capture the evolving complexity in global affairs. While not suggesting that structural leadership by great powers is no longer the most important source of initiative in the international order of the 1990s, the introduction of a wider lens is deemed crucial if the processes of reform and change — especially those requiring considerable cooperation and collaboration — in a variety of issue areas on the international agenda for the 1990s are to be fully understood. Such a role may be performed by appropriately qualified secondary powers in an appreciably different way than in the past. While readily acknowledging that the term ‘middle powers’ is problematic both in terms of conceptual clarity and operational coherence, this category of countries does appear to have some accentuated space for diplomatic manoeuvre on a segmented basis in the post-Cold War era.

Simple Mindedness: In Defense of Naive Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind

Abstract: Book synopsis: How is our conception of what there is affected by our counting ourselves as inhabitants of the natural world? How do our actions fit into a world that is altered through our agency? And how do we accommodate our understanding of one another as fellow subjects of experience—as beings with thoughts and wants and hopes and fears? These questions provide the impetus for the detailed discussions of ontology, human agency, and everyday psychological explanation presented in this book. The answers offer a distinctive view of questions about “the mind’s place in nature,” and they argue for a particular position in philosophy of mind: naive naturalism. This position opposes the whole drift of the last thirty or forty years’ philosophy of mind in the English-speaking world. Jennifer Hornsby sets naive naturalism against dualism, but without advancing the claims of “materialism,” “physicalism,” or “naturalism” as these have come to be known. She shows how we can, and why we should, abandon the view that thoughts and actions, to be seen as real, must be subject to scientific explanation.

The ethics of dialogue: bakhtin and levinas

Abstract: he reemergence of subjective agency as a crucial category in recent literary and cultural studies can be seen as a direct response to the decentering of the subject enacted by the first wave of poststructuralism. Poststructuralists of all stripes are increasingly being pressed to engage the question of ethical agency "after" the subject (see, e.g., Nancy). At the same time, however, a certain critique of the humanist or Enlightenment subject remains firmly in place. While there is a great deal of sympathy for rethinking notions of subjectivity in the current theoretical field, no one wants anything to do with the appropriating instrumental rationality of the bourgeois subject. In fact, virtually all critical camps-groups as diverse as Habermasians, feminists, postcolonial theorists, Marxists, Deleuzians, African Americanists, deconstructors, Lacanians, queer theorists, and pragmatists-remain aligned in their attempts to critique a subjectivity that inexorably goes about reducing the other to the categories of the self. Any ethical system that understands the other as simply "like the self' will be unable to respond adequately to the other's uniqueness and singularity; indeed, such a reduction amounts to a kind of subjective colonialism, where all the other's desires are reduced to the desires of the "home country," the self.

“Sing along with the Common People”: Politics, Postcolonialism, and other Figures:

Abstract: Recent interest amongst critical human geographers in postcolonial theory has been framed by a concern for the relationship between ‘politics’ and ‘theory’. This paper addresses debates in the field of colonial discourse analysis in order to explore the connections between particular conceptions of language and particular models of politics to which oppositional academics consider themselves responsible. The rhetorical representation of empowerment and disempowerment through figures of ‘speech’ and ‘silence’ respectively is critically examined in order to expose the limits of this representation of power-relations. Through a reading of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s account of the dilemmas of subaltern representation, contrasted with that of Benita Parry, and staged via an account of their different interpretations of the exemplary postcolonial fictions of J. M. Coetzee, it is argued that the deconstruction of the conventional metaphorics of speech and silence calls into view the irreducible textuality of the work of representation. This implies that questions about institutional positionality and academic authority be kept squarely in sight when discussing the problems of representing the struggles and agency of marginalised social groups. It is suggested that the continuing suspicion of literary and cultural theory amongst social scientists for being insufficiently ‘materialist’ and/or ‘political’ may serve to reproduce certain forms of institutionally sanctioned disciplinary authority.

Agency and Constitutional Ordering in Networks A Case Study of the Port Wine Industry

Abstract: This paper illustrates how the network structures in which economic exchange is embedded can be the subject of individual or collective actions aimed at altering the conditions of action and power afforded by such structures. A second strand of our study concerns the notion that interorganizational networks are systems of economic as well as social and political exchange. We regard economic exchange as existing within dense fabrics of social relations, rarely able to rid themselves of baggage such as social exchange, kinship and friendship networks, altruism, and gift giving (Easton and Araujo, 1994). Similarly, the boundaries between economic and political exchange are seldom clear-cut. In economic exchange, actors trade resources and property rights, taking for granted the conditions and rules that structure their exchanges. In political exchange, actors trade a variety of resources with the aim of manipulating to their advantage the rules that

The Circular Structure of Power: Politics, Identity, Community

Abstract: Few concepts in social theory have been used so extravagantly in recent years as the notion of power. Yet, despite its inflated presence, the term is still unclear and under-theorized. This study rises to the challenge of conceptualizing power through a philosophical examination of its uses in contemporary social theory. Drawing on the insights of Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the book brings this Continental tradition into a creative dialogue with the Anglo-American tradition represented by figures, such as Steven Lukes, William Connolly, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz. Moreover, Dyrberg moves from such abstract considerations to their implications for political and democratic theory through an examination of the work of thinkers as diverse as Robert Dahl, John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas and Nicos Poulantzas. Simultaneously engaging with and defying many of the dominant definitions of power, the book de-stabilizes and undermines the conventional distinctions and polarities through which power is usually understood. The new perspective offered to readers by this investigation is one which goes beyond the assumption that power can be based on and derived from either agency or structure, as if these categories themselves were not somehow constituted by power.

The Ghost in the Machine: Agency in "Poststructural" Critiques of Development

Abstract: Anthropologists inspired by the works of Michel Foucault have described development as a discourse imposed on the Third World by powerful western institutions. In defining the power of such agencies (especially the World Bank) these authors focus not on the practices of actors or sets of actors, but rather on the ability of such institutions to shape perceptions of Third World peoples and to limit ways of thinking about the world and imagining change. While the focus on language is helpful to understanding how development agendas are "deployed" throughout the world, many critics overlook the important role of local elite groups as well as the agency of development's "target populations." The uses of, and popular responses to, "sustainable development" and other development strategies in Bogota, Colombia, show that the development discourse is neither so monolithic nor so hegemonic as some critics suggest. Because of sustainable development's vague mandate and imprecise terminology, it has been easily manipulated and rewritten at the local level. [development, environment, agency, poststructuralism, Latin America] Recent works in anthropology and other social sciences have advanced the important task of unraveling development practice and malpractice from Bretton Woods to present-day interventions including "Women In Development," "Sustainable Development," and "Participatory Planning."1 These critics describe development as a powerful discourse, or as a "regime of representation," which imposes itself on Third World peoples. This discourse facilitates not only the governance and control of the "Third World" by "the West," but also imposes a hegemonic view of reality which defines non-western peoples as underdeveloped. The consequence of this discourse for those who are its target, critics say, is the perpetuation and expansion of global inequalities, and the "disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems" (Escobar 1995a 13). In other words, development, as both an idea and a set of practices, has become so pervasive and so powerful, that it is increasingly difficult to imagine alternatives that are outside of the development framework. Such critiques have shown the ways in which the development community shapes perceptions of Third World peoples while systematically failing to meet most of its own stated objectives. Yet these critiques lack, to varying degrees, a meaningful sense of agency or process. We still know very little about who the practitioners of development are, and how policies are shaped by struggles and conflicts within and between institutions. For some, resistance on the part of development's subjects is a way out of the development "nightmare." Yet, in-depth discussions of how target groups have resisted and reshaped development programs to date are lacking in such critiques. In fact, arguments of poststructural or postmodern critics of development share many of the weaknesses of those of their Marxist predecessors, in that they tend to portray "subject peoples" as incapable (or nearly so) of autonomous intellectual thought (reminiscent of the "false consciousness" concerns of some Marxists), and especially in that they tend to ignore the important role of local and national elite groups in importing and redefining "western" development strategies? A look at the uses of sustainable development and ecology claims in Bogota suggests that local actors (planners, environmentalists, politicians, neighborhood residents, activists) are conscious participants in the development encounter. While the poststructuralist critique of the teleological Marxist analyses of development in the 1970s is a useful step in recognizing the unintended consequences of development, I do not agree with the view of development as a "subject-less" process. This decentered approach to development (most notable in the works of Ferguson 1990 and Escobar 1995a, discussed below) is based on the assertion that events unfold not by the will of knowing subjects, but rather "behind the backs of or against the wills of even the most powerful actors" (Ferguson 1990: 18). …

The biology and psychology of moral agency

Abstract: Part I. Moral Agency and Scientific Naturalism: 1. Understanding moral agency: what is a scientific naturalist view of moral agency? Part II. The Biological Bases of Moral Agency: 2. Evolution and moral agency: can evolution endow us with moral capacities? 3. Evolution and moral agency: Does Evolution endow us with moral capacities? 4. Developmental biology and psychology and moral agency: how do our biologically-based moral capacities develop? Part III. The Psychological Bases of moral Agency: 5. Behavioral psychology and moral agency: how do we learn to behave morally? 6. Social cognitive psychology and moral agency: how do we learn to act morally? 7. The neurophysiological bases of moral capacities: do the neurosciences have room for moral agents? Part IV. A Scientific Naturalist Account of Moral Agency: 8. The adequacy of moral beliefs, motivations and actions: how can biological and psychological explanations serve as justifications? 9. Moral ontology: what is the ontological status of moral values? Part V. Integrating a Personalistic and Naturalistic View of Agency: 10. The manifest and scientific images of morality: how can we integrate our ordinary and scientifically based views of moral agency?

The Social Construction of Non-Human Agency: The Case of Mental Disorder

Abstract: In diverse ways, constructionist studies demonstrate the profound relevance of social processes to the emergence and assessment of mental disorders in various organizational settings. However, there remains a curious silence in the constructionist literature regarding how mental disorders, once assembled as meaningful objects of discourse and practice, might come to exercise their own causal influences upon members' experiences and activities. In this paper, I draw upon the notion of social problems work to provide for the practical dynamics whereby members, in effect, animate the categorical objects that they presume to populate their worlds. More than enacting identifiable objects of social problems discourse, social problems work at times actually realizes these objects as causally influential non-human agents, such that one may find members interacting with these objects much as they do with one another in the ongoing production of local affairs. While the analysis presented in this paper concerns the social construction of mental disorders as causally influential non-human agents, it is intended as a case study of the more general phenomenon.

He made a way out of no way: religious experience in an african-american congregation*

Abstract: Sociologists have expended little effort to examine the experiential dimension of religion. When social scientists have turned their attention to religious experience, they have used a definition of the concept which has overly restricted its scope. This paper is based upon an ethnographic study of an African Methodist Episcopal congregation made up primarily of the working poor and near-poor. I use the data to study the reported experiences of congregational members concerning the action of spiritual beings in their everyday lives, and I discuss the role of social ties and the cultural devices of metaphor and narrative in shaping these experiences. Finally, I demonstrate the influence of social location - primarily race and class - on attributions to supernatural agency. Religion is more than a set of beliefs and rules of behavior. It is more than an institution and a moral community. It is a way of experiencing the world. Those who believe in the reality of the spiritual realm experience life differently than those who do not. While for the secular person life is experienced within the single dimension of human existence, for the religious, ". . . life is lived on a twofold plane; it takes its course as human existence and, at the same time, shares in a transhuman life, that of the cosmos or the gods" (Eliade, 1959:167). Because of this additional dimension, religion makes available a set of "others" with extraordinary powers (God or gods, Satan, demons, ancestors, animist spirits, etc.) with whom significant interaction is possible. For this reason, Ninian Smart once suggested that "... in principal one should treat the gods and spirits who inhabit the phenomenological environment of a given cultural group as part of the [social] system" (Smart, 1977:52). However, there is another, often overlooked, way in which religious beliefs can generate alternate realities: they not only add a sometimes extensive cast of spiritual characters to the drama of social life, but they often imbue these beings with the capacity (and the inclination) to intervene in the ongoing affairs of the social and physical world. Thus, religion makes it possible for believers not only to "interact" with spiritual beings, but also to interpret everyday events - whether unusual, bizarre, or exceedingly mundane - as the result of their direct intervention. While some might attribute being laid off or breaking the good china simply to "bad luck" or to the operation of impersonal social or natural forces, to the

A Small Company of Actors A Critique of Style

Abstract: The concept of style has been central to material culture studies for the past 50 years. During this time, the main problem of style has been one of defi nition. Whether cultural evolutionist, proc...