Showing papers on "Agency (philosophy) published in 2005"

Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

Abstract: Introduction: How to Resume the Task of Tracing Associations PART I: HOW TO DEPLOY CONTROVERSIES ABOUT THE SOCIAL WORLD 1 Learning to Feed from Controversies 2 First Source of Uncertainty: No Group, Only Group Formation 3 Second Source of Uncertainty: Action is Overtaken 4 Third Source of Uncertainty: Objects Too Have Agency 5 Fourth Source of Uncertainty: Matters of Fact vs Matters of Concern 6 Fifth Source of Uncertainty: Writing Down Risky Accounts 7 On the Difficulty of Being an ANT - An Interlude in Form of a Dialog PART II: HOW TO RENDER ASSOCIATIONS TRACEABLE AGAIN 8 Why is it So Difficult to Trace the Social? 9 How to Keep the Social Flat 10 First Move: Localizing the Global 11 Second Move: Redistributing the Local 12 Third Move: Connecting Sites 13 Conclusion: From Society to Collective - Can the Social be Reassembled?

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Abstract: WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

Reframing Public Participation: Strategies for the 21st Century

Abstract: This article makes the case that legally required participation methods in the US not only do not meet most basic goals for public participation, but they are also counterproductive, causing anger and mistrust. Both theory and practice are dominated by ambivalence about the idea of participation itself. Both struggle with dilemmas that make the problems seem insoluble, such as the conflict between the individual and collective interest or between the ideal of democracy and the reality that many voices are never heard. Cases are used to draw on an emerging set of practices of collaborative public engagement from around the world to demonstrate how alternative methods can better meet public participation goals and how they make moot most of the dilemmas of more conventional practice. Research shows that collaborative participation can solve complex, contentious problems such as budget decision making and create an improved climate for future action when bitter disputes divide a community. Authentic dialogue, networks and institutional capacity are the key elements. The authors propose that participation should be understood as a multi-way set of interactions among citizens and other players who together produce outcomes. Next steps involve developing an alternative practice framework, creating forums and arenas, adapting agency decision processes, and providing training and financial support.

Enacting Integrated Information Technology: A Human Agency Perspective

Abstract: Recent perspectives on organizational change have emphasized human agency, more than technology or structure, to explain empirical outcomes resulting from the use of information technologies in organizations. Yet, newer technologies such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems continue to be associated with the agenda of organizational transformation, largely because they are assumed to constrain human action. We report an interpretive case study of an ERP system after its implementation in a large government agency. Despite the transformation agenda accompanying the new system, users initially chose to avoid using it as much as possible (inertia) and later to work around system constraints in unintended ways (reinvention). We explain the change in enactments with the concept of improvised learning, which was motivated by social influence from project leaders, "power users," and peers. Our results are consistent with arguments regarding the enactment of information technology in organizations and with temporal views of human agency. We conclude that an integrated technology like ERP, which potentially represents a "hard" constraint on human agency, can be resisted and reinvented in use.

Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies

Abstract: Assisted reproductive technology (ART) makes babies and parents at once. Drawing on science and technology studies, feminist theory, and historical and ethnographic analyses of ART clinics, Charis Thompson explores the intertwining of biological reproduction with the personal, political, and technological meanings of reproduction. She analyzes the "ontological choreography" at ART clinics -- the dynamics by which technical, scientific, kinship, gender, emotional, legal, political, financial, and other matters are coordinated -- using ethnographic data to address questions usually treated in the abstract. Reproductive technologies, says Thompson, are part of the increasing tendency to turn social problems into biomedical questions and can be used as a lens through which to see the resulting changes in the relations between science and society. After giving an account of the book's disciplinary roots in science and technology studies and in feminist scholarship on reproduction, Thompson comes to the ethnographic heart of her study. She develops her concept of ontological choreography by examining ART's normalization of "miraculous" technology (including the etiquette of technological sex); gender identity in the assigned roles of mother and father and the conservative nature of gender relations in the clinic; the naturalization of technologically assisted kinship and procreative intent; and patients' pursuit of agency through objectification and technology. Finally, Thompson explores the economies of reproductive technologies, concluding with a speculative and polemical look at the "biomedical mode of reproduction" as a predictor of future relations between science and society.

The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context

Abstract: The prime claim of the theory of securitization is that the articulation of security produces a specific threatening state of affairs. Within this theory, power is derived from the use of ‘appropri...

Subjective Quantitative Studies of Human Agency

Abstract: Amartya Sen’s writings have articulated the importance of human agency, and identified the need for information on agency freedom to inform our evaluation of social arrangements. Many approaches to poverty reduction stress the need for empowerment. This paper reviews subjective quantitative measures of human agency at the individual level. It introduces large-scale cross-cultural psychological studies of self-direction, of autonomy, of self-efficacy, and of self-determination. Such studies and approaches have largely developed along an independent academic path from economic development and poverty reduction literature, yet may be quite significant in crafting appropriate indicators of individual empowerment or human agency. The purpose of this paper is to note avenues of collaborative enquiry that might be fruitful to develop.

The Rise of an Ideal: Tracing Changing Discourses of Wellbeing

Abstract: Wellbeing is a quality in demand in today's society. Wellbeing is virtue that is much desired, much promoted, and much debated. Yet, as an ideal, wellbeing is not a concept set in stone. Rather, conceptualisations and experiences of wellbeing are produced in and through wider social perceptions and practices. This article outlines and analyses contemporary conceptualisations of wellbeing and suggests that ideas of wellbeing capture and reproduce important social norms. Indeed, the increasing popularity of the ideal of wellbeing appears to reflect shifts in perceptions and experiences of individual agency and responsibility. In particular, dominant discourses of wellbeing relate to changes in subjectivity; they manifest a move from subjects as citizens to subjects as consumers. In a consumer society, wellbeing emerges as a normative obligation chosen and sought after by individual agents. This article is informed by social theories of subjectivity and critical analyses of selected newspaper reports from 1985 to 2003.

Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology

Abstract: Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Social Theory, Modernity and the Three Waves of Historical Sociology / Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff 1 Part I: Historical Sociology and Epistemological Underpinnings The Action Turn? Comparative-Historical Inquiry beyond the Classical Models of Conduct / Richard Biernacki 75 Overlapping Territories and Intertwined Histories: Historical Sociology's Global Imagination / Zine Magubene 92 The Epistemological Unconscious of U.S. Sociology and the Transition to Post-Fordism: The Case of Historical Sociology / George Steinmetz 109 Part II: State Formation and Historical Sociology The Return of the Repressed: Religion and the Political Unconscious of Historical Sociology / Philip S. Gorski 161 Social Provision and Regulation: Theories of States, Social Policies, and Modernity / Ann Shola Orloff 190 The Bureaucratization of States: Toward an Analytical Weberianism / Edgar Kiser and Justin Baer 225 Part III: History and Political Contention Mars Revealed: The Entry of Ordinary People into War among the States / Meyer Kestnbaum 249 Historical Sociology and Collective Action / Roger V. Gould 286 Revolutions as Pathways to Modernity / Nader Sohrabi 300 Part IV: Capitalism, Modernity, and the Economic Realm Historical Sociology and the Economy: Actors, Networks, and Context / Bruce G. Carruthers 333 The Great Debates: Transitions to Capitalisms / Rebecca Jean Emigh 355 The Professions: Prodigal Daughters of Modernity / Ming-Cheng M. Lo 381 Part V: Politics, History, and Collective Identities Nations / Lyn Spillman and Russell Faeges 409 Citizenship Troubles: Genealogies of Struggle for the Soul of the Social / Margaret R. Somers 438 Ethnicity without Groups / Rogers Brubake 470 Afterword: Logics of History? Agency, Multiplicity, and Incoherence in the Explanation of Change / Elisabeth S. Clemens 493 References 517 Contributors 599 Index 603

Institutional Transformation and Planning: From Institutionalization Theory to Institutional Design:

Abstract: For planners, institutional transformation is important in two ways. From the positive aspect they need to know their institutional environment: institutionalization theory can help. Three 'schools' of institutionalization theory are presented: 'Historical', 'Rational Choice' and 'Sociological Institutionalism'. The normative aspect of institutional transformation is institutional design: planning often demands this. Institutional design is defined and described: what is it, where is it done, and who does it. The article identifies the institutional-agent interactions that are the media and tools of institutional design, and reviews some of the knowledge base for institutional design practice under the headings of governance, coordination, and agency.

Organization, Surveillance and the Body: Towards a Politics of Resistance:

Abstract: This paper examines the problematic of embodied resistance to biometric surveillance practices. After establishing that surveillance is becoming more widespread, the paper draws on the multidisciplinary areas of organization theory, surveillance theory, and body and feminist sociology. It is argued that current theoretical resources available to organization theorists are inadequate for analysing resistance to these technologies. After an investigation of recent developments in the sociology of the body and in surveillance theory, resistance is conceptualized at the interface of bodies and technologies, and is antagonistic towards categorizations and fixities produced by biometrics. A number of resistance strategies are distilled, using feminist and post-structuralist sociology. Although it is acknowledged that the paper’s arguments do not address questions of agency and an ethics of the self, resistance arguments that challenge the totalizing impulse of surveillance practice are welcome in the face of government and private sector rhetoric about its desirability.

Self and narrative in schizophrenia: time to author a new story

Abstract: The prevailing, clinical view of schizophrenia, as reflected in the psychiatric literature, suggests both that people with schizophrenia have lost their sense of self and that they have a diminished capacity to create coherent narratives about their own lives. Drawing on our empirical research in the growing area of recovery, we describe not only the disruptions and discontinuities introduced by the illness and its social and personal consequences, but also the person’s efforts to overcome these, to reconstruct a sense of self, to regain agency and to create a coherent life narrative. We suggest in closing that, rather than simply being a byproduct of recovery, these processes of re-authoring one’s life story are actually integral components of the recovery process itself.

The International Atomic Energy Agency

Abstract: Plant roots perform a myriad of functions right from the anchorage of plants to storage of reserve food material for the adverse weather. Roots forage around the soil for acquisition of ions and water and continually develop new branches. However, very little is known about the molecular mechanisms regulating root development and differentiation. We have endeavoured to decipher the genetic regulation of root formation in tomato by screening mutants defective in root development. We have isolated several mutants with altered morphology of roots. These mutants have been characterized for their phenotypes throughout the life cycle. In this report we show that for few of the mutants the vigour of plant is directly related to modification in the root structure. The potential utility of these mutants in understanding root development and also improving yield of tomato is discussed.

The Sociology of Groups and the Economics of Incentives: Theory and Evidence on Compensation Systems

Abstract: When working together, people engage in non-contractual and informal interactions that constitute the sociology of the group. We use behavioral models and a unique survey of medical groups to analyze how group sociology influences physician incentive pay and behavior. We conclude that informal interactions among group members influence pay practices and behaviors, but the relationship is complex. No single aspect of group sociology is entirely consistent with all the patterns in the data. Factors emphasized in the economic theory of agency, notably risk aversion, also shape pay policies but these factors cannot account for all the observed empirical relationships.

Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions

Abstract: Taking Power analyzes the causes behind some three dozen revolutions in the Third World between 1910 and the present. It advances a theory that seeks to integrate the political, economic, and cultural factors that brought these revolutions about, and links structural theorizing with original ideas on culture and agency. It attempts to explain why so few revolutions have succeeded, while so many have failed. The book is divided into chapters that treat particular sets of revolutions including the great social revolutions of Mexico 1910, China 1949, Cuba 1959, Iran 1979, and Nicaragua 1979, the anticolonial revolutions in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe from the 1940s to the 1970s, and the failed revolutionary attempts in El Salvador, Peru, and elsewhere. It closes with speculation about the future of revolutions in an age of globalization, with special attention to Chiapas, the post-September 11 world, and the global justice movement.

Discourse, Discourse Everywhere: Subject “Agency” in Feminist Discourse Methodology

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to provoke much‐needed discussion on the uses by feminists, in particular feminist political scientists, of the language of discourse, discourses and discursive. The terms, it argues, have become ubiquitous, with considerable confusion about intended meanings. A particular concern is the growing tendency among some feminist political scientists to use “discourse” as shorthand for ways of talking about an issue. Critical to sorting through different meanings of discourse, it argues, is the question of subject “agency”—the extent to which subjects can use discourses or are constituted by them. As a way forward the article advances a dual‐focus agenda that builds bridges across discourse traditions; identifying both the ways in which interpretive and conceptual schemas delimit understandings, and the politics involved in the intentional deployment of concepts and categories to achieve specific political goals.

Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and the Making of a Global Apartheid

Abstract: This essay critically examines the historical and contemporary discursive practices of anti-trafficking campaigns. I argue that such campaigns within the global North, often led by feminists, constitute the moral reform arm of contemporary anti-immigrant politics that targets negatively racialized migrants. As in the past, current campaigns collude with a state-backed international security agenda aimed at criminalizing self-determined migrations of people who have ever-less access to legal channels of migration. I argue that only by recognizing the agency, however constrained, of illegalized migrants can we come to understand how processes of capitalist globalization and the consequent effects of dislocation and dispersal shape the mobility of illegalized migrants. Within the current global circuits of capital, goods, and people, I argue that along with a call to end practices of displacement, a demand to eliminate immigration controls is necessary if feminists are to act in solidarity with the dispossessed in their search for new livelihoods and homes.

Personal autonomy : new essays on personal autonomy and its role in contemporary moral philosophy

Abstract: Introduction James Stacey Taylor Part I. Theoretical Approaches to Personal Autonomy: 1. Planning agency, autonomous agency Michael Bratman 2. Autonomy without free will Bernard Berofsky 3. Autonomy and the paradox of self-creation Robert Noggle 4. Agnostic autonomism Alfred Mele 5. Feminist intuitions and the normative substance of autonomy Paul Benson 6. Autonomy and personal integration Laura Waddell Ekstrom 7. Responsibility, applied ethics, and complex autonomy theories Normy Arpaly Part II. Autonomy, Freedom and Moral Responsibility: 8. Autonomy and free agency Marina A. L. Oshana 9. The relationship between autonomous and morally responsible agency Michael McKenna 10. Alternative possibilities and personal autonomy Ishtiyaque Haji 11. Freedom within reason Susan Wolf Part III. The Expanding Role of Personal Autonomy: 12. Procedural autonomy and liberal legitimacy John Christman 13. The concept of autonomy in bioethics: an unwarranted fall from grace Thomas May 14. Who deserves autonomy and whose autonomy deserves respect? Tom L. Beauchamp 15. Autonomy, diminished life, and the threshold for use R. G. Frey.

Socio-Theoretic Accounts of IS: The Problem of Agency

Abstract: A long-standing debate in the IS literature concerns the relationship between technology and organization. Does technology cause effects in organizations, or is it humans that determine how technology is used? Many socio-theoretic accounts of a middle way between the extremes of technolog- ical and social determinism have been suggested: in recent years the more convincing explanations have been based on Giddens' structuration theory and, more recently, on actor network theory. The two theories, however, may be seen to adopt rather different, and potentially incompatible, views of agency. Thus, structuration theory sees agency as a uniquely human prop- erty, whereas the principle of general symmetry in actor network theory implies that machines may also be actors. This rather fundamental disagree- ment may be characterized as the problem of agency. At the empirical level the problem of agency can be studied through ERP systems. These systems, though built and implemented by people, are thought to be wide-ranging in

Who is driving development? Reflections on the transformative potential of asset-based community development?

Abstract: Arising out of a critique of needs-based approaches to development, asset-based community development (ABCD) offers a set of principles and practices to mobilize and sustain community economic development. This paper draws attention to the connections between these principles and practices and current interest in sustainable livelihoods as a conceptual framework, the concept of social capital the social psychology of mobilization, the enhancement of capacity and agency to engage as citizens with the entitlements of citizenship, the role of multiple stakeholders, and the issue of control over the development process. Finally, the paper points to the challenges for NGOs employing an asset-based, community-driven approach given the needs-based, problem-solving paradigm in which they operate.

Schumpeter's Legacy? Interaction and Emotion in the Sociology of Entrepreneurship

Abstract: This article revisits the work of Joseph Schumpeter using a sociological view to explore his early writings and focus on the apparent contradiction between his view of the inhibitory effects of social control (structure) and the entrepreneur's strength of will (agency). This tension is resolved by recourse to the contemporary social theory of Randall Collins' interaction ritual theory and emotional energy, which provides a way to extend and deepen Schumpeter's ideas. The core of interaction theory is the concept of emotional energy. Also provided is a micro-translation of Schumpeter's key entrepreneurial concepts of routine, innovation, social sanctioning, and motivation. Interaction ritual theory serves to extend Schumpeter's theory, especially of its routine and innovation dimensions. By way of synthesis, two hypothetical modes of entrepreneurial action are proposed. Each examines ways interaction ritual chains build to produce high levels of emotional energy and direct it to innovative business venturing. One mode is colored by pride, the other by shame. The combination of interaction ritual and emotion in these two modes helps explain how entrepreneurs can draw others into a new sector and create the momentum for new combinations to occur within social practice. In conclusion, it is suggested that viewing entrepreneurship as a form of social action rather than systemic function encourages one to look for new and emerging forms of entrepreneurship.(TNM)

ON BECOMING DISABLED AND ARTICULATING ALTERNATIVES: The multiple modes of ordering disability and their interferences

Abstract: The topic of this article is the ordering of disability. The question is how people become, and are made, disabled. This is linked with a further question about how to investigate and represent differences such as those between ability and disability. How can studies that aim to contribute to opening up and remaking the conditions of possibility for disability avoid reproducing the same differences and distributions of power and agency? Indeed, disability studies have contributed to denaturalizing ability as well as disability. Many of these studies owe much to genealogical approaches focusing on the descent, regulation, and generative power of discourse. But then the problematic inference is drawn that this discourse imposes itself to order how people perceive and think, materializes in bodies and practices, and does so in a coherent manner. The objective in this article is to pursue a different approach that investigates ordering in practice, brings out the existing alternatives and explores the possibi...

Masculinities, Performativity, and Subversion: A Sociological Reappraisal

Abstract: The study of masculinities has not escaped the influence of Judith Butler’s writings on gender, performativity, and subversion. However, this article suggests that Butler’s formulations of performativity and subversion express a lack of clarity and engender a number of problems with respect to agency, action, interaction, and social change. This article argues for reformulating performativity and subversion in a more explicitly sociological frame to render the concepts more useful for examining agency and subjectivity in the study of masculinities. The writings of Erving Goffman suggest ways to reclaim the socially constructed agency of “performance” from the mire of “performativity,” with the latter’s apparent disappearance of subjective action. This article suggests reworking subversion away from parody and resignification toward a consideration of resources for subjectivity and challenges to prevailing social structures. In this way, performativity and subversion may be set more convincingly within a s...

Collective memory, group minds, and the extended mind thesis

Abstract: While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory “goes beyond the individual” but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency.

Rethinking Agency: A Phenomenological Approach to Embodiment and Agentic Capacities

Abstract: Agency has been central to modern conceptions of politics but it is a complicated and contested idea that seems to have fallen into both theoretical and historical crisis. I explore the underlying ideas that have grounded it, as well as some recent historical and theoretical challenges. I respond by advocating an ontological agnosticism regarding who or what exercises agency and suggest a spectrum of agentic capacities instead. Commending a phenomenological approach, I then suggest that agentic capacities emerge and interact across this spectrum. At one pole I envisage pre- personal, corporeal processes and at the other, a transpersonal, intersubjective interworld that requires a novel social ontology. I locate individual or collective agents in the middle of the spectrum where they emerge as contingent singularities. My aim here is to retain agency as a necessary ingredient of politics while eliminating the Cartesian presuppositions that have, for example, rendered the agency-structure debate irresolvable and supported a subjectivist account of agents that is no longer tenable. I show how all three dimensions of the spectrum have political significance and discuss examples to illustrate this.

Mediating Zones of Uncertainty: Interpreter Agency, the Interpreting Habitus and Political Asylum Adjudication

Abstract: This paper builds on previous work by the author (Inghilleri 2003) which explored the status of norms in relation to the notion of an 'interpreting habitus' and the contexts and cultures of interpreter training and practice. It attempts to further elaborate one aspect of the conceptual framework used in this previous work, namely the notion of an interpreting habitus, considering it in relation to translation and interpreting theory more generally. The paper argues for a view of interpreted events within the asylum system as crucial sites for the convergence of competing fields and their accompanying habitus. It suggests that, given the present constitution of the public service interpreting profession as a 'zone of uncertainty', a term Bourdieu uses to refer to weak positions located in the gaps between fields within social space, the status of interpreters' knowledge within interpreted events remains vulnerable to exercises of power outside of their control. Under these conditions, the 'interpreting habitus' – the 'product' of the convergence of fields, habitus and capital – remains oriented toward the maintenance of control of the social/interactive space by the dominant legal and political institutions involved in the political asylum process. The paper is based on a current ethnographic investigation of interpreting activity in the political asylum application process in the United Kingdom.

Agency in a Postmold? Physicality and the Archaeology of Culture-Making

Abstract: Architecture embodies human agency in all of its dimensions and effective scales. Specifically, the wooden posts of Mississippian peoples in the American mid-continent were simultaneously spatial, material, and corporeal dimensions of the process of cultural construction and contestation. Our reconsideration of the lowly postmold is based on the principle of physicality that, in turn, alters the ways in which we pose research questions and interpret archaeological data. A historical-processual methodology involves three procedural fundamentals: identifying practical variability, comparing genealogies of practices, and tacking between lines of evidence at multiple scales of analysis.

"O Lord… You Perceive my Thoughts from Afar": Recursiveness and the Evolution of Supernatural Agency

Abstract: Across religious belief systems, some supernatural agents are nearly always granted privileged epistemic access into the self's thoughts. In addition, the ethnographic literature supports the claim that, across cultures, supernatural agents are envisioned as (1) incapable of being deceived through overt behaviors; (2) preoccupied with behavior in the moral domain; (3) punitive agents who cause general misfortune to those who transgress and; (4) committed to an implicit social contract with believers that is dependent on the rules of reciprocal altruism. The present article examines the possibility that these factors comprise a developmentally based, adaptive information-processing system that increased the net genetic fitness of ancestral human beings living within complex social groups. In particular, the authors argue that fear of supernatural punishment, whether in this life or in the hereafter, encouraged the inhibition of selfish actions that were associated with "real" punishment (and thus real selective impairments) by actual group members.

Panic and perjury: A psychosocial exploration of agency

Abstract: The primary aim of this chapter is to explore the predicament of one man, Vince, in difficult circumstances, in order to produce a psychosocial analysis that could contribute to the understanding of agency. In the process we note the role of what we prefer to call affect, rather than emotion, in most contexts. If emotions are, as Blackman and Cromby (2007, p. 6) suggest, ‘those patterned brain/body responses that are culturally recognizable and provide some unity, stability and coherence to the felt dimensions of our relational encounters’, it is perhaps unsurprising that, because we are focusing on unconscious dynamics in this chapter, the term affect proves more relevant to our analysis than the emotions of anger and shame that are, arguably, the core suppressed emotions in the account. Vince himself never talked in terms of specific emotions, but rather, in line with Black- man and Cromby’s definition that ‘feelings register intensive experiences as subjective experience’ (ibid.), of how he was experiencing his painful world. In highlighting his embodied ‘sickness’, and the accompanying anxiety, we focus on the affective dimension. In this usage, anxiety is an affective state.