Showing papers on "Agency (philosophy) published in 2009"

Women Directors on Corporate Boards: A Review and Research Agenda

Abstract: Manuscript Type: Conceptual (Review) Research Question/Issue: This review examines how gender diversity on corporate boards influences corporate governance outcomes that in turn impact performance. We describe extant research on theoretical perspectives, characteristics and impact of women directors on corporate boards (WOCB) at micro, meso and macro levels: individual, board, firm and industry/environment. Research Finding/Insights: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review of WOCBs, incorporating and integrating research from over 400 publications in psychology, sociology, leadership, gender, finance, management, law, corporate governance and entrepreneurship domains. In addition, we organized our findings to provide a new lens enabling the field to be readily examined by level and by theoretical perspective. The review indicates that WOCB research is about improving corporate governance through better use of the whole talent pool’s capital, as well as about building more inclusive and fairer business institutions that better reflect their present generation stakeholders. Theoretical/Academic Implications: With only one in ten papers addressing theoretical development, the predominant perspectives are human and social capital theories and gender schema at individual level; social identity, token and social networks theories at board level; resource dependency, institution and agency theories at firm level, and institutional, critical and political theories at environmental level. We provide a short synopsis of findings at each level, and conclude with an outline of fruitful directions for future research. Practitioner/Policy Implications: There are increasing pressures for WOCBs, from diverse stakeholders such as the European Commission, national governments, politicians, employer lobby groups, shareholders, Fortune and FTSE rankings, best places for women to work lists as well as expectations from highly qualified women who are likely to leave if they see no women board members. Rationales generally draw on the business case, however the moral justice case is also used by those who seek a fairer gender balance in all aspects of society. From our review, the ‘Impact’ section charts the effect of WOCB at all four levels of analysis.

Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory

Abstract: People are inescapably shaped by the culture in which they live, while culture itself is made and remade by people. Human beings in their daily lives feel a genuine freedom of thought and belief, yet this is unavoidably constrained by cultural limitations--such as those imposed by the language spoken, the knowledge developed and the information available at any time. In this book, Margaret Archer provides an analysis of the nature and stringency of cultural constraints, and the conditions and degrees of cultural freedom, and offers a radical new explanation of the tension between them. She suggests that the "problem of culture and agency" directly parallels the "problem of structure and agency," and that both problems can be solved by using the same analytical framework. She therefore paves the way toward the theoretical unification of the structural and cultural fields.

Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East

Abstract: Prior to 2011, popular imagination perceived the Muslim Middle East as unchanging and unchangeable, frozen in its own traditions and history. In Life as Politics, Asef Bayat argues that such presumptions fail to recognise the routine, yet important, ways in which ordinary people make meaningful change through everyday actions. First published just months before the Arab Spring swept across the region, this timely and prophetic book sheds light on the ongoing acts of protest, practice, and direct daily action. The second edition includes three new chapters on the Arab Spring and Iran's Green Movement and is fully updated to reflect recent events. At heart, the book remains a study of agency in times of constraint. In addition to ongoing protests, millions of people across the Middle East are effecting transformation through the discovery and creation of new social spaces within which to make their claims heard. This eye-opening book makes an important contribution to global debates over the meaning of social movements and the dynamics of social change.

Mapping new theoretical and methodological terrain for knowledge translation: contributions from critical realism and the arts

Abstract: Clinical practice guidelines have been a popular tool for the improvement of health care through the implementation of evidence from systematic research. Yet, it is increasingly clear that knowledge alone is insufficient to change practice. The social, cultural, and material contexts within which practice occurs may invite or reject innovation, complement or inhibit the activities required for success, and sustain or alter adherence to entrenched practices. However, knowledge translation (KT) models are limited in providing insight about how and why contextual contingencies interact, the causal mechanisms linking structural aspects of context and individual agency, and how these mechanisms influence KT. Another limitation of KT models is the neglect of methods to engage potential adopters of the innovation in critical reflection about aspects of context that influence practice, the relevance and meaning of innovation in the context of practice, and the identification of strategies for bringing about meaningful change. This paper presents a KT model, the Critical Realism and the Arts Research Utilization Model (CRARUM), that combines critical realism and arts-based methodologies. Critical realism facilitates understanding of clinical settings by providing insight into the interrelationship between its structures and potentials, and individual action. The arts nurture empathy, and can foster reflection on the ways in which contextual factors influence and shape clinical practice, and how they may facilitate or impede change. The combination of critical realism and the arts within the CRARUM model promotes the successful embedding of interventions, and greater impact and sustainability. CRARUM has the potential to strengthen the science of implementation research by addressing the complexities of practice settings, and engaging potential adopters to critically reflect on existing and proposed practices and strategies for sustaining change.

Introduction: Theorizing and Studying Institutional Work

Abstract: The 'institutional' approach to organizational research has shown how enduring features of social life - such as marriage and bureaucracy - act as mechanisms of social control. Such approaches have traditionally focused attention on the relationships between organizations and the fields in which they operate, providing strong accounts of the processes through which institutions govern action. In contrast, the study of institutional work reorients these traditional concerns, shifting the focus to understanding how action affects institutions. This book sets a research agenda within the field of institutional work by analyzing the ways in which individuals, groups, and organizations work to create, maintain, and disrupt the institutions that structure their lives. Through a series of essays and case studies, it explores the conceptual core of institutional work, identifies institutional work strategies, provides exemplars for future empirical research, and embeds the concept within broader sociological debates and ideas.

Globalized Fear? : Towards an Emotional Geopolitics

Abstract: This paper questions the recent recasting of fear within critical geopolitics. It identifies a widespread metanarrative, `globalized fear', analysis of which lacks grounding and is remote, disembodied and curiously unemotional. A hierarchical scaling of emotions, politics and place overlooks agency, resistance and action. Drawing on feminist scholarship, I call for an emotional geopolitics of fear which connects political processes and everyday emotional topographies in a less hierarchical, more enabling relationship. I employ conscientization as a tool to inform the reconceptualization of global fears within critical geopolitics, and to move forward epistemological practice and our relationship as scholars with social change.

The Individualization of Chinese Society

Abstract: Chinese society has seen phenomenal change in the last 30 years. Two of the most profound changes have been the rise of the individual in both public and private spheres and the consequent individualization of Chinese society itself. Yet, despite China's recent dramatic entrance into global politics and economics, neither of these significant shifts has been fully analysed. China may indeed present an alternative model of social transformation in the age of globalisation - so its path to development may have particular implications for the developing world.The Individualization of Chinese Society reveals how individual agency has been on the rise since the 1970s and how this has impacted on everyday life and Chinese society more broadly. The book presents a wide range of detailed case studies - on the impact of economic policy, patterns of kinship, changes in marriage relations and the socio-economic position of women, the development of youth culture, the politics of consumerism, and shifting power relations in everyday life.

Gendering the Comparative Analysis of Welfare States: An Unfinished Agenda*:

Abstract: Can feminists count on welfare states—or at least some aspects of these complex systems—as resources in the struggle for gender equality? Gender analysts of “welfare states” investigate this question and the broader set of issues around the mutually constitutive relationship between systems of social provision and regulation and gender. Feminist scholars have moved to bring the contingent practice of politics back into grounded fields of action and social change and away from the reification and abstractions that had come to dominate models of politics focused on “big” structures and systems, including those focused on “welfare states.” Conceptual innovations and reconceptualizations of foundational terms have been especially prominent in the comparative scholarship on welfare states, starting with gender, and including care, autonomy, citizenship, (in)dependence, political agency, and equality. In contrast to other subfields of political science and sociology, gendered insights have to some extent been incorporated into mainstream comparative scholarship on welfare states. The arguments between feminists and mainstream scholars over the course of the last two decades have been productive, powering the development of key themes and concepts pioneered by gender scholars, including “defamilialization,” the significance of unpaid care work in families and the difficulties of work-family “reconciliation,” gendered welfare state institutions, the relation between fertility and women's employment, and the partisan correlates of different family and gender policy models. Yet the mainstream still resists the deeper implications of feminist work, and has difficulties assimilating concepts of care, gendered power, dependency, and interdependency. Thus, the agenda of gendering comparative welfare state studies remains unfinished. To develop an understanding of what might be needed to finish that agenda, I assess the gendered contributions to the analysis of modern systems of social provision, starting with the concept of gender itself, then moving to studies of the gendered division of labor (including care) and of gendered political power.

Rational choice, agency and thoughtfully reflective decision making: The short and long-term consequences of making good choices.

Abstract: Notions of human agency are a prominent part of some but not all criminological theories. For example, McCarthy (Annu Rev Sociol 28:417–442, 2002) argues that rational choice theory, which allows persons great involvement in decision making, is more congenial with notions of human agency than others. It would appear from his argument that rational choice theory offers fertile ground to develop a clearly defined role for human agency in criminal behavior. In this paper we have taken up McCarthy’s view and argue that an important part of what is human agency consists of thoughtfully reflective decision making. We outline four elements of thoughtfully reflective decision making, and claim that it is a characteristic that varies both across persons and within persons over time. It is in short the process by which good decisions are made because by using this process one increases the likelihood that choices made will be consistent with preferences. We develop a clear operational definition of thoughtfully reflective decision making and link it to the concept of human agency. We also articulate testable hypotheses about the short-term and longer-term implications of thoughtfully reflective decision making. We conclude with a discussion of what we think lies ahead for future conceptual and empirical work.

The Ethico‐politics of Teacher Identity

Abstract: Identity is a contemporary buzzword in education, referencing the individual and the social, the personal and the political, self and other. Following Maggie MacLure, we can think of identity in terms of teachers ‘arguing for themselves’, or giving an account of themselves. Yet in the wake of poststructuralism's radical de‐centering of the subject and its highlighting of a number of impediments to agency, we might well ask how teachers are to give an account of themselves? This paper offers reading of identity that recognizes its paradoxical aspects, yet also contains scope for ethical agency. The latter is explored via a ‘diagram’ that utilizes Foucault's four axes of ethics to elaborate a framework for thinking about teacher identity as ethical self‐formation and for engaging in what I refer to here as ‘identity work’. This approach to thinking about teacher identity recognizes our discursive determination, yet also offers scope for recognizing and building ethical agency.

Varieties of Asian capitalism : toward an institutional theory of Asian enterprise

Abstract: In this paper we respond to calls for an institution-based perspective on strategy. With its emphasis upon mimetic, coercive, and normative isomorphism, institutional theory has earned a deterministic reputation and seems an unlikely foundation on which to construct a theory of strategy. However, a second movement in institutional theory is emerging that gives greater emphasis to creativity and agency. We develop this approach by highlighting co-evolutionary processes that are shaping the varieties of capitalism (VoC) in Asia. To do so, we examine the extent to which the VoC model can be fruitfully applied in the Asian context. In the spirit of the second movement of institutional theory, we describe three processes in which firm strategy collectively and intentionally feeds back to shape institutions: (1) filling institutional voids, (2) retarding institutional innovation, and (3) deploying institutional escape. We outline the key contributions contained in the articles of this Special Issue and discuss a research agenda generated by the VoC perspective.

Historical Institutionalism in Rationalist and Sociological Perspective

Abstract: Some of the most fruitful insights generated by social science in recent decades flow from explorations of how institutions, under­ stood as sets of regularized practices with a rule-like quality, struc­ ture the behavior of political and economic actors. I It is not surpris­ ing that attention has now turned to the second-order problem of explaining when and how institutions change. 2 In conceptual terms, however, this task is intrinsically difficult. By their nature, analy­ ses designed to explain why institutions have a persistent impact on behavior tend to overstate the solidity of institutions. Acknowledging their plasticity raises questions about when institutions should be seen as determinants of behavior and when as objects of strategic action themselves) This problem afflicts rational-choice approaches to institutions with particular intensity because of the elegant solutions such analyses have devised to explain the force and persistence of institutions. Typically, they see institutions as patterns of regularized behavior that reflect Pareto-optimal equilibria or subgame perfect solutions to collective

The mysterious case of the pervasive choice biography: Ulrich Beck, structure/agency, and the middling state of theory in the sociology of youth

Abstract: This paper explores the emergence of the concept of choice biography, as it is linked to the work of Ulrich Beck, in youth research. The concept has been called a current pervasive theoretical orthodoxy. However, this article argues that the concept is most often taken up to critique, and Beck used mostly as a foil, through arguing that he overemphasizes agency and neglects structural constraints, in establishing or occupying a middle-ground theoretical position between structure and agency. I propose that the relationship and balance between structure and agency is of little interest to Beck and aim to discourage forcing his work into this frame. Instead of focusing on a shift towards agency, and proposing the concept of choice biographies to understand the shift, Beck is making the more complicated claim that at the very moment, and through the same processes, that some of the constraints placed on people are breaking down, the predictability and security that would allow these new options to function a...

Varieties of Asian Capitalism: Toward an Institutional Theory of Asian Enterprise

Abstract: In this paper we respond to calls for an institution-based perspective on strategy. With its emphasis upon mimetic, coercive, and normative isomorphism, institutional theory has earned a deterministic reputation and seems an unlikely foundation on which to construct a theory of strategy. However, a second movement in institutional theory is emerging that gives greater emphasis to creativity and agency. We develop this approach by highlighting co-evolutionary processes that are shaping the varieties of capitalism (VoC) in Asia. To do so, we examine the extent to which the VoC model can be fruitfully applied in the Asian context. In the spirit of the second movement of institutional theory, we describe three processes in which firm strategy collectively and intentionally feeds back to shape institutions: (1) filling institutional voids, (2) retarding institutional innovation, and (3) deploying institutional escape. We outline the key contributions contained in the articles of this Special Issue and discuss a research agenda generated by the VoC perspective.

Social Practice Theory and the Historical Production of Persons

Abstract: Working collaboratively, we and others have developed a historical, material theory of social practice that integrates the study of persons, local practice, and long-term historically institutionalized struggles. We have drawn on the work of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and Mead to develop this approach to “history-in-person”. Social Practice Theory, like Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) takes activity as a central focus. But, in contrast to CHAT, social practice theory emphasizes the historical production of persons in practice, and pays particular attention to differences among participants, and to the ongoing struggles that develop across activities around those differences. Through Holland’s ethnographic work on environmental groups in the Southeastern United States, we show the integration of emotion, motivation, and agency into cultural-historical activity theory by means of Vygotskian and Bakhtinian inspired ideas concerning “history-in-person”. Lave’s research focuses on tension, conflict and difference in participation in cultural activities in an old port wine merchant community in Porto, and looks to both local and trans-local institutional arrangements and practices for explanations.

Creative search and strategic sense-making : missing dimensions in the concept of dynamic capabilities

Abstract: In this paper we discuss the role of managerial agency in creating and shaping dynamic capabilities. We argue that dynamic capability is a phenomenon that enables a deviation to take place from the knowledge that otherwise would have arisen cumulatively from experiential learning. In addition we argue that to create major changes in patterns of knowledge accumulation managers need to be purposefully and creatively engaged. Such agency is identifiable in two cognitive processes we call creative search and strategic sense-making. We show how these processes differ in respect to their temporal orientation and relationship to uncertainty and by adopting a process perspective we demonstrate how creative search, strategic sense-making and experiential learning are complementary. This notion of complementarity implies that these processes, notwithstanding their contrasting characteristics, coexist together and serve to offer an explanation for how knowledge progresses at a firm level. Variance is introduced into the framework proposed through the identification of factors that influence the coexistence of creative search and strategic sense-making. The argument developed is illustrated through the use of an emergent technology context.

Artificial agency, consciousness, and the criteria for moral agency: what properties must an artificial agent have to be a moral agent?

Abstract: In this essay, I describe and explain the standard accounts of agency, natural agency, artificial agency, and moral agency, as well as articulate what are widely taken to be the criteria for moral agency, supporting the contention that this is the standard account with citations from such widely used and respected professional resources as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I then flesh out the implications of some of these well-settled theories with respect to the prerequisites that an ICT must satisfy in order to count as a moral agent accountable for its behavior. I argue that each of the various elements of the necessary conditions for moral agency presupposes consciousness, i.e., the capacity for inner subjective experience like that of pain or, as Nagel puts it, the possession of an internal something-of-which-it is-is-to-be-like. I ultimately conclude that the issue of whether artificial moral agency is possible depends on the issue of whether it is possible for ICTs to be conscious.

Actor‐Network Theory as a Critical Approach to Environmental Justice: A Case against Synthesis with Urban Political Ecology

Abstract: Recent critiques of environmental justice research emphasize its disengagement from theory and its political focus on liberal conceptions of distributional and procedural justice. Marxian urban political ecology has been proposed as an approach that can both contextualize environmental inequalities more productively and provide a basis for a more radical politics of environmental justice. Although this work takes its primary inspiration from historical materialism, it also adapts key concepts from actor-network theory (ANT)—in particular, the agency of nonhumans—while dismissing the rest of ANT as insufficiently critical and explanatory. This paper argues that ANT—specifically, the version articulated by Bruno Latour—provides a basis for an alternative critical approach to environmental justice research and politics. Instead of arguing for a synthesis of ANT and Marxism, I contend that ANT gives us a distinctive conception of the social and opens up new questions about the production and justification of environmental inequalities.

How We Get Along

Abstract: In How We Get Along, philosopher David Velleman compares our social interactions to the interactions among improvisational actors on stage. He argues that we play ourselves - not artificially but authentically, by doing what would make sense coming from us as we really are. And, like improvisational actors, we deal with one another in dual capacities: both as characters within the social drama and as players contributing to the shared performance. In this conception of social intercourse, Velleman finds rational grounds for morality, though not a rational guarantee. He maps a middle course between skepticism and rationalism, arguing that practical reasoning is 'pro-moral' without requiring moral action. The result is what he calls a 'Kinda Kantian metaethics'. How We Get Along is the summation of Velleman's thinking to date, incorporating and unifying previous work on agency, the self, the emotions, narrative and Kantian moral theory.

Reconciling the Self and Morality: An Empirical Model of Moral Centrality Development.

Abstract: Self-interest and moral sensibilities generally compete with one another, but for moral exemplars, this tension appears to not be in play. This study advances thereconciliation model, which explains this anomaly within a developmental framework by positing that the relationship between the self’s interests and moral concerns ideally transforms from one of mutual competition to one of synergy. The degree to which morality is central to an individual’s identity—or moral centrality—was operationalized in terms of values advanced implicitly in self-understanding narratives; a measure was developed and then validated. Participants were 97 university students who responded to a self-understanding interview and to several measures of morally relevant behaviors. Results indicated that communal values (centered on concerns for others) positively predicted and agentic (self-interested) values negatively predicted moral behavior. At the same time, the tendency to coordinate both agentic and communal values within narrative thought segments positively predicted moral behavior, indicating that the 2 motives can be adaptively reconciled. Moral centrality holds considerable promise in explaining moral motivation and its development.

Decentring Policy Networks: A Theoretical Agenda

Abstract: doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2008.01736.x DECENTRING POLICY NETWORKS: A THEORETICAL AGENDA MARK BEVIR AND DAVID RICHARDS This introduction starts by specifying the theoretical and analytical framework underpinning the range of essays in this special issue. It then provides an overview of the existing literature on policy networks and network governance in order to identify what a decentred approach might contribute. What follows is an account of decentred theory, a discussion of the potential alternatives it can offer to existing accounts and how these might be achieved through reconstruct- ing networks by appealing to notions of situated agency and tradition; it concludes by considering the potential methodologies to be employed, with particular emphasis on ethnography. INTRODUCTION Policy networks consist of governmental and societal actors whose interactions with one another give rise to policies. They are actors linked through informal practices as well as (or even instead of) formal institutions. Typically, they operate through inter- dependent relationships, with a view to trying to secure their individual goals by col- laborating with each other. Policy networks have long been a topic of study in the social sciences. More recently, they have been central to the literature on governance, which is often described as rule by and through networks. The essays in this special issue explore both the use and limitations of a decentred theory of policy networks and network governance. To decentre is to focus on the social construction of a practice through the ability of individuals to create and act on meanings. It is to unpack a practice in terms of the disparate and contingent beliefs and actions of individuals. A decentred governance approach involves challenging the idea that inexorable, imper- sonal forces are driving a shift from hierarchies to networks. Instead, it suggests that networks are constructed differently by many actors against the background of diverse traditions. Adopting decentred theory, the contributors to this special issue attempt: • to use textual and/or ethnographic analysis to explore the meanings found in a policy arena; • where appropriate, to highlight competing, diverse sets of meaning in that policy arena; • to reflect on the contingent historical roots of the relevant meanings – the traditions against the background of which the meanings arose. This introductory essay explores the theory behind this research agenda, locating it in relation to the current literature on policy networks. The concluding essay both sum- marizes the main themes of the papers and reflects on the experience of working with decentred theory, examining its strengths and weaknesses, the problems that arose in applying it, and lessons for future research. Mark Bevir is Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. David Richards is a Reader in the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield. Public Administration Vol. 87, No. 1, 2009 (3–14) © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Introduction: Reclaiming Feminism: Gender and Neoliberalism

Abstract: Neoliberalism - that 'grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently and serve the public interest well' as Stiglitz (2008) puts it - has been a focal point for contestation in development. Feminists have highlighted its deleterious effects on women's lives and on gender relations. They have drawn attention to the extent to which the institutions promoting neoliberal economic and social policies have undermined a more progressive agenda, as they have come to appropriate words such as 'empowerment' and 'agency' and eviscerate them of any association with a project of progressive social change. This collection of articles brings together reflections from a diversity of locations on prospects for reclaiming these ideas and using them to reframe and revitalise feminist engagement with development. To reclaim feminist concepts like 'agency' and 'empowerment', we argue, we need to return to and reaffirm their 'liberating' dimensions, reaffirming their association with forms of collective action that involve resisting and transgressing repressive social norms.

What's the Use of 'Well-Being' in Contexts of Child Poverty? Approaches to Research, Monitoring and Children's Participation

Abstract: Monitoring, protecting and promoting 'well-being' are central to realisation of children's rights. Yet definitions of the concept are both variable and can appear conceptually confused. Competing research paradigms engage with the concept and its measurement, while applications of well-being in policy are equally contested. This paper outlines some of the major debates, as a starting point for reviewing three contrasting approaches to well-being: indicator-based, participatory, and longitudinal research. In particular, it focuses on applications of the concept in contexts of child poverty worldwide. We suggest there are some promising signs of integration amongst these approaches, and argue that well-being does have potential as a bridging concept, at the same time highlighting inequalities, acknowledging diversity, and respecting children's agency. Drawing on the experience of Young Lives, a 15 year, four-country longitudinal study of child poverty, we suggest that methods for studying child well-being in global contexts should be dynamic and sensitive to culture and time, as well as to the trade-offs that children are required to make between themselves and others. We argue that dynamic approaches are especially important in research with children as they address how people change in time. Well-being is understood by Young Lives to be about real people and the social contexts they inhabit. It can act as a lens - similar to culture - which recognises that outcomes of deprivation are influenced by children and their responses to and interpretation of events. Accessing children's views in the context of their communities is important and can increase the accuracy and credibility of research data. Crucially, well-being research also foregrounds subjective meanings and experiences, and provides the background for interpreting 'best interests'. While shared visions for well-being can set parameters of acceptability and underpin basic entitlements, detailed specification must be negotiable, especially taking account of the views of the principal stakeholders, namely children, their caregivers and others centrally concerned with their lives.

Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics

Abstract: Although gossip is disapproved of across the world's societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the author's intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, this work uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion, locality, belief, and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions-the microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and the macroscopic interpretation of social practice-that are rarely wedded successfully. Drawing on a broad range of theoretical resources, Niko Besnier approaches gossip from several angles. A detailed analysis of how Nukulaelae's people structure their gossip interactions demonstrates that this structure reflects and contributes to the atoll's political ideology, which wavers between a staunch egalitarianism and a need for hierarchy. His discussion then turns to narratives of specific events in which gossip played an important role in either enacting egalitarianism or reinforcing inequality. Embedding gossip in a broad range of communicative practices enables Besnier to develop a nuanced analysis of how gossip operates, demonstrating how it allows some to gain power while others suffer because of it. Throughout, he is particularly attentive to the ways in which anthropologists themselves are the subject and object of gossip, making his work a notable contribution to reflexive social science. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics will appeal to students and scholars of political, legal, linguistic, and psychological anthropology; social science methodology; communication, conflict, gender, and globalization studies; and Pacific Islands studies.

Agencies in Technology Design: Feminist Reconfigurations

Abstract: In this paper the author considers some new resources for thinking about how capacities for action are configured at the human-machine interface, informed by developments in feminist science and technology studies. While not all of the authors and works cited would identify as feminist, they share commitments to a critical and generative interference in received conceptions of the human, the technological and the relations between them. The author interrogates the trope of innovation itself, to see how a fascination with change and transformation might be located, both culturally and historically, and in particular moments. He argues that through the figures of artificial intelligence we are witnessing a reiteration of traditional humanist notions of agency, at the same time - even through - the intra-actions of that notion with new computational media. The author also explores the question of what other directions our relations with machines, both conceptually and practically, might take.

On the Role of Social Interaction in Individual Agency

Abstract: Is an individual agent constitutive of or constituted by its social interactions? This question is typically not asked in the cognitive sciences, so strong is the consensus that only individual agents have constitutive efficacy In this article we challenge this methodological solipsism and argue that interindividual relations and social context do not simply arise from the behavior of individual agents, but themselves enable and shape the individual agents on which they depend For this, we define the notion of autonomy as both a characteristic of individual agents and of social interaction processes We then propose a number of ways in which interactional autonomy can influence individuals Then we discuss recent work in modeling on the one hand and psychological investigations on the other that support and illustrate this claim Finally, we discuss some implications for research on social and individual agency

Race as Technology

Abstract: Philadelphia, 18 March 2008, http://www.barackobama .com/tv/ Summary of Argument For the sake of decency, I call for a perversion of common standards or at least a productive distortion of such. I ask the reader to consider race as technology. This proposition moves race away from the biological and genetic systems that have historically dominated its definition toward questions of technological agency. Technological agency speaks to the ways by which external devices help us navigate the terrain in which we live. For example, the hunter throwing a rock kills a tiger from a safer distance than if he had engaged in direct combat. The rock is the external device in this case. When the hunter leaves a sign behind, scratched into the stone or dirt, it indicates a good place for hunting; the hunter uses an external marker to communicate with distant parts of the tribe. In the elds of anthropology and philosophy, technology is often de ned as an intrinsically human extension of the self.1 We are by nature tool-making and sign-making creatures who cannot be separated from our urge for technology. I argue in this essay that technology’s embedded function of self-extension may be exploited to liberate race from an inherited position of abjection toward a greater expression of agency. In this case, agency indicates presence, will, and movement — the abilRace as Technology