Showing papers on "Agency (philosophy) published in 2010"

New materialisms : ontology, agency, and politics

Abstract: Book synopsis: New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures. Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment.

Cultures and Selves: A Cycle of Mutual Constitution

Abstract: The study of culture and self casts psychology’s understanding of the self, identity, or agency as central to the analysis and interpretation of behavior and demonstrates that cultures and selves define and build upon each other in an ongoing cycle of mutual constitution. In a selective review of theoretical and empirical work, we define self and what the self does, define culture and how it constitutes the self (and vice versa), define independence and interdependence and determine how they shape psychological functioning, and examine the continuing challenges and controversies in the study of culture and self. We propose that a self is the ‘‘me’’ at the center of experience—a continually developing sense of awareness and agency that guides actions and takes shape as the individual, both brain and body, becomes attuned to various environments. Selves incorporate the patterning of their various environments and thus confer particular and culture-specific form and function to the psychological processes they organize (e.g., attention, perception, cognition, emotion, motivation, interpersonal relationship, group). In turn, as selves engage with their sociocultural contexts, they reinforce and sometimes change the ideas, practices, and institutions of these environments.

Path Dependence or Path Creation

Abstract: We discuss the assumptions that underlie path dependence, as defined by Vergne and Durand, and then provide the outlines of an alternative perspective which we label as path creation Path creation entertains a notion of agency that is distributed and emergent through relational processes that constitute phenomena Viewed from this perspective, ‘initial conditions’ are not given, ‘contingencies’ are emergent contexts for action, ‘self-reinforcing mechanisms’ are strategically manipulated, and ‘lock-in’ is but a temporary stabilization of paths in-the-making We develop these points using a narrative approach and highlight the theoretical and methodological implications of our perspective

Understanding Global Migration: A Social Transformation Perspective

Abstract: This chapter examines some of the difficulties of theory formation in international migration studies and suggests adopting a social transformation perspective in response. The starting point is an examination of the dominant perception of ‘migration as a problem’. This is followed by a discussion of some key obstacles to theoretical advancement in migration studies. I argue that a general theory of migration is neither possible nor desirable, but that we can make significant progress by re-embedding migration research in a more general understanding of contemporary society, and linking it to broader theories of social change across a range of social scientific disciplines. A conceptual framework for migration studies should take social transformation as its central category, in order to facilitate understanding of the complexity, interconnectedness, variability, contexuality and multi-level mediations of migratory processes in the context of rapid global change. This would mean examining the links between social transformation and human mobility across a range of socio-spatial levels, while always seeking to understand how human agency can condition responses to structural factors. The argument is illustrated through the example of the changing dynamics of labour forces in highly developed countries.

The Applicability of the Concept of Resilience to Social Systems: Some Sources of Optimism and Nagging Doubts

Abstract: This article presents an inquiry into prospects for application of the conceptual lens of resilience to social systems. The dominant paradigm of sustainability in its current form is likely to be of limited utility for aiding scholars to contribute to our understanding of past and current global environmental crises, and for planning for such events in the future. Resilience theory offers a compelling source of theoretical insight; however, the current iteration of this framework is not readily applicable to social systems. Our ability to do so requires further theoretical development in the areas of system complexity and agency. This article offers an initial step in this direction, by providing an overview and critique of recent academic treatments of the concept of resilience, and a set of guideposts for further research.

New Institutionalism Through a Gender Lens: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism?:

Abstract: New institutionalism (NI) may no longer qualify as being ‘new’, but since re-emphasizing institutions as a central explanatory variable in political analysis over two decades ago, it continues to provide scholars with a useful perspective through which to analyse political dynamics and outcomes that shape everyday life. The renewed focus on institutions has rebalanced the structure/agency scales back toward the former without losing important insights about the role and impact of political actors. NI has allowed for greater understanding about the co-constitutive nature of politics: the various ways in which actors bring about or resist change in institutions; and the way institutions shape the nature of actors’ behaviour through the construction of rules, norms and policies.

Cultural Holes: Beyond Relationality in Social Networks and Culture

Abstract: A burgeoning literature spanning sociologies of culture and social network methods has for the past several decades sought to explicate the relationships between culture and connectivity. A number of promising recent moves toward integration are worthy of review, comparison, critique, and synthesis. Network thinking provides powerful techniques for specifying cultural concepts ranging from narrative networks to classification systems, tastes, and cultural repertoires. At the same time, we see theoretical advances by sociologists of culture as providing a corrective to network analysis as it is often portrayed, as a mere collection of methods. Cultural thinking complements and sets a new agenda for moving beyond predominant forms of structural analysis that ignore action, agency, and intersubjective meaning. The notion of “cultural holes” that we use to organize our review points both to the cultural contingency of network structure and to the increasingly permeable boundary between studies of culture and ...

Varieties of second modernity: the cosmopolitan turn in social and political theory and research.

Abstract: The theme of this special issue is the necessity of a cosmopolitan turn in social and political theory. The question at the heart of this introductory chapter takes the challenge of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’, already addressed in a Special Issue on Cosmopolitan Sociology in this journal (Beck and Sznaider 2006), an important step further: How can social and political theory be opened up, theoretically as well as methodologically and normatively, to a historically new, entangled Modernity which threatens its own foundations? How can it account for the fundamental fragility, the mutability of societal dynamics (of unintended side-effects, domination and power), shaped by the globalization of capital and risks at the beginning of the twenty-first century? What theoretical and methodological problems arise and how can they be addressed in empirical research? In the following, we will develop this ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in four steps: firstly, we present the major conceptual tools for a theory of cosmopolitan modernities; secondly, we de-construct Western modernity by using examples taken from research on individualization and risk; thirdly, we address the key problem of methodological cosmopolitanism, namely the problem of defining the appropriate unit of analysis; and finally, we discuss normative questions, perspectives, and dilemmas of a theory of cosmopolitan modernities, in particular problems of political agency and prospects of political realization.

Cultural political economy and critical policy studies

Abstract: This article introduces cultural political economy as a distinctive approach in the social sciences, including policy studies. The version presented here combines critical semiotic analysis and critical political economy. It grounds its approach to both in the practical necessities of complexity reduction and the role of meaning-making and structuration in turning unstructured into structured complexity as a basis for ‘going on’ in the world. It explores both semiosis and structuration in terms of the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention and, in this context, also highlights the role of specific forms of agency and specific technologies. These general propositions are illustrated from ‘economic imaginaries’ (other types of imaginary could have been examined) and their relevance to economic policy. Brief comments on crisis-interpretation and crisis-management give this example some substance. The conclusion notes some implications for research in critical policy studies.

Self-Interest through Delegation: An Additional Rationale for the Principal-Agent Relationship

Abstract: In the standard economic analysis of the principal-agent relationship, principals are assumed to hire agents because delegation confers efficiencies, as the agent either possesses special ability or has a lower opportunity cost of time or effort. The central focus of the literature on principal agent relationships has been on how to design monitoring and incentive schemes that enable these advantages to be realized despite the fact that agents typically face different incentives and possess different information than the principals who employ them (Paul R. Milgrom and John Roberts 1992; Patrick Bolton and Mathias F. Dewatripont 2005). This paper examines whether the principal-agent relationship might in some cases serve a function unrelated to efficiency. Specifically, a principal may hire an agent to take self-interested or immoral actions that the principal would be reluctant to take more directly. The principal may feel more detached, and hence less responsible, for such an action if it is delegated, while the agent may feel that he or she was "just carrying out orders" or merely fulfilling the requirement of an employment contract. Through the use of agents, therefore, accountability for morally questionable behavior can become vertically diffused, with no individual taking responsibility. While this function of agency has not been fully investigated in the economics literature, it is commonplace in popular accounts of behavior in domains as diverse as politics, business, war, and everyday social interaction. Companies are often accused of outsourcing production and other functions to outside firms that act less ethically than the company would act itself?for example, by treating workers less generously.1 Executives and stockholders of the outsourcing company may turn a blind eye toward the actions of the outside firms, remaining deliberately uninformed, or at least pretending to be. Recent press stories have noted the increasing use of "firing consultants," who often serve little role other than carrying out the act of firing employ ees2. Moreover, firm managers who act unethically may justify such behavior through their role as shareholders' agents (Tara J. Radin and Martin Calkins 2006). Within firms or other organizations, high-level decision makers are often accused of tacitly encouraging unethical or illegal behaviors, while shielding themselves from knowledge and

Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, Incarnation and Ventriloquism

Abstract: What happens when people communicate or dialogue with each other? This is the daunting question that this book proposes to address by starting from a controversial hypothesis: What if human interactants were not the only ones to be considered, paraphrasing Austin (1962), as “doing things with words”? That is, what if other “things” could also be granted the status of agents in a dialogical situation? Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, incarnation, and ventriloquism proposes to explore this unique hypothesis by mobilizing metaphorically the notion of ventriloquism. According to this ventriloqual perspective, interactions are never purely local, but dislocal , that is, they constantly mobilize figures (collectives, principles, values, emotions, etc.) that incarnate themselves in people’s discussions. This highly original book, which develops the analytical, practical and ethical dimensions of such a theoretical positioning, may be of interest to communication scholars, linguists, sociologists, conversation analysts, management and organizational scholars, as well as philosophers interested in language, action and ethics.

Beyond Subordination vs. Resistance: An Intersectional Approach to the Agency of Veiled Muslim Women

Abstract: Engaging with a figure that came to operate as a powerful cultural signifier of otherness in debates over migrant/Muslim integration across the West, the ‘veiled woman’; the paper questions the idea of agency that inheres in the contemporary feminist discourses on Muslim veil. After showing the shortcomings and adverse effects of two dominant readings of the Muslim veil, as a symbol of women's subordination to men, or as an act of resistance to Western hegemony, it explores an alternative avenue drawing on both the poststructuralist critique of the humanist subject and feminist intersectional theorising to answer the question of what kind of conception of agency can help us to think about the agency of the veiled woman without binding a priori the meaning of her veiling to the teleology of emancipation, whether feminist or anti-imperialist.

The Storied Life of Singularized Objects: Forces of Agency and Network Transformation

Abstract: Our study contributes to understanding the role of material culture in families. Findings from a longitudinal case study extend Kopytoff’s theory of singularization by explaining what occurs between the singularization of a focal object and its recommodification. We uncover processes that move an already singularized object in and out of a network of practices, objects, and spaces; identify forces that constrain and empower a singularized object’s agency within that network; and demonstrate network transformations that result from the focal object’s movement. This extension explains some paradoxical findings in consumer research: how objects are granted agency even while displaced, when irreplaceable objects can be replaced, and why families sometimes displace central identity practices.

Post-humanitarianism Humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity

Abstract: This article offers a trajectory of humanitarian communication, which suggests a clear, though not linear, move from emotion-oriented to post-emotional styles of appealing. Drawing on empirical examples, the article demonstrates that the humanitarian sensibility that arises out of these emerging styles breaks with pity and privileges a short-term and low-intensity form of agency, which is no longer inspired by an intellectual agenda but momentarily engages us in practices of playful consumerism. Whereas this move to the post-emotional should be seen as a reaction to a much-criticized articulation between politics and humanitarianism, which relied on ‘universal’ morality and grand emotion, it is also a response to the intensely mediatized global market in which humanitarian agencies operate today. The article concludes by reflecting on the political and ethical ambivalence at the heart of this new style of humanitarian communication, which offers both the tentative promise of new practices of altruism and the threat of cultural narcissism.

Blaming God for Our Pain: Human Suffering and the Divine Mind

Abstract: Believing in God requires not only a leap of faith but also an extension of people’s normal capacity to perceive the minds of others. Usually, people perceive minds of all kinds by trying to understand their conscious experience (what it is like to be them) and their agency (what they can do). Although humans are perceived to have both agency and experience, humans appear to see God as possessing agency, but not experience. God’s unique mind is due, the authors suggest, to the uniquely moral role He occupies. In this article, the authors propose that God is seen as the ultimate moral agent, the entity people blame and praise when they receive anomalous harm and help. Support for this proposition comes from research on mind perception, morality, and moral typecasting. Interestingly, although people perceive God as the author of salvation, suffering seems to evoke even more attributions to the divine.

The Social and the Aesthetic: For a Post-Bourdieuian Theory of Cultural Production:

Abstract: This article sets out new methodological principles for the sociology of art, a sub-discipline that it seeks to broaden conceptually by shifting the ground from art to cultural production. This shift suggests the utility of overcoming the boundaries that demarcate the sociology of art from adjacent fields, augmenting the sociological repertoire with reference to anthropology, cultural and media studies, art and cultural history, and the music disciplines. At the same time the article proposes that an explanatory theory of cultural production requires reinvention in relation to five key themes: aesthetics and the cultural object; agency and subjectivity; the place of institutions; history, temporality and change; and problems of value and judgement. The first half of the article approaches these issues through a sustained critique of Bourdieu. It proceeds through an exposition of generative research from contemporary anthropology, including the work of Alfred Gell, Christopher Pinney, Fred Myers and others...

Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action

Abstract: What is the place of the ethical in human life? How do we render it visible? How might sustained attention to the ethical transform anthropological theory and enrich our understanding of thought, speech, and social action? This volume offers a significant attempt to address these questions. It is a common experience of most ethnographers that the people we encounter are trying to do what they consider right or good, are being evaluated according to criteria of what is right and good, or are in some debate about what constitutes the human good. Yet anthropological theory has tended to overlook all this in favor of analyses that emphasize structure, power, and interest.Bringing together ethnographic exposition with philosophical concepts and arguments and effectively transcending subdisciplinary boundaries between cultural and linguistic anthropology, the essays collected in this volume explore the ethical entailments of speech and action and demonstrate the centrality of ethical practice, judgment, reasoning, responsibility, cultivation, commitment, and questioning in social life. Rather than focus on codes of conduct or hot-button issues, they make the cumulative argument that ethics is profoundly ordinary,pervasive-and possibly even intrinsic to speech and action. In addition to deepening our understanding of ethics, the volume makes an incisive and necessary intervention in anthropological theory,recasting discussion in ways that force us to rethink such concepts as power, agency, and relativism.Individual chapters consider the place of ethics with respect to conversation and interaction; judgment and responsibility; formality, etiquette, performance, ritual, and law; character and empathy; social boundaries and exclusions; socialization and punishment; and commemoration, history, and living together in peace and war.Together they offer a comprehensive portrait of an approach that is now critical for advancing anthropological theory and ethnographic description, as well as fruitful conversation with philosophy.

Citizen-Consumers as Agents of Change in Globalizing Modernity: The Case of Sustainable Consumption

Abstract: The roles that individuals can adopt, or get assigned, in processes of global environmental change, can be analyzed with the help of three ideal-type forms of commitment: as environmental citizens, as political consumers, and as individual moral agents. We offer a discussion of the three roles in the context of sustainability changes in everyday life practices of consumption. Sociological accounts of (sustainability) transitions are discussed with respect to their treatment of the concept of agency vis a vis the objects, technologies, and infrastructures implied in globalizing consumption practices. Using consumption practices as basic units of analysis helps to avoid individualist and privatized accounts of the role of citizen-consumers in environmental change, while making possible a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between the personal and the planetary in the process of greening everyday life consumption.

Making a difference: ethical consumption and the everyday

Abstract: Our everyday shopping practices are increasingly marketed as opportunities to ‘make a difference’ via our ethical consumption choices. In response to a growing body of work detailing the ways in which specific alignments of ‘ethics’ and ‘consumption’ are mediated, we explore how ‘ethical’ opportunities such as the consumption of Fairtrade products are recognized, experienced and taken-up in the everyday. The ‘everyday’ is approached here via a specially commissioned Mass Observation directive, a volunteer panel of correspondents in the UK. Our on-going thematic analysis of their autobiographical accounts aims to explore a complex unevenness in the ways ‘ordinary’ people experience and negotiate calls to enact their ethical agency through consumption. Situating ethical consumption, moral obligation and choice in the everyday is, we argue, important if we are to avoid both over-exaggerating the reflexive and self-conscious sensibilities involved in ethical consumption, and, adhering to a reductive understanding of ethical self-expression.

Cartographies of Knowledge: Exploring Qualitative Epistemologies

Abstract: Preface About the Author 1. Introduction Mapping the Journey Familiar Intellectual Geographies Implications for Social Research Concluding Thoughts Further Reading 2. Philosophical Roots of Research Methodologies Introduction The Changing Discourses of Social Science Philosophy and Practice Implications for Social Research Concluding Thoughts Further Reading 3. Analytic Induction Introduction Analytic Induction: A Brief History The Basic Premise of Contemporary Analytic Induction Analysis of Newpaper, Television, and Interview Exemplars Implications for Social Research Concluding Thoughts Further Reading 4. Symbolic Interaction Introduction Symbolic Interaction: A Brief History The Basic Premise of Symbolic Interaction Anaylsis of Newspaper, Television, and Interview Exemplars Implications for Social Research Concluding Thoughts Further Reading 5. Ethnomethodology Introduction Ethnomethodology: A Brief History The Basic Premise of Ethnomethodology Analysis of Newspaper, Television, and Interview Exemplars Implications for Social Research Concluding Thoughts Further Reading 6. Social Research: Drawing New Maps Introduction The Problems of Social Research Revisited A Matter of Ethics: The Making of a Social Scientist Revisiting Subjectivity, Agency, and Experience Envisioning Social Epistemologies Implications for Social Research Concluding Thoughts Further Reading References Index

An interdisciplinary review of resistance to consumption, some marketing interpretations, and future research suggestions

Abstract: This article provides an interdisciplinary review of consumer resistance, an overarching term that includes various forms of anti‐consumerist behaviour. The review draws from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, political economy, and cultural studies to explore the historical and discursive constructions of resistance and other key marketing concepts. In so doing, it identifies two distinct paradigms in the social sciences and humanities, namely, the “manipulation and enslavement” and the “agency and empowerment” discourses, and examines how these paradigms reflect onto theories of resistance in marketing. Lastly, the article suggests several new directions for resistance research that pertain to globalization, emerging markets, and ideological consumption.

Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life

Abstract: This article examines microhistories and the histories of the everyday both in the context of developments in social and cultural history since the 1960s, and in the light of political and social change in post-war European society. Moving beyond debates about historical narrative, it emphasizes issues of perspective, space, size and historical distance in shaping historical interpretation. This historiographical trend, it argues, emanates from two major debates within the social sciences and politics. One concerns the nature of everyday life under modern capitalism and ‘consumer society’, the other the vexed issue of human agency. Focusing particularly on Italian microstoria, it argues that such writing is best understood as the commitment to a humanist agenda which places agency and historical meaning in the realm of day-to-day transactions, and which sees their recuperation as the proper task of the historian.

Remembering research: memory and methodology in the social sciences

Abstract: This article examines the conceptualisation and use of memory in the social sciences, both as a methodological tool and as an object of research. The article situates memory as a vast potential resource for the social sciences in the exploration of relations between public and private life, agency and power, and the past, present and future. It goes on to recognise that the methodological issues surrounding the use of memory have, with few exceptions, rarely received sustained attention. The article argues for, and moves towards, developing a coherent account of the variety of practical techniques of using memory in data collection and analysis, and their appropriate use within a clear epistemological framework which distinguishes itself from conventional historiography and it’s criteria of validity. It is argued that without this attention to method, memory will remain on the margins of social science research.

Ethics and social networking sites : a disclosive analysis of Facebook

Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to provide insights into the moral values embodied by a popular social networking site (SNS), Facebook Design/methodology/approach – This study is based upon qualitative fieldwork, involving participant observation, conducted over a two-year period The authors adopt the position that technology as well as humans has a moral character in order to disclose ethical concerns that are not transparent to users of the site Findings – Much research on the ethics of information systems has focused on the way that people deploy particular technologies, and the consequences arising, with a view to making policy recommendations and ethical interventions By focusing on technology as a moral actor with reach across and beyond the internet, the authors reveal the complex and diffuse nature of ethical responsibility and the consequent implications for governance of SNS Research limitations/implications – The authors situate their research in a body of work known as disclosive ethics, and argue for an ongoing process of evaluating SNS to reveal their moral importance Along with that of other authors in the genre, this work is largely descriptive, but the paper engages with prior research by Brey and Introna to highlight the scope for theory development Practical implications – Governance measures that require the developers of social networking sites to revise their designs fail to address the diffuse nature of ethical responsibility in this case Such technologies need to be opened up to scrutiny on a regular basis to increase public awareness of the issues and thereby disclose concerns to a wider audience The authors suggest that there is value in studying the development and use of these technologies in their infancy, or if established, in the experiences of novice users Furthermore, flash points in technological trajectories can prove useful sites of investigation Originality/value – Existing research on social networking sites either fails to address ethical concerns head on or adopts a tool view of the technologies so that the focus is on the ethical behaviour of users The authors focus upon the agency, and hence the moral character, of technology to show both the possibilities for, and limitations of, ethical interventions in such cases

Developing Moral Agency through Narrative

Abstract: This paper poses the following question: When, in spite of knowing that it is wrong, people go on to hurt others, what does this mean for the development of moral agency? We begin by defining moral agency and briefly sketching relations between moral agency and other concepts. We then outline what three extant literatures suggest about this question: social domain theory, moral intuitionist theories, and theories of moral identity development. Building on these literatures, but moving beyond them, we propose that experiences of harming others are catalysts for the development of what we term moral agency. In the remainder of the paper, we outline a model for how moral agency develops that draws on research about the narrative development of self. We close by outlining some of the critical directions for future work that are suggested by our approach.

The Politics of Postanarchism

Abstract: This book explores the relevance of anarchism for contemporary politics. The author contends that this long neglected and almost heretical political philosophy is becoming increasingly central to radical struggles and movements today, especially in the wake of the collapse of the Marxist revolutionary projects and with the terminal decline of both social democracy and political liberalism. Here the author explores new directions for anti-authoritarian thought. Seeing anarchism as a politics of anti-politics, the author uses this paradox to formulate alternative ways of thinking about the place of the political, and the relationship between politics and ethics. Working at the intersections between anarchism and poststructuralism, the author frames a new approach to radical politics: 'postanarchism' – or anarchism without essential foundations. This original theoretical perspective – which draws upon classical anarchist thought, deconstruction, post-Marxism and psychoanalytic theory - allows for a renewed engagement with contemporary debates about future directions in radical politics. Postanarchism offers a distinct way of theorising a politics of emancipation, confronting central questions of the state domination, agency, ethics, democracy, social movements and the struggles taking place today on the terrain of globalisation.