Agency (philosophy)

About: Agency (philosophy) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10461 publications have been published within this topic receiving 350831 citations. The topic is also known as: Thought & Human agency.

New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies

Abstract: Preface. Introduction to the Second Edition. Introduction to the First Edition. 1. Some Schools of Social Theory and Philosophy. 2. Agency, Act--identifications and Communicative Intent. 3. The Production and Reproduction of Social Life. 4. The Form of Explanatory Accounts. Conclusion: Some New Rules of Sociological Method. Notes. Index.

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.

The personal and professional selves of teachers: stable and unstable identities

Abstract: In much educational literature it is recognised that the broader social conditions in which teachers live and work, and the personal and professional elements of teachers' lives, experiences, beliefs and practices are integral to one another, and that there are often tensions between these which impact to a greater or lesser extent upon teachers' sense of self or identity. If identity is a key influencing factor on teachers' sense of purpose, self‐efficacy, motivation, commitment, job satisfaction and effectiveness, then investigation of those factors which influence positively and negatively, the contexts in which these occur and the consequences for practice, is essential. Surprisingly, although notions of ‘self’ and personal identity are much used in educational research and theory, critical engagement with individual teachers' cognitive and emotional ‘selves’ has been relatively rare. Yet such engagement is important to all with an interest in raising and sustaining standards of teaching, particularly in centralist reform contexts which threaten to destabilise long‐held beliefs and practices. This article addresses the issue of teacher identities by drawing together research which examines the nature of the relationships between social structures and individual agency; between notions of a socially constructed, and therefore contingent and ever‐remade, ‘self’, and a ‘self’ with dispositions, attitudes and behavioural responses which are durable and relatively stable; and between cognitive and emotional identities. Drawing upon existing research literature and findings from a four‐year Department for Education and Skills funded project with 300 teachers in 100 schools which investigated variations in teachers' work and lives and their effects on pupils (VITAE), it finds that identities are neither intrinsically stable nor intrinsically fragmented, as earlier literature suggests. Rather, teacher identities may be more, or less, stable and more or less fragmented at different times and in different ways according to a number of life, career and situational factors.

Institutional Work: Refocusing Institutional Studies of Organization

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss an alternative focus for institutional studies of organization - the study of institutional work. Research on institutional work examines the practices of individual and collective actors aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. Our focus in this paper is on the distinctiveness of institutional work as a field of study and the potential it provides for the examination of new questions. We argue that research on institutional work can contribute to bringing the individual back into institutional theory, help to re-examine the relationship between agency and institutions, and provide a bridge between critical and institutional views of organization.

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.