Topic
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.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
••
TL;DR: This paper examined the relationship between social structure (social identities) and conversational structure (codeswitching, language preference) using data from bilingual talk-in-interaction and found that social categories such as ethnicity and group membership were correlated with conversational codeswitching.
99 citations
••
TL;DR: In this paper, an informal social network (ISN) model was proposed to explain individually rational non-altruistic voting participation in the United States, and the authors found that if group variables that affect whether voting is used as a marker of individual standing in groups are included, the likelihood of turnout rises dramatically.
Abstract: Classical rational choice explanations of voting participation are widely thought to have failed. This article argues that the currently dominant Group Mobilization and Ethical Agency approaches have serious shortcomings in explaining individually rational turnout. It develops an informal social network (ISN) model in which people rationally vote if their informal networks of family and friends attach enough importance to voting, because voting leads to social approval and vice versa. Using results from the social psychology literature, research on social groups in sociology and their own survey data, the authors argue that the ISN model can explain individually rational non-altruistic turnout. If group variables that affect whether voting is used as a marker of individual standing in groups are included, the likelihood of turnout rises dramatically.
99 citations
••
TL;DR: In this article, an agency-based conceptual framework is developed with which processes of change related to sustainability transitions can be researched, and new insights about the some of the elementary elements of sustainability transitions, such as the establishment of a so-called socio-technological niche, as well as the scaling up of the outcomes of such a niche.
98 citations
••
01 Nov 2006
TL;DR: In this article, a conceptual framework for thinking about community social context and crime is proposed, which is based on the idea of community as a metaphor with no real explanatory power, and which does not require individuals as units of analysis.
Abstract: The idea of “community” is at once compelling and frustrating. Indeed, few would disagree that at some fundamental level a community's social context matters for crime. Yet the concept is sufficiently vague that it risks becoming meaningless – if community context is all things to all people then it is simply a metaphor with no real explanatory power. What is a community? Neighborhood? Even if we can agree on the unit of analysis, what exactly about the community is doing the explaining? Do communities act? What is the mechanism at work? In this chapter I shall attempt to make some explanatory progress by setting out a conceptual framework for thinking about community social context and crime. In its pure form my claim is not only that communities matter but also that we need not have to explain individual criminal behavior. Multi-level integration is all the rage these days, but to demonstrate a causal effect of community does not necessarily require individuals as units of analysis. As I shall elaborate, a theory of crime rates, especially one that aims to explain how neighborhoods fare as units of social control over their own public spaces in the here and now, is logically not the same theoretical enterprise as explaining how neighborhoods exert long-term or developmental effects that ultimately translate into individual crime (Wikstrom & Sampson, 2003). Both sets of mechanisms may be at work, but one does not compel the other.
98 citations
••
TL;DR: In this paper, a 3-year study of instructional designers in Canadian universities revealed how, through reflexive critical practice, designers are active, moral, political, and influential in activating change at interpersonal, professional, institutional and societal levels.
Abstract: This paper offers an emerging interpretive framework for understanding the active role instructional designers play in the transformation of learning systems in higher education. A 3-year study of instructional designers in Canadian universities revealed how, through reflexive critical practice, designers are active, moral, political, and influential in activating change at interpersonal, professional, institutional and societal levels. Through narrative inquiry the voices of designers reflect the scope of agency, community and relational practice in which they regularly engage with faculty in institutions of higher learning.
98 citations