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.

Elaborating the “New Institutionalism”

Abstract: To sketch an institutional approach, this paper elaborates ideas presented over 20 years ago in The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life (March and Olsen 1984). Institutionalism, as that term is used here, connotes a general approach to the study of political institutions, a set of theoretical ideas and hypotheses concerning the relations between institutional characteristics and political agency, performance and change. Institutionalism emphasizes the endogenous nature and social construction of political institutions. Institutions are not simply equilibrium contracts among self-seeking, calculating individual actors or arenas for contending social forces. They are collections of structures, rules and standard operating procedures that have a partly autonomous role in political life. The paper ends with raising some research questions at the frontier of institutional studies.

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

Advances in Social Theory and Methodology : Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies

Abstract: Introduction. The Micro-Sociological Challenge of Macro-Sociology: Towards a Reconstruction of Social Theory and Methodology K. Knorr-Cetina. Part 1. The Micro-Foundations of Social Knowledge 1. Notes on the Integration of Micro- and Macro-levels of Analysis A.V. Cicourel 2. Micro-translation as a Theory-Building Strategy R. Collins 3. Intermediate Steps between Micro- and Macro-Integration: the Case of Screening for Inherited Disorders T. Duster Part 2. Action and Structure: The Cognitive Organization of Symbolic Practice 4. Philosophical Aspects of the Micro-Macro Problem R. Harre 5. Agency, Institution and Time-Space Analysis A. Giddens 6. Social Ritual and Relative Truth in Natural Language G. Fauconnier Part 3. Toward a Reconstruction of Systems Perspectives 7. Transformational Theory and the Internal Environment of Action Systems V. Lidz 8. Communication about Law in Interaction Systems N. Luhmann Part 4. The Production of Societal Macro-Structures: Aspects of a Political Economy of Practice 9. Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism J. Habermas 10. Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-Structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to Do So M. Callon and B. Latour 11. Men and Machines P. Bourdieu

Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect

Abstract: In Animacies , Mel Y. Chen draws on recent debates about sexuality, race, and affect to examine how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, or deathly animates cultural lives. Toward that end, Chen investigates the blurry division between the living and the dead, or that which is beyond the human or animal. Within the field of linguistics, animacy has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, sentience, or liveness. Chen turns to cognitive linguistics to stress how language habitually differentiates the animate and the inanimate. Expanding this construct, Chen argues that animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal rights debates to biosecurity concerns. Chen's book is the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory. Through analyses of dehumanizing insults, the meanings of queerness, animal protagonists in recent Asian/American art and film, the lead in toys panic in 2007, and the social lives of environmental illness, Animacies illuminates a hierarchical politics infused by race, sexuality, and ability. In this groundbreaking book, Chen rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness—and demonstrates how attention to the affective charge of matter challenges commonsense orderings of the world.

Reason and Morality

Abstract: "Most modern philosophers attempt to solve the problem of morality from within the epistemological assumptions that define the dominant cultural perspective of our age. Alan Gewirth's "Reason and Morality" is a major work in this ongoing enterprise. Gewirth develops, with patience and skill, what he calls a 'modified naturalism' in which morality is derived by logic alone from the concept of action. . . . I think that the publication of "Reason and Morality" is a major event in the history of moral philosophy. It develops with great power a new and exciting position in ethical naturalism. No one, regardless of philosophical stance, can read this work without an enlargement of mind. It illuminates morality and agency for all."-E. M. Adams, "The Review of Metaphysics" "This is a fascinating study of an apparently intractable problem. Gewirth has provided plenty of material for further discussion, and his theory deserves serious consideration. He is always aware of possible rejoinders and argues in a rigorous manner, showing a firm grasp of the current state of moral and political philosophy."-"Mind"