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.

The constitution of agency : essays on practical reason and moral psychology

Abstract: PART ONE: THE PRINCIPLES OF PRACTICAL REASON PART TWO: MORAL VIRTUE AND MORAL PSYCHOLOGY PART THREE: OTHER REFLECTIONS

Rhetoric and Capitalism: Rhetorical Agency as Communicative Labor

Abstract: ed and captured to perform gendered, nationalized, and raced work—forms of work and labor that can create class structures and class forms, and can distribute bodies along the international division of labor. In other words, by focusing on communicative labor we can understand how communication makes possible the invention of class. As a form of constituent power, however, labor can never be reduced to its capture, command, and control by capital. For Hardt and Negri the cooperative potential of affirmative labor, or more specifically, the qualitative significance of communicative and affective labor, generates a productive excess impossible to calculate and control. The social force of labor “appears simply as the power to act. . . . Anything that blocks this power to act is merely an obstacle to overcome—an obstacle that is eventually outflanked, weakened, and smashed by the critical powers of labor and the everyday passional wisdom of the affects” (2000, 358). Living labor’s power to act demonstrates an ability to challenge and create new values. Therefore, rhetorical agency comes first; it realizes the value necessary for the current regime of capital and the values necessary to challenge the current regime of governance. What does this mean for the political dimensions of rhetorical agency? It means that politics cannot be disconnected from the sphere of bio-political production. To do so would be to provide a place where the revolutionary energy of communicative labor becomes harnessed to the 203 RHETORICAL AGENCY AS COMMUNICATIVE LABOR social division of labor. To take the example of free speech, when free speech becomes a political right disconnected from the constitutive power of labor, it becomes possible to balance the right of free speech against societal protection. In this way, the domain of the political-legal becomes a space for coercive restrictions on the constitutive power of labor. Being political, as Engin Isen highlights, is to disagree with the dominant regime of citizenship. Recall that the political dimension of communicative labor is built into bio-political production’s attempt to harness and capture the constitutive power of communication. As living labor, communication acts; there is no anxiety here about the status of rhetorical agency, because its action generates the value of living labor. Rhetorical agency is everywhere. To fully flesh out the politics of living labor requires a future study on how communicative labor provides new technologies and strategies for a temporal and spatial disagreement with the command logics of bio-po-

Socio-Theoretic Accounts of IS: The Problem of Agency

Abstract: A long-standing debate in the IS literature concerns the relationship between technology and organization. Does technology cause effects in organizations, or is it humans that determine how technology is used? Many socio-theoretic accounts of a middle way between the extremes of technolog- ical and social determinism have been suggested: in recent years the more convincing explanations have been based on Giddens' structuration theory and, more recently, on actor network theory. The two theories, however, may be seen to adopt rather different, and potentially incompatible, views of agency. Thus, structuration theory sees agency as a uniquely human prop- erty, whereas the principle of general symmetry in actor network theory implies that machines may also be actors. This rather fundamental disagree- ment may be characterized as the problem of agency. At the empirical level the problem of agency can be studied through ERP systems. These systems, though built and implemented by people, are thought to be wide-ranging in

Tales of the unexpected: Integrating career shocks in the contemporary careers literature

Abstract: Orientation: This article addresses the interplay between individual agency and contextual factors in contemporary career development processes. In light of the prominence of the former in the contemporary scholarly debate, we present a case for a more comprehensive approach by heeding the latter as well. Research purpose: The main aim of this article was to provide a definition and conceptualisation of career shocks, as well as an agenda for future research on this topic. Motivation for the study: Most of the contemporary careers literature has overemphasised the role of individual agency in career development. While certainly important, we argue that we also need to address the role of context – in this case, career shocks – in order to gain a fuller appreciation of career development processes. Main conclusions and implications: We provide a definition of career shocks based on the existing literature related to chance events and turnover. In addition, we provide an overview of attributes of career shocks, potentially valuable theoretical perspectives and key issues for future research. Contribution: This article brings together several existing streams of literature related to career shocks and provides an integrative definition and conceptualisation. We hope that this will ignite future research on an important but often overlooked topic.