—affect entities, ideas and behaviors? Does space have agency in the sense that spatial characteristics exert influence or contribute to change? Historians have reacted to these questions in different ways. For some, spaces can be “alive with generative capacity
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How Should Historians Talk about Spatial Agency?
Paul Stock
Boundary Plants, the Social Production of Space, and Vegetative Agency in Agrarian Societies
Michael Sheridan
anthropological study of boundaries, I review major approaches to boundary plants in the social sciences, as well as recent literature on space, place, and agency. Finally, I offer three short case studies from recent fieldwork showing how and why these
Extralegal Agency and the Search for Safety in Northeast Brazil
Moving beyond Carceral Logics
Hollis Moore
nearest prison (where she was incarcerated). This domestic stronghold, from which she arranges a safe(r) familial future, is a product of extralegal agency, a neglected dimension of Bahian low-income urban sociality. Scholars concerned with ‘territorial
Agency and the Anstoß
Max Planck Directors as Fichtean Subjects
Vita Peacock
One of the core assumptions in agency theory has been that agency is a primordial attribute of persons: an agent is 'the origin of causal events'. However, rather than situating agency at the origin, this article argues that we should a end to where agency, within a given context, itself originates. In Germany's Max Planck Society the departmental heads – so-called 'directors' – possess a significant degree of 'agency' in realizing their personal will. Yet they are not its authors. On the contrary their agency is a secondary product of the philosophies of German Idealism, which eulogize the subjectivity of a heroic intellectual. In this analysis, the agency of the directors is not a precondition of their humanity, but the off spring of a specific cultural inheritance which frames the organization's intramural life. Organizational theorists should thus pay close attention to the geo-cultural location of their object before drawing conclusions about agency.
Agency, Sustainability and Organizational Change
Jane Dickson
This article discusses how agency is emergent from the asymmetrical power interactions of multiple social actors and organizations. Agency, contingent and relational, is creative even when interpreted by people as unsuccessful. I employ ethnographic research from within a local authority sustainability team who were threatened with redundancy because of funding cuts imposed during the implementation of British Prime Minister David Cameron's Big Society project. In order to manage their situation, possible futures had to be re-imagined and appropriately contained through processes of self-assessment and self-management. The ability to enable self-directing action was often evident but was frequently interpreted by people as unsuccessful. This stemmed from misrecognition, scarcity and the lack of capacity to bring about full and substantial changes. Both the sustainability team and their work emerge from this process reduced and reformed through the competing tensions of systems of political governance and technologies of the self.
Post-Development Theory and the Discourse-Agency Conundrum
Jon Harald Sande Lie
Through its post-structural critique of development, post-development provides a fundamental dismissal of institutional development. Drawing on the work of Foucault, post-development portrays development as a monolithic and hegemonic discourse that constructs rather than solves the problems it purports to address. Yet post-development itself becomes guilty of creating an analysis that loses sight of individuals and agency, being fundamental to its development critique. This article discusses the discourse-agency nexus in light of the post-development context with specific reference to the grand structure-actor conundrum of social theory, and asks whether an actor perspective is compatible with discourse analysis and what—if anything—should be given primacy. It aims to provide insight into social theory and post-development comparatively and, furthermore, to put these in context, with Foucault's work being pivotal to the seminal post-development approach.
What Can the Human Development Approach Tell Us about Crisis?
An Exploration
Oscar A. Gómez
Recognizing the influence crises have in shaping global governance nowadays, the present work explores the possible contribution of human development thinking countering the perverse effects of shock-driven responses to major emergencies. This is done by focusing on contributions by Sen, Dreze, Haq and Stewart related to famines, violent conflict and the idea of human security, analyzed using a selection of four criteria, namely, describing the position of crisis inside human development thinking, issues of modeling and measurement, the stance toward agency, and the actors gathered around the discourse. After strengths and weaknesses are considered, the article suggests a tangential involvement through other human concepts, so human development ideas do not get muddled by the logic of shocks and fulfill the great responsibility of helping us avoid the many shortfalls of a security-obsessed view of humanity.
Discourses of Agency and Gender in Girls' Conversations on Sport in Windhoek, Namibia
Valerie R. Friesen
In many parts of the developing world, sport is a non-traditional activity for girls, one which is being used increasingly by development organizations for the empowerment of girls and women. However, very little research has been done on the complex subjective perceptions and understandings of the participants themselves. The girls in this study were participants in an after-school program in Windhoek, Namibia, which combines academics and sport. I used discourse analysis to highlight issues of agency, power, and gender that emerge from their reflections on their sport participation. Girls' conversations often revealed acceptance and normalization of dominant gender norms but also a growing critical consciousness, and demonstrated the numerous ways girls resist, negotiate and engage with these discourses through their own perceptions of power, agency, and hope.
Embodied Agency
Creating Room for Maneuver through Dance in Palestine
Sara Christophersen
the particular political and social context in which these first-person experiences are felt. In her work on embodied agency, this is what Diana * Coole (2005: 138) refers to as a critical reflexiveness entailing a back and forth between a first- and
Growing Up with Smartphones
How Stay-behind Filipino and Indonesian Children Exercise Agency in Transnational Families
Kristel Acedera, Bittiandra Chand Somaiah, and Brenda S. A. Yeoh
and contributing to the family's migration project, even in migration decision-making processes. Despite these paradigm shifts, we argue that there is a need to further explore how children's agency is manifested in transnational family life