Fully Unconscious and Prone to Habit: The Characteristics of Agency in the Structure and Agency Dialectic

While the human agent must have the capacity for reflexivity, intentionality and consciousness, the same agent must also be affected by the social world in which she lives: herein lies the essence of the structure and agency dialectic. This paper argues that while some realists are in principle committed to a dialectical relationship between structure and agency, there is some dissonance between this commitment and the concepts of agency that they develop. I highlight the exclusion of the unconscious and habit from realist notions of agency and argue that this oversight serves to unbalance the dialectic between structure and agency thereby leading to the over‐empowerment of agency. The concepts of agency developed by Margaret Archer, Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu are discussed in this paper. Archer's concept of agency is argued to focus exclusively on reflexivity whilst neglecting to include the unconscious and habit. Giddens is shown to develop a much improved concept of agency, which includes the unconscious, however, his rejection of the independent causal powers of structure and agency problematises his commitment to the dialectic. A much improved approach to theorising agency, developed within a critical realist framework, is offered drawing on Bourdieu's concept of habitus. The paper concludes with a discussion of gender, and considers how the unconscious and habit can help to better understand the myriad ways in which gender functions in society.     

Animals,Agency and Resistance

In this paper we develop a relational approach to the question of animal agency. We distinguish between agency and action and, using three examples of non‐human animal behaviour, explore how human‐other animal interactions might be understood in terms of action, agency and resistance. In order to do this we draw on the distinction between primary and corporate agency found in the work of Margaret Archer, arguing that, while non‐human animals are able to act and to exercise primary agency, they are unable to exercise corporate agency. Animals are therefore agents; they act and their actions have consequences, they also resist conditions which they do not like and, in some circumstances, are able to change the conditions of their agency. We discuss the place of animals in the social world and the political implications of this way of viewing animal agency.     

Determinism and the Recovery of Human Agency: The Embodying of Persons

Intending the recovery of human agency with the aid of theories of human socio-cultural life, Turner and Harre do so however in terms of conflicting conceptions of the embodying of persons. Consequently, their theories share the problem of determinism and embodied human agency. This is the problem of the proper location of agency with regard to the person, the body, and society. These theories then are in fundamental conflict on exactly this issue of the proper location of agency. Turner's thesis of location: in the beginning is the body, and therefore the person. Thus Turner's recovery of agency: the effectiveness of persons resides in the discourse-independent agency of the bodies of persons. Harre's thesis of location: in the beginning is the person, and therefore the body. Thus Harre's recovery of agency: the effectiveness of persons resides in the discursive agency of persons embodied. For both Turner and Harre the intent to recover agency through embodiment is also a scientific intent. Thus, the problem of the proper location of agency requires that agency must be formulated in terms of ubiquitous determinism and not regularity determinism: only the former provides a conception of causal powers. To answer the question of location Turner is led to Merleau-Pontian phenomenology and its conception of the lived body. Instead, Harre enlists a realist philosophy of science with its special conception of causual powers. A systematic conception of agentive causation is shown to constitute the recovery of human agency and to enable us to make principled determinations in the assignment of agency. It is argued that, since phenomenology presumes the ontology of regularity determinism, it cannot provide us with what it in fact denies, a conception of causal powers. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty moved from his idea of the actual body as lived to the actual body as flesh, and in that reformulation it is best understood as causal powers. It is argued that without a conception of causal powers Turner's use of the lived body to establish the agency of effective persons must fail, revealing instead that the effectiveness of persons is the discursive agency of persons embodied. Persons discursively embodied enact the practices of speech acts and action signs systems.     

社会工作机构与政府组织的相互嵌入及其影响

由于政府的主导推动和社工机构对政府资源的强依赖,社工机构在创建及运作过程中与政府之间呈现出相互嵌入的倾向和特点,其中政府对社工机构的嵌入突出表现为一种结构性的强嵌入,而社工机构对政府的嵌入则是一种制度性和职能性的弱嵌入。本文以上海市自强社会服务总社等三家社工机构为例,来具体分析社工机构与政府之间如何相互的嵌入,以及这种相互嵌入对社工机构的实际运作及长远发展又产生怎样的冲击与影响。     

Toward a Dialogical Perspective on Agency

The aim of this article is to motivate and outline a dialogical perspective on agency that accommodates centrifugal and centripetal tendencies in current cultural theories of agency. To complement approaches that assume a high degree of integration and clarity, we emphasise the diversity of agency as it is experienced in the open-ended dialogical relationship with a particular other. While these former approaches to agency provide us with the means to examine the influence of social processes such as division of labour and reproduction of community, they tend to underplay the importance of agency as it is embodied and experienced in the lives of particular people. To reflect on this aspect of agency, we will draw extensively on Bakhtin's work, which crosses boundaries between philosophy, psychology and literary criticism, and which is concerned to understand what is personal in activity. In terms of agency, his work draws our attention to the sense of responsibility and potentiality that imbues our dialogues with particular others, the aesthetics and ethics involved in dialoguing with the other, and the sense of dilemmatic choice and intonation that is involved in our dialogue with the other.     

The irreversibility effect and agency conflicts

This paper studies the influence of agency conflicts on the irreversibility effect. Using a dynamic variant of the static Baron and Myerson (Econometrica 50(4):911–930, 1982) adverse selection model, we characterize under which circumstances the irreversibility effect arises in the presence and absence of an agency conflict. In particular, we find that in the presence of an agency conflict the irreversibility effect arises in more circumstances than in the standard first-best analysis that abstracts from agency problems.     

Accountability and the design of an anticorruption agency in a parliamentary democracy

This article explores the institutional requirements of accountability for an anticorruption agency in a parliamentary democracy. It suggests that approaching public accountability as ‘the satisfaction of legitimate expectations about the use of discretion’ is useful in understanding or designing an accountability regime for such a powerful agency requiring independence from the executive. The approach facilitates identification of a variety of stakeholders and a range of institutional means by which their legitimate expectations may be satisfied. Despite the recognition, in consequence, of multiple agents and channels of accountability, parliament must remain central to the accountability regime and can achieve this through an appropriately designed oversight committee. Examination of a selected Australian agency, the Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission, provides support for these propositions. Particular controversies involving this agency are used to demonstrate the requirements of a parliamentary oversight committee, and that independent review of determinations of misconduct, as well as appropriately regulated public hearings where there is a strong public interest in matters under investigation, are important elements of public accountability for an anticorruption agency.     

Autonomous Agency in Anti-Dualistic Social Ontologies: A Compatibilist Notion

Anti-dualistic social ontologies, those highlighting the intrinsic interdependency of agency and structure as two sides of the same coin, are sometimes criticized for failing to provide a satisfactory account of autonomous – capable and free – agency, or even denying the reality of such agency. This paper contests these claims, arguing that anti-dualistic ontologies only conflict with autonomous agency when the latter is understood in a highly voluntaristic sense, whose ideational roots go to what philosophers of free will call “incompatibilist” intuitions of freedom. Those intuitions suggest that actions (intentions, decisions) ultimately determined by extrinsic causes lack the kind of freedom presupposed by moral responsibility, so when agentive autonomy is presumed to involve such freedom, it does indeed cohere poorly with the anti-dualistic picture of intrinsically structured agency. Herein, however, an alternative, “compatibilist” notion of autonomy is advanced, such that does not conflict with extrinsic determination and is therefore congruent with anti-dualistic social ontologies.     

Developing and Sustaining Group Work Services

This paper identifies eleven interrelated elements that need to be considered in organizing and sustaining group services in an agency. An approach to building group services is seen as needing to be both systemic and systematic-i.e., every element of the agency system must be analyzed and assessment and implementation must be systematically done. The paper presents a set of interrelated contextual and programmatic factors and an approach to analyzing their individual, reciprocal, and collective effect on building group services in a range of agency settings.     

论养老机构中社会工作的介入——基于南通市养老机构的实证调查

随着我国人口老龄化趋势的日益加剧,养老问题逐渐成为一大社会问题,而且影响着经济社会的持续快速发展。但在当前形势下,居家养老模式已经受到现代社会发展的严重冲击和挑战,社区养老模式才刚刚起步,各种机制设施还有待进一步健全、完善。在新旧模式的转换过渡中,机构养老便成为解决养老问题的重要力量。本文通过对南通市养老机构的实证调查,发现了南通市机构养老存在的一些问题,提出了在养老机构中介入社会工作的设想。     

In Whose Interests? A Case Study of Community Work in a Voluntary Welfare Agency

This article traces the development of a community work project sponsored by a voluntary welfare agency. The context of its birth is outlined, as are the struggles it encountered during its operation. These struggles hinged on questions of accountability to the local community and the resistance to this concept from the sponsoring agency, resistance which led ultimately to the demise of the project. Community work has been regarded at times as the ‘radical’ form of social intervention, the means of working for dramatic social change in society. Whether or not it can be that, it certainly need not be. The events to be related here concern a welfare agency of essentially conservative orientation seeking to redefine its role within the changing welfare environment of the 1960s and 1970s. In the event it was quite prepared to embrace the outward forms and codes of community work, so much a part of the new welfare ethos of the Whitlam era, while maintaining unaltered its conservative orientation. For its field staff, however, the situation was hot so easy. Themselves influenced by the thoughts and practices in community work, they found a real tension between accountability to local community on one hand and to the sponsoring agency on the other. Conflict was inevitable. It was only when the agency was faced with demands regarding community accountability, a concept cutting across its traditional practice and presenting a perceived threat to agency autonomy and control, that it moved away into other, safer directions.     

Explaining with Intentional Omissions

Determining the human activity that social processes consist in is a central task for the philosophy of the social sciences. This paper asks: which conception of agency arising from contemporary action theory is the most suitable for social science explanation? It is argued that a movement-centered, Davidsonian picture of agency is not suitable for explaining certain social processes such as strikes and boycotts because, instead of intentional bodily movements, they are explained by the intentional omissions of agents. I propose that instead of intentional bodily movements, social processes are better explained by phenomena in which an agent is taking an active relation both to her mental or bodily processes as well as to what is happening around her. Thus, to fully explain social processes, a comprehensive theory of agency that can account for intentional actions and intentional omissions and a conception of agency that includes both materialist and volitionalist aspects is needed.     

Some Aspects of Empowerment: A Case Study of Work with Disadvantaged Youth

This article describes and comments on negotiations between an agency worker, his supervisors, and a group of disadvantaged young people on the involvement of young people in the appointment of a new agency worker. It provides some background on the actors and the agency, tells what happened and aims to identify some aspects of empowerment through the use of a simple grid. By comparison with the daily experience of disadvantage of the young people involved it is a minor experience in empowerment. Despite that it is a case study placed within a radical tradition espousing the pursuit of social justice.     

Citizen participation: conflicting interests in state and national agency policy making

This study examines citizen participation in agency policy making across levels of governance in the United States, to address the following questions: Do citizens pursuing economic policy goals participate and wield influence in agency policy making differently than do citizens pursuing noneconomic policy goals? Does citizen participation in state policy making differ from that in national policy making? Analysis of policy making and participation in one policy sector, public forest management, suggests that citizens favoring economic (timber) goals participate more, and perceive greater influence, in state agency decisions, while those favoring noneconomic (environmental preservation) goals participate more, and perceive greater influence, in national agency decisions. These differences result from several factors, including legal constraints, agency composition, use outcomes, geographic location of stakeholders, and job mobility.     

The assembly of active participation by parents of children subject to a multi‐agency model of early intervention in child and family services

The Common Assessment Framework provides a model of early intervention, which is familiar in local authorities throughout England, and asserts a participatory framework of child and family engagement. This paper is based on a qualitative study of parents and children who were subject to a multi‐agency process of early intervention in children's social care in a local authority in the Midlands of England. I advance the concept of assemblage to consider the basis of an active service user participation as rather more a struggle to achieve than something that has been granted by practitioner agencies. Interview extracts are used to show the enrolment and assembly of participation as a process of service users developing their active human agency in a multi‐agency setting. The article explores the assembling of skills in administration and management of meetings and plans, accessing knowledge and expertise through service user networks, and challenging professional expertise and institutional space while developing personal qualities of confidence and voice as a means of marshalling an effective participation in a multi‐agency setting.     

ANALYSIS OF CLIENT CAREERS FOR PROGRAM EVALUATION

The present study analyzes the careers of clients, both within and between agencies. Several phases of the careers of 316 adolescent clients are examined as part of a process evaluation of Professional Youth Services (PYS). Clients' movement within PYS is described to provide on understanding of when and why clients leave a helping agency and to describe some of the characteristics of clients who are most likely to have their treatment interrupted. In addition, clients' "between agency" movement is analyzed by exploring the other human service agency involvements) of clients; in this way the role of PYS in the larger service delivery network is clarified.     

The proof of the pudding: What difference does multi‐agency working make to families with disabled children with complex health care needs?

More than 20 years of research with disabled children, young people and their families has highlighted the need for the different professionals and services that support them to work more closely together. The British policy and legal framework for ‘joined up working’ has never been stronger. However, there has been an assumption that multi‐ or inter‐agency working will inevitably be a ‘good thing’ for families. This paper discusses findings from a 3‐year research project which looked at both the process and impact of multi‐agency working on families with a disabled child with complex health care needs. Interviews with 25 parents and 18 children and young people who used six developed, multi‐agency services were carried out. Findings suggested that the services had made a big difference to the health care needs of disabled children but were less able to meet the wider needs of the child and the family – particularly in relation to social and emotional needs. Multi‐agency working appeared to make some positive, but not significant, differences to the lives of families.     

Institutional Entrepreneurship and Agency

The notion of institutional entrepreneurship has become very popular in the last decade. Starting from a review of the literature on the topic, I first focus on the use of the idea of individual entrepreneurs and point out three theoretical incongruities it produces. I then discuss notions of collective entrepreneurship and institutional work to see if they can overcome these incongruities. I conclude that although they can remedy some of the problems, these notions run the risk of describing everything until they describe nothing. In order to limit and enable the entrepreneurship literature to discuss agency meaningfully, I argue, it needs to develop analytical frames of agency derived either from existing sociological theories or from further developing its own brand of agency theory.     

When I hurt others,and when I get hurt: Integrating victim and perpetrator experiences of harm into a sense of moral agency

In a social world, occasionally we all will harm others, as well as be harmed. Previous research has focused largely on how perpetration and victimization events are distinct rather than on how they might be integrated with one another, jointly shaping moral agency. We report on an exploratory qualitative analysis of narratives about perpetration and victimization. Our sample included 30 participants divided evenly by gender and age (ages 11–12, 16–17, and 19–26). Our aims were: (a) to identify potential forms of integration in moral agency across perpetration and victimization; (b) to explore developmental paths in integration; and (c) to examine forms of integration that were not tied directly to the construction of moral agency. We found three frequent integration patterns: harm was similarly understandable in perpetrator and victim narratives; harm was similarly incomprehensible in perpetrator and victim narratives; and harm was understandable in perpetration narratives but incomprehensible in victim narratives. Other forms of integration suggestive of how diminished moral agency can be reclaimed via narrative also were identified.