Academic literature on the topic 'Actor-agency relations'
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Journal articles on the topic "Actor-agency relations"
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Somerville, Ian. "Agency versus identity: actor‐network theory meets public relations." Corporate Communications: An International Journal 4, no. 1 (March 1999): 6–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13563289910254525.
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Braun, Benjamin, Sebastian Schindler, and Tobias Wille. "Rethinking agency in International Relations: performativity, performances and actor-networks." Journal of International Relations and Development 22, no. 4 (April 25, 2018): 787–807. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0147-z.
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Jansen, Till. "Beyond ANT." European Journal of Social Theory 20, no. 2 (May 3, 2016): 199–215. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1368431016646506.
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Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) offers an ‘infra-language’ of the social that allows one to trace social relations very dynamically, while at the same time dissolving human agency, thus providing a flat and de-centred way into sociology. However, ANT struggles with its theoretical design that may lead us to reduce agency to causation and to conceptualize actor-networks as homogeneous ontologies of force. This article proposes to regard ANT’s inability to conceptualize reflexivity and the interrelatedness of different ontologies as the fundamental problem of the theory. Drawing on Günther, it offers an ‘infra-language’ of reflexive relations while maintaining ANT’s de-centred approach. This would enable us to conceptualize actor-networks as non-homogeneous, dynamic and connecting different societal rationales while maintaining the main strengths of ANT.
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Lohse, Mikael. "Finnish Defence Intelligence Agency - an Actor in National Security?" Journal of Strategic Security 13, no. 2 (July 2020): 107–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.13.2.1799.
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One disparate feature between Finnish civilian and military intelligence is their express relationship to national security. The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service prominently declares to be an expert in national security whereas no corresponding public territorial claim has been made by its counterpart – the Finnish Defence Intelligence Agency (FDIA). This observation leads to the question: are the tasks of the FDIA limited solely to the military defence of Finland or has it any more comprehensive role in safeguarding national security. This article aims to examine this question by comparing the provisions governing the purpose of civilian and military intelligence and analysing the provision on the targets of military intelligence. Legal analysis indicate that military intelligence targets are broadly located in the field on national security, both at the core of military activities and in the outer reaches on non-military activities. The FDIA actually has a wide mandate which extends its mission beyond the reaches of civilian intelligence.
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Pyrozhkov, Serhii, and Nazip Khamitov. "Ukraine in the 21st Century: Strengthening Civilisational Agency." Diplomatic Ukraine, no. XXI (2020): 595–604. http://dx.doi.org/10.37837/2707-7683-2020-28.
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The article addresses the issue of Ukraine’s civilisational agency in the modern world. The authors state that a civilisational destiny of a state is determined by geopolitical actors claiming a superpower status, the state’s own choice, people’s will, its political and intellectual elite. Then, a state becomes a unit of international relations and law, world geopolitics, science, art; a civilisational actor of history, the present, and the future. Ukraine strives to become such an actor, have its civilisational project, and implement it. Our country is located between the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian civilisational societies, thus its capacity to be an actor in the modern globalised world is contingent on efficient cooperation with both of the societies. The authors believe that the implementation of the civilisational project of Ukraine as an actor and not as an object of modern world lies in systemic cooperation with the international actors which accept freedom and dignity of a human being as fundamental values. The authors single out the civilisational measures of such a society, which is a society of trust, social and political partnership, and balanced interaction of the rule of law and civil society. In its civilisational project of the 21st century, Ukraine should stand for a society of innovations and information, where a person can live up to her full potential. It is about the worldview transformation of consciousness and relations among people, countries, civilisations, and civilisational worlds. The implementation of this project is a fundamental condition for ensuring the national security and existence of Ukraine as an independent state. That is indeed a noble cause of Ukraine and its people in the multifaceted world of the 21st century. Keywords: Eurasian civilisational society, Euro-Atlantic direction, agency of Ukraine, independent state.
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Epstein, Charlotte. "Theorizing Agency in Hobbes's Wake: The Rational Actor, the Self, or the Speaking Subject?" International Organization 67, no. 2 (April 2013): 287–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020818313000039.
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AbstractThe rationalist-constructivist divide that runs through the discipline of International Relations (IR) revolves around two figures of agency, the rational actor and the constructivist “self.” In this article I examine the models of agency that implicitly or explicitly underpin the study of international politics. I show how both notions of the rational actor and the constructivist self have remained wedded to individualist understandings of agency that were first incarnated in the discipline's self-understandings by Hobbes's natural individual. Despite its turn to social theory, this persistent individualism has hampered constructivism's ability to appraise the ways in which the actors and structures of international politics mutually constitute one another “all the way down.” My purpose is to lay the foundations for a nonindividualist, adequately relational, social theory of international politics. To this end I propose a third model of agency, Lacan's split speaking subject. Through a Lacanian reading of the Leviathan, I show how the speaking subject has in fact laid buried away in the discipline's Hobbesian legacy all along.
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Pijović, Nikola. "How States Order the World: A Typology of “Core” and “Peripheral” Foreign Policy." Foreign Policy Analysis 16, no. 3 (August 23, 2019): 504–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/fpa/orz022.
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Abstract Every state's foreign policy has to deal with other states, regions, and transnational issues, not all of whom are likely to receive the same level of policy-making interest and attention. States have differing foreign policy priorities, but how do we conceptualize those different priorities? To explain how states order the world and prioritize their foreign policy, I establish an ideal typology of “core” and “peripheral” foreign policy, which categorizes more and less important foreign policy spaces and issues. This typology contributes to foreign policy analysis's “middle-range” theorizing by establishing how and why the determinants, processes, and goals of foreign policy–making in these distinct types differ, and where policy-makers have the greatest ability to influence change in foreign policy. One of the key insights of this research relates to how structure and agency differently influence foreign policy–making: “core” foreign policy tends to be more structurally rigid and obtrusive, allowing less maneuverability for actor agency seeking to change the status quo, while “peripheral” foreign policy is less structurally rigid and obtrusive, allowing for greater actor agency in changing foreign policy direction and priorities. Hence, this typology should aid our understanding and prediction of foreign policy priorities and decisions.
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Ariyani, Nafiah, and Farhat Umar. "Typology of Stakeholders in Perspective of Sustainable Tourism Development Use Mactor Method." Urban Studies and Public Administration 3, no. 4 (November 26, 2020): p20. http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/uspa.v3n4p20.
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Tourism represents a complex multi-actor system. The successful sustainable development of tourism areas requires all stakeholders’ support and a map of the strengths, the relations, and the interests of stakeholder actors to determine appropriate institutional policies. This study aims to map stakeholders’ character at the Kedung Ombo tourism area development as a favorite potential destination in Central Java, Indonesia. Data collection used the focused group discussions method. The data analysis used was the Mactor method. This research shows that the Pemalijuana River Flow Management Office, the Indonesian State Forest Company, and the Regional Development Planning Agency were the dominant actors. The Department of Youth, Sports and Tourism, College, village government, the youth organization, and business people are relay actors. College is an autonomous actor; meanwhile, the youth organization, local government, and community are actor-dependent. The Regional Development Planning Agency Department of Youth, Sports and Tourism, college, village government, youth organizations, and business people are convergent actors who can build strong alliances. The support of BBWS Pemali Juana and Perhutani to collaborate is needed to succeed. The research findings are the basis for making a participative institutional design for the Kedung Ombo tourist area’s success and sustainability.
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Seitzl, Lina, and Patrick Emmenegger. "How agents change institutions: Coalitional dynamics and the reform of commercial training in Switzerland." Business and Politics 21, no. 2 (December 17, 2018): 145–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/bap.2018.21.
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AbstractHistorical institutionalist research has long struggled to come to terms with agency. Yet injecting agency into historical-institutionalist accounts is no easy task. If institutions are structuring agents’ actions, while they are simultaneously being structured by these very agents’ behavior, the ontological status of institutions remains unclear. Hence, most historical-institutional accounts, at the conceptual level, tend to downplay the role of agency. However, in this way, they also remain incomplete. Following the “coalitional turn” in historical institutionalism, we develop a new account of institutional change and stability that awards a central role to agency. At the heart of our approach is the notion that both stability and change in institutions presuppose constant coalition building by organized entrepreneurial actors. However, for several reasons, such coalition building is complicated, which ultimately leads to institutional stability. In addition, we argue that relevant state agencies actively shape whether the incumbent coalition or the challenger coalition prevails. We illustrate the potential of our actor-centered approach to institutional change by analyzing the reform of commercial training in Switzerland, tracing developments from the beginning of the 1980s until today.
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Yetim, Mustafa, and Tamer Kaşıkcı. "Re-adapting to Changing Middle Eastern Politics: The Modification in Turkey’s Actor Perception and Turkey-Free Syrian Army (FSA) Relations." Contemporary Review of the Middle East 8, no. 2 (June 2021): 193–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2347798921999178.
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This article investigates the current modification in Turkey’s actor perception according to the Middle East’s changing dynamics. Clarifying the shift in Turkish foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party (JDP) and the emergent structural realities in the Middle East as a result of increasing agency of the violent non-state actors (VNSAs) in the aftermath of several Arab revolutions, the current article scrutinizes the adaption of Turkish foreign policy to these regional realities. In this context, to prove Turkey’s active orientation toward the recent regional environment, its exceptional engagement with one of the important VNSAs, namely the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or Syrian National Army (SNA), has been empirically examined. Within this background, the current resurrection of the VNSAs in the Middle East and regional-global actors’ reactions to this reality will also be analyzed. Afterward, Turkey’s unique and swift compliance with this reality and the consequent modification of its actor perception will be explored.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Actor-agency relations"
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Ogilvie-Whyte, Sharon Anne. "An analytical ethnography of children's agency, power and social relations : an actor-network theory approach." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/17093.
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This thesis connects with and extends inter alia the recent but as yet peripheral move within the sociology of childhood to open up children's agency to empirical analysis. Drawing heuristically upon actor-network theory and thought of this kind its aim is to expose the networks of heterogeneous associations upon which children's agency and power depends. Focusing upon children's every day play activities; the analytical lens is extended to consider the role of nonhumans that are embedded in children's mundane play interactions within their local neighbourhood and within their school playground. In doing so, this thesis argues that nonhumans are crucial participants in social interaction that are implicated in and pivotal to the heterogeneous networks of associations that children, as heterogeneous engineers, actively create to achieve their particular goals and desires. As a corollary to this, an analytical incorporation of nonhumans has drawn attention to the wider role that nonhumans play in the life worlds of children. In respect to this, the argument this thesis advances is that nonhumans,in their diverse forms, are functionally important in holding children's social relations in place. Drawn from ethnographic fieldwork with children, this thesis argues that children's agency, power and social relations, take their form and are an outcome of the heterogeneous associations that take place between humans and `things'.
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Quinn, Rapin, and rapin quinn@dest gov au. "NGOs, Peasants and the State: Transformation and Intervention in Rural Thailand, 1970-1990." The Australian National University. Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, 1997. http://thesis.anu.edu.au./public/adt-ANU20060227.084102.
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This study examines people-centred Thai NGOs trying to help peasants empower themselves in order to compete better in conflicts over land, water, forest, and capital, during the 1970s to 1990s. The study investigates how the NGOs contested asymmetric power relations among government officials, private entrepreneurs and ordinary people while helping raise the peoples confidence in their own power to negotiate their demands with other actors.¶
The thesis argues that the NGOs are able to play an interventionist role when a number of key factors coexist. First, the NGOs are able to understand local situations, which contain asymmetric power relations between different actors, in relation to current changes in the wider context of the Thai political economy and seize the time to take action. Secondly, the NGOs are able to articulate a social meaning beyond the dominating rhetoric of the state and the capitalists which encourages the peoples participation in collective activities. Thirdly, while dealing with one problem in social relations and negotiation with local environment, the NGOs are able to recognise new problems as they arise and rapidly identify a new political space for the actors to renegotiate their conflicting interests and demands. Fourthly, the NGOs are able to recreate new meanings, new actors and reform their organisations and networks to deal with new situations. Finally, the NGOs are able to effectively use three pillars of their movement, namely individuals, organisations and networks to deal with everyday politics and collective protest.¶
The case studies in three villages in Northern Thailand reveal that the NGOs were able to play an interventionist role in specific situations through their alternative development strategies somewhat influenced by structural Marxism. The thesis recommends that the NGO interventionist role be continued so as to overcome tensions within the NGO community, for instance, between the NGOs working at the grass-roots level and the NGOs working at regional and national levels (including NGO funding agencies); local everyday conflicts; and the bipolar views of a society among the NGOs expressed in dichotomous thinking between rural and urban, community and state, conflict and order, actor and system.¶
The fragmentation of NGO social and environmental movements showed that there is no single formula or easy solution to the problems. If the NGOs want to continue their interventionist role to help empower ordinary people and help them gain access to productive resources, they must move beyond their bipolar views of a society to discover the middle ground to search for new meanings, new actors, new issues and to create again and again counter-hegemony movements. This could be done by having abstract development theories assessed and enriched by concrete development practices and vice versa. Both theorists and practitioners need to use their own imagination to invent and reinvent what and how best to continue.
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Hiltz, Tia. "Indigenous media relations: reconfiguring the mainstream." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/5650.
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Much of the scholarly literature on Indigenous media relations frames Indigenous peoples as passive players in the mainstream media, and focuses on negative elements such as stereotypes. This thesis challenges this view, finding that Indigenous peoples in Canada actively and strategically engage with mainstream and social media as they forward their social and political agendas. This thesis provides an analysis of the counter-colonial narrative in Canada by offering a new perspective on Indigenous media relations, focusing as a case on the Idle No More movement. Emphasizing three dimensions of communication--the mainstream print media, social media, and individuals involved in Indigenous media relations--I examine the ways in which Indigenous agency and empowerment have the potential to change discourses in the media.
As sources of insight I draw on a discourse analysis of mainstream news media, a qualitative analysis of social media and on interviews with those who have significant experience in Indigenous media relations. Interviews with prominent media personalities and individuals involved in media relations (including CBC’s Duncan McCue and Janet Rogers; Four Host Nations CEO Tewanee Joseph, and others) illustrate the novel and impactful ways indigenous peoples in Canada are actively and strategically shaping the mainstream media. These representations create a more complex picture of Indigenous peoples as they counter the stereotyped or victimized media narratives within which Indigenous peoples have historically been placed.Graduate
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Quinn, Rapin. "NGOs, Peasants and the State: Transformation and Intervention in Rural Thailand, 1970-1990." Phd thesis, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/48019.
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This study examines people-centred Thai NGOs trying to help peasants empower themselves in order to compete better in conflicts over land, water, forest, and capital, during the 1970s to 1990s. The study investigates how the NGOs contested asymmetric power relations among government officials, private entrepreneurs and ordinary people while helping raise the people’s confidence in their own power to negotiate their demands with other actors.¶ The thesis argues that the NGOs are able to play an interventionist role when a number of key factors coexist. ...
Books on the topic "Actor-agency relations"
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Walt, Stephen M. Realism and Security. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.286.
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Political Realism has been described as the “oldest theory” of international politics, as well as the “dominant” one. Central to the realist tradition is the concept of “security.” Realism sees the insecurity of states as the main problem in international relations. It depicts the international system as a realm where “self-help” is the primary motivation; states must provide security for themselves because no other agency or actor can be counted on to do so. However, realists offer different explanations for why security is scarce, emphasizing a range of underlying mechanisms and causal factors such as man’s innate desire for power; conflicts of interest that arise between states possessing different resource endowments, economic systems, and political orders; and the “ordering principle” of international anarchy. They also propose numerous factors that can intensify or ameliorate the basic security problem, such as polarity, shifts in the overall balance of power, the “offense–defense balance,” and domestic politics. Several alternative approaches to international relations have challenged the basic realist account of the security problem, three of which are democratic peace theory, economic liberalism, and social constructivism. Furthermore, realism outlines various strategies that states can pursue in order to make themselves more secure, such as maximizing power, international alliances, arms racing, socialization and innovation, and institutions and diplomacy. Scholars continue to debate the historical roots, conceptual foundations, and predictive accuracy of realism. New avenues of research cover issues such as civil war, ethnic conflict, mass violence, September 11, and the Iraq War.
Book chapters on the topic "Actor-agency relations"
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Khan, M. Shah Alam, Rezaur Rahman, Nusrat Jahan Tarin, Sheikh Nazmul Huda, and A. T. M. Zakir Hossain. "Views from the Sluice Gate: Water Insecurity, Conflict and Cooperation in Peri-Urban Khulna, Bangladesh." In Water Security, Conflict and Cooperation in Peri-Urban South Asia, 123–45. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79035-6_7.
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AbstractThis chapter explores conflict and cooperation around water infrastructure in relation to contestations over water and land in peri-urban Khulna, Bangladesh. It analyses how these contestations, together with the effects of climate change and urbanization, contribute to water insecurity. These dynamics are explored by viewing the peri-urban space as a hydro-social system where physical infrastructure (a sluice gate), hydrological processes and various actors interact. Through participatory appraisal, stakeholder analysis and social power mapping, we analyse the emergence, manifestations and implications of conflicts, and how power relations influence the conflict dynamics. The chapter further presents the process and outcome of participatory actions for capacity-building of communities to facilitate their empowerment by elevating their knowledge level and negotiating capabilities toward securing water and resolving conflicts. We argue that conflicts and water insecurities of peri-urban communities largely emerge from the absence of their participation in the planning and management of water infrastructure, and their limited capacity to resist changes in the control of water and agricultural land. The chapter concludes that peri-urban communities lack the power and agency to mitigate the impacts of urbanization and climate change, while neither urban nor rural planning processes formally recognize the peri-urban and its specific water security problems and needs. This policy gap leads to increasingly complex conflicts and water insecurities. Success and sustainability of alternative livelihood choices and collective action by marginalized communities depend much on continued advocacy, cooperation among and between communities and government agencies, commitment of a trusted neutral actor, and mutual understanding and respect for each other’s positions.
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Wiltshier, Peter. "Informed developments for a sustainable community: an English case study in renewal and rejuvenation." In Tourism planning and development in Western Europe, 8–19. Wallingford: CABI, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1079/9781800620797.0001.
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Abstract This chapter offers a critical analysis of practices adopted for the implementation of sustainable development goals in the English Midlands. Through the lenses of various discourses, this case study epitomizes a long-held belief in the positive outcomes of rejuvenation and regeneration following the decline in manufacturing and extractive industry that occurred in the 1980s. Several evaluations are performed, such as relational discourse, structuration, endogeny, stakeholders and structure agency/actor networks, and recommendations are provided for any destination, especially those more mature places that need skills, capacity and resources to effect change for future welfare and an enduring legacy.
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Da Silveira, Alexandre Borba, Norberto Hoppen, and Patricia Kinast De Camillis. "Flattening Relations in the Sharing Economy." In Handbook of Research on the Platform Economy and the Evolution of E-Commerce, 26–51. IGI Global, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7545-1.ch002.
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The sharing economy (SE) includes economic, social, and technological arrangements to promote collaborative relations between users and providers willing to share assets through digital platforms (DP). Even evolving fast, there is an opportunity to discuss how DP establishes connections between users and providers and uses a digital agency to mediate and flatten consumption relations in SE. Therefore, the authors propose a framework and future research directions that explore characteristics of the actants (roles, agency, behavioral attitudes) in the process of flattening consumption relations through DP in SE (connections, mediation, induction). To structure this framework, the authors consolidated the various definitions of its main elements and adopted the actor-network theory concept of translation as the theoretical-methodological approach to analyze the associations that determined how flattening consumption relations occur in SE.
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McCourt, David M. "The New Constructivism." In The New Constructivism in International Relations Theory, 39–52. Policy Press, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781529217827.003.0003.
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Chapter 2 analyses the main approaches of The New Constructivism: practice theory, relationalism, network analysis, and actor network theory. I first offer an overview of each perspective, and then describe how together they overcome the dichotomies described related to Constructivism I discuss in the previous chapter, together forming a broad “practice-relational” theoretical basis for the New Constructivism in IR. While practice theory is often thought limited to the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I explore the full array of pragmatic and critical practice theories available to IR scholars. Similarly, I describe a broad account of relational and processual sociology, network analysis and actor network theory. I describe how, by deploying distinct concepts, a practice-relational approach moves beyond problematic binaries like material vs. ideational explanations, structure vs. agency, and subjective vs. object accounts of social action. From a practice-relational perspective, political agents are always situated in social contexts imbued with power and knowledge. I show how a practice-relational view proves that approaches that downplay meaning are as misplaced as those that rely solely on objective power differentials to explain political life.
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Pye, Valerie Clayman, and Cara Gargano. "Sight Unseen: Visualising Variability through Ontological Representations in Macbeth." In Variable Objects, 192–209. Edinburgh University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474481397.003.0010.
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Starting with Morton’s notion of the hyperobject, this chapter locates Shakespeare’s texts – the ultimate humanist object – in terms of the interobjective relations between objects both present and absent in Macbeth. Focusing explicitly on Macbeth’s absent-present dagger, this chapter interrogates the relationship between the material and the immaterial and the ways in which they create a traumatic tension between the seen and unseen. The play lines, “art thou but a dagger of the mind?” introduces visual variability as seen on the page, as seen on the stage, and as seen in the imagination. Through the lens of object-oriented ontology, this essay explores and examines the friction and fissure between the text’s agency and the actor’s agency that displaces the author Shakespeare and focuses on the prismatic qualities of production. Through these points of refraction, that both depend and challenge the actor-audience relationship, this essay will examine competing agencies of text, actor, and audience.
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Gegout, Catherine. "Actors in Military Intervention." In Why Europe Intervenes in Africa, 89–134. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190845162.003.0004.
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Chapter three locates European military intervention alongside the military interventions and political and economic presence of other regional and international actors. African states have agency in their own foreign policies, but African security organizations are dependent on European funding for the deployment of troops, and they cooperate with the European Union. The United Nations is present in Africa, but it often has to act alone: European actors are not always there to support UN missions. However, Europeans are keen on reinforcing UN capacity to fight militias. China is increasingly an important economic partner of Africa, and now becoming a security actor there. European actors are trying to develop relations with China on African security affairs. The United States is an important security actor in Africa, with military bases there. Its role and motives are studied in detail, as it influences the decisions of European actors to intervene.
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Ochsner, Beate. "Talking about Associations and Descriptions or a Short Story about Associology." In Advances in Media, Entertainment, and the Arts, 220–33. IGI Global, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0616-4.ch013.
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In 1999, Bruno Latour advocated for “abandoning what was wrong with ANT, that is ‘actor,' ‘network,' ‘theory' without forgetting the hyphen.” However, it seems that the “hyphen,” which brings with it the operation of hyphenating or connecting, was abandoned too quickly. If one investigates what something is by asking what it is meant as well as how it emerges, by (re-)tracing the strategy in materials in situated practices and sets of relations, and, by bypassing the distinction between agency and structure, one shifts from studying “what causes what” to describing “how things happen.” This perspective not only makes it necessary for us to clarify the changing positions and displacements of human and non-human actors in the assemblage, but, also question the role (the enrolment) of the researcher him/herself: What kind of “relation” connects the researcher to his/her research and associates him/her with the subject, how to prevent (or not) his/her own involvement, and, to what degree s/he ignores the relationality of his/her writing in a “sociology of association?”
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Papadopoulos, Theodoros, and Antonios Roumpakis. "Family as a socio-economic actor in the political economy of welfare." In Social Policy Review 31, edited by Elke Heins, Catherine Needham, and James Rees, 243–66. Policy Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447343981.003.0011.
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After years of neoliberal restructuring of social welfare, families are under pressure to act more strategically in absorbing the ever-increasing social risks and costs associated with social reproduction. Thus, we consider it imperative to expand our theoretical understanding of the family as a socio-economic actor whose agency extends beyond the realm of care provision. Drawing upon Karl Polanyi’s work on the variety of moral rationalities of economic action and upon critical realist sociological literature on the family as a relational subject this chapter conceptualizes the family as a collective socio-economic actor that deploys a portfolio of moral ‘rationales’ and practices (householding, reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange) to enhance the welfare of its members. We conclude by arguing for a new research agenda that treats the terrain of family’s collective agency as a separate level of analysis, where intersections of class, racial, gender and generational inequalities can be re-imagined in studying how different welfare regimes institutionalize the conditions for families to act as socio-economic agents.
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Frank, Jason. "Tocqueville’s Religious Terror." In The Democratic Sublime, 153–80. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190658151.003.0007.
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One of the central ironies of Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought was that the democratic era that promised to bring conscious human agency to an equal mankind, freeing human beings from their bondage to tradition and their submission to the sacred, actually threatened them with unprecedented forms of domination. Tocqueville’s sense of “religious terror” is engendered from the spectacle of everyone being “driven willy-nilly along the same road” and having “joined the common cause, some despite themselves, others unwittingly, like blind instruments in the hands of God.” “Religious terror” is both a symptom and a diagnosis of his concern with the deflated status of individual agency in democratic contexts, and with the related eclipse of the political by the social question. This chapter explores this dimension of Tocqueville’s thought and its relation to his denial of such agency to any collective actor, to deny heroism, and its associated grandeur, to the popular will.
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Sands, Danielle. "Telling Nonhuman Stories: ‘The secret contours of objects’." In Animal Writing, 96–125. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439039.003.0004.
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This chapter puts the novels of Jim Crace in conversation with Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of the development of OOP in contradistinction to Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory, it assesses the claims made by Harman for the superiority of OOP over contemporary relational ontologies such as that espoused by Jane Bennett. Turning to Crace, the chapter argues that his fiction enacts a sustained movement away from anthropocentrism, demonstrating the collaborative nature of storytelling and absenting the human from a variety of different landscapes. It argues that, in their examination of the ‘allure’ of objects, these novels espouse a position closer to Harman than Bennett. Finally, the chapter interrogates Harman’s presentation of aesthetics as first philosophy, arguing that the clear alignment between Crace’s fiction and Harman’s work reinforces the claim that aesthetics gives access to the ontological, and demands a reconsideration of agency.