Hi Francois,
You post gave me an opportunity to hinge on it and make my spiel, a spiel I deliberated from the beginning of the last several threads.
It is a good idea to conceive agency the way you described it below. If you are interested in more resources about this way of thinking, move directly to Activity Theory. Your description coincides almost exactly with major principles of Activity Theory.
I love one adage that everything new is an well-forgotten old. I would like to add also: New is something we have discovered ourselves although other people might be talking about it for decades or centuries. I see this very often these days when "new" theories are emerging every day in the context of a quasi-Postmodernist thinking.
With the advent of Postmodernity and Deconstruction, many scholars started rewriting the old in order to make their very own NEW staff. And to claim innovation and contribution.
Also, similar problems are conceptualized and treated in different ways in different paradigms, resulting in "visibly" different conceptualizations and theories. In many cases there is some kind of thematic overlap, some similarities, and some associations. If we want to claim relationships among these conceptualizations, we can. If we want to says they are very different because they are produced by different ways of thinking, we can.
There are several fields that both relate thematically, and re very different as ways of thinking: Action Theory, Activity Theory, and Structuration/Agency theory. Action Theory is a product of positivist thinking; Activity theory is a product of historical materialist thinking, and Structuration is a product of early Postmodern thinking.
The problem area of agency is similar to the problem area of the subject (Der Subjekt) and subjectivity (Der Subjektivität) in historical materialism. Yet it is different in terms of philosophical foundations and way of thinking. I can translate one into the other, to the degree possible, considering they have differences that cannot be explicated in the terms of the other.
Most of the approaches/methodologies can be very productive in some situations and counterproductive if applied everywhere. This is true in particular for approaches that are based on metaphors.
The agency of non-human entities is a metaphor that can be very productive in a number of situations. But if we rigidly apply it to every problem, it becomes ridiculous. The agency of things expands the problem area and thus the solution area. This approach can also be translated in systems theory concepts and actually, get even more productive when we use Systems Theory. One reason for the productivity of systems thinking is that it relates better and easier to most of the sciences of the day. The postmodernist ideas are not well developed yet; not operationalized; and besides the humanities, have no interface with current practices at disciplinary level. In some way, we are at the beginning of Postmodernity and postmodern philosophical ideas hang in the air because there are not developed down to disciplinary level and field research level. The ideas about agency are hovering somewhere between the levels of philosophy and theory, at best. Anthony Giddens did a great job with his structuration theory (my admiration!), but he didn't bother to show how to operationalize them at disciplinary level and in particular in field research. And no one is bothering. (Of course, I am sure these people didn't have time for that, like most of us.) What I hear is only a great talk about structuration and agency, but when it comes to the pragmatics of field research and applied research, I don't see anything that works.
If you are interested in agency and mediation, you better go to Activity Theory. It unites everything in the social world under the umbrella of activity and then analytically decomposes the major components of human activity. It claims this is productive because it is better to see the social world in action, as a system of activities and activity subjects (similar to agents) rather than to start with structure and how it is build up through agency. Activity theorists will tell you that structure is a product of activity (including activity subjects) and there is nothing new in this. It is just one of the first principles in activity theory.
It is also interesting how new terminological systems lead to new conceptualizations. When people make the agency talk, they gradually start developing a new realm around it that diverges from the realm of the activity discourse. The concept of agency is easier accepted by the humanitarians and humanities-leaning social scientists. It also resonates better with empowerment theorists. Activity Theory sounds a bit mechanistic for the humanitarians. And paradoxically (considering its historical materialist origins) it is more neutral ideologically and is more technocratic and objectivist. Social thinking based on agency is more ideologized and biased compared to thinking based on activity theory and its treatment of the subjective.
I will stop here, despite of the urges to talk more and about many others things related to the last threads.
Best wishes to everyone,
Lubomir
Lubomir Popov, Ph.D., FDRS
Professor, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, U.S.A.
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Francois Nsenga <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2020 7:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] On Characterization of Agency - Was 'The Uselessness of Agency in Design Theory'
Dear Klaus
Wouldn't it be helpful to conceive Agency - has it ever been conceived this
way?? - as direct, and/or mediated? At occasions mediated through other
humans and through non-humans, and very often through tools?!
It is in this latter sense - of Agency somehow modified through translation
- that I understood Latour's and Terry's concept of agency.
Wrong or right??
A commoner's thought!
Greetings,
François
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