Agency as an Explanatory Key

Theoretical Issues

Bibliographic Data

ID23637404
AuthorsRichard Biernacki (University of California San Diego), Tad Skotnicki (0000-0002-8050-027X, University of California San Diego)
Year2015
Pages1-13
Publication date2015-05-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeOTHER
VenueEmerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL)
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0002
OpenAlexW1550356371
ISBN9781118900772
LanguageEN
References cited45

In philosophy agency designates the inalienable ability of individuals to make choices about their conduct that are not determined by the environment. In empirical social science, however, agency designates not autonomous free will but the launching of patterned action that surpasses constraints in the setting and that directs the course of institutional change. Many social scientists have limited the explanatory task they take on to show that agency is an indispensable part of ongoing social life. They have also reasoned that portrayals of institutional structures alone or even of the cultural resources that accompany them, such as shared scripts for social interaction, are inadequate for explaining important changes. It is typical therefore to feature agency as a logically necessary contributor. Study of agency can be improved by specifying affirmatively when and how action is in decisive ways organized independently of the constraints in the setting and this sense transcends them. This sharper requirement for positive demonstration of how agency brought about change is satisfied by reconstructing the actors' independent invention of a new master problem that guides their conduct. This promising approach to explaining transformative action has disseminated from study of artistic and scientific innovation to that of institutional change.

Action (physics) · Agency (philosophy) · Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Positive economics · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Structure and agency · Transformative learning · Critical Realism in Sociology · Management and Organizational Studies · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology

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