Troubling agency

Agency and charity in early nineteenth-century London

Bibliographic Data

ID4556984
AuthorsMegan Clare Webber (University of Hertfordshire), Megan Webber (University of Hertfordshire, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume91
Issue251
Pages116-136
Publication date2018-02-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistorical Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0950-3471 • E-ISSN: 1468-2281
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1468-2281.12211
OpenAlexW2772794941
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited10

Agency is a fashionable concept, particularly among historians of poverty, welfare and charity in Britain in the long eighteenth century, and yet the concept is seldom scrutinized. This article troubles agency, subjecting it to the critical examination that it has largely eluded thus far. The first section outlines the manifold, and occasionally contradictory, ways in which historians characterize human agency. The second examines agency through the lens of charity in early nineteenth-century London (c.1800–c.1837), dissecting how the poor exercised agency in their interactions with charitable organizations and illustrating how philanthropists represented and sought to define the limits of plebeian agency. Case studies from individual charities test the boundaries of agency, proposing new ways of approaching the concept. The article concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of agency as a tool for historical analysis

Political science · Poverty · Social science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law

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