The capacity of individuals and groups to actively shape and influence their social and cultural context.
Agency and Structure: This is a core concept in anthropology that examines how individuals make choices and exert their power within a social structure.
Actor Network Theory: This theory suggests that non-human entities such as technology, material culture, and artifacts are also capable of exerting agency.
Habitus: A person's habitus refers to their embodied cultural dispositions and ways of being in the world, which shape their agency.
Power: Anthropologists study how power relations affect agency, particularly how social inequalities and hierarchies can limit or enhance one's ability to act in certain ways.
Identity: An individual's sense of self and belonging is a significant factor in their agency, as it can influence their actions and choices.
Embodiment: Embodied experiences, such as pain and pleasure, can shape an individual's agency and decision-making.
Social Movements: Anthropologists study how collective action and resistance can be a form of agency for marginalized groups.
Religion and Spirituality: Religious beliefs and practices can empower individuals and shape their agency.
Gender and Sexuality: Gender and sexuality are socially constructed categories that affect the ways individuals are perceived and the choices they make, thus influencing their agency.
Globalization: Globalization has enabled individuals to engage in transnational networks and movements, leading to new forms of agency and resistance.
Individual agency: This type of agency emphasizes the role of the individual in shaping their own lives and the world around them.
Collective agency: This type of agency focuses on the collective actions and decisions of groups or societies that shape social structures and institutions.
Structural agency: This type of agency highlights the influence of broader social, economic, and political structures on individuals and groups, showing how these structures constrain and shape agency.
Intentional agency: This type of agency recognizes the power of individual intentions and motivations in shaping behavior.
Emergent agency: This type of agency emphasizes the unpredictable and dynamic ways in which individual and collective actions shape social structures and institutions over time.
Distributed agency: This type of agency highlights the ways in which agency is distributed across multiple actors and entities, rather than being localized in one individual or group.
Reflexive agency: This type of agency focuses on the ways in which individual and collective actions are shaped by ongoing processes of self-reflection and self-monitoring.
Vernacular agency: This type of agency recognizes the ways in which everyday practices, beliefs, and values shape individual and collective actions and decision-making, often in ways that defy formalized or institutionalized norms and rules.
Coactive agency: This type of agency emphasizes the ways in which individual and collective agency are co-constructed and mutually reinforcing through ongoing interactions and relationships.