Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency*

(2007) - Steven Hitlin, Glen H. Elder

Journal: Sociological Theory
Link::
DOI:: 10.1111/j.1467-9558.2007.00303.x
Links::
Tags:: #paper #LifeCourse #SocialTheory
Cite Key:: [@hitlinTimeSelfCuriously2007]

Abstract

The term “agency” is quite slippery and is used differently depending on the epistemological roots and goals of scholars who employ it. Distressingly, the sociological literature on the concept rarely addresses relevant social psychological research. We take a social behaviorist approach to agency by suggesting that individual temporal orientations are underutilized in conceptualizing this core sociological concept. Different temporal foci—the actor's engaged response to situational circumstances—implicate different forms of agency. This article offers a theoretical model involving four analytical types of agency (“existential,” “identity,” “pragmatic,” and “life course”) that are often conflated across treatments of the topic. Each mode of agency overlaps with established social psychological literatures, most notably about the self, enabling scholars to anchor overly abstract treatments of agency within established research literatures.

Notes

“The term “agency” is quite slippery and is used differently depending on the epistemological roots and goals of scholars who employ it.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 170)

“Different temporal foci—the actor’s engaged response to situational circumstancesimplicate different forms of agency.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 170)

“he notion of time, highlighted in Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) notable treatment of agency, is conversely rarely employed within models of the self.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 171)

“Temporal orientations are a fundamental aspect of social interaction (Flaherty 2003), and form the basis for developing an understanding of the human agency that bridges multiple uses of the concept and links to an established literature on the self.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 171)

“Agency is exerted differentially depending on the actor’s salient time horizon. Viewed this way, agency’s processes are less mysterious and draw on well-established scholarship on self-processes.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 171)

“We identify and describe four variants of human agency: existential, identity, pragmatic, and life course. These are meant as heuristics for linking theoretical problems with established research traditions” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 171)

“reasonably conclude that positing a strict dualism between agency and structure is erroneous (e.g., Cockerham 2005; Dunn 1997; Hayes 1994; Sewell 1992).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 172)

“Emirbayer and Mische (1998) define agency as: the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural environments—the temporal-relational contexts of action—which, through the interplay of habit, imagination and judgement, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations. (1998:970)3” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 172)

“Joas (2000) refers to the self as one of social science’s greatest discoveries; constituting active, socialized, meaning-making individuals. The self is “an organized and interactive system of thoughts, feelings, identities, and motives that (1) is born of self-reflexivity and language, (2) people attribute to themselves and (3) characterize specific human beings” (Owens 2003:206)” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 173)

“Life course studies are centered around the notion of historical and unfolding time, but even there it is rare to find first-person temporal orientations being the subject of inquiry.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 174)

“Flaherty (1999) discusses the experience of time within situated activity, suggesting that “variation in the perceived passage of time reflects variation in the intensity of conscious information processing per standard temporal unit.”” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 174)

“The type of agency discussed in Flaherty’s models forms the basis for what we will discuss as “existential” agency, and underlies agency’s other three variants (pragmatic, identity, and life course).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 174)

“individuals’ actions are oriented toward meeting the conditions of social life (Swanson 1992).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 175)

“We view agentic action as those actions whose ostensible origin begins within the actor, in the sense that, as Giddens (1984) maintains, the actor might have done otherwise. This covers behavior ranging from automatic (throwing a ball) to carefully considered (solving a math problem) to long term (enrolling in a particular university). All of these sorts of behaviors implicate individual action, effort, and intention.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 175)

“An actor’s attention gets focused on situational aspects perceived as most important. Our mental horizons, similar to “frames” (Goffman 1974) shape which information we attend to or omit (Zerubavel 1997) as situated activity evolves (Gonos 1977). Interactional models typically omit the nature of the actor’s temporal frames, over which we can exercise control (Flaherty 2002) but that also respond to situational exigencies.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 175)

“Existential Agency” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 177)

“Much human action is self-initiated, even if it involves automatic processing. Existential agency is inherent in social action, and as such is a universal human potentiality. This capacity for self-directed action underlies all of the types of agency we discuss and refers to a fundamental level of human freedom, Giddens’s (1984) notion that one might have acted otherwise” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 177)

“Our capacity to exert influence on our action is only sociologically consequential insofar as it is utilized within social situations or with social outcomes.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 177)

“his type of agency, “pragmatic,” highlights the overlap with pragmatist insights into the contingent nature of human action (e.g., Dewey 1934; Joas 1993). Pragmatic agency is expressed in the types of activities that are chosen when habitual responses to patterned social actions break down. Much of our action involves habit (Camic 1986) as we rely on available, preestablished routines to guide interactions.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 178)

“Mead’s “I” is the active portion of the self-concept that carries on a dialogue with the reflective “Me,” an interplay that fundamentally involves temporality, a neglected distinction in the literature (Flahterty and Fine 2001). The “I” is an internal experience of reflexivity (Dunn 1997; Wiley 1994), and exists prior to language, though over time it becomes socially shaped and channeled.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 178)

“Mead’s “I” is conceptualized as a fundamentally spontaneous aspect of the self. It is, however, far from random—idiosyncratic, possibly, but not unpredictable. If our responses were, in fact, completely random, much social science would be untenable.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 178)

“The model, derived from Mead’s focus on language in interaction (Owens 2003), focuses on actors’ emotional consequences when situational emotional reactions differ from culturally shared meanings (sentiments).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 179)

“Identity agency represents the habitual patterning of social behavior. Following established ways of acting, role enactment, or identity performance, involves agentic action.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 179)

“Identity agency captures the sense—unarticulated in Goffman (see Schwalbe 1993) and much symbolic interactionist work (Miyamoto 1970)—of the motivating nature of identity commitments (Gecas 1986, 1991). We do not simply act randomly in our lives.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 180)

“By discussing identity agency, we focus on agentic individuals within the interaction order and not on the interaction order, itself. The self, comprising both the patterned and spontaneous aspects of the agentic individual, is not only a performance, and it is not constituted anew in each interaction. There are personal commitments to lines of activity, captured through our understanding of identity processes, which motivate our actions and serve as standards for maintaining behavior (Burke 2004; Burke and Reitzes 1981).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 180)

“Identity agency is the level at which Giddens’s discussion of structuration theory best fits, the anchoring of “practical consciousness” in Goffman’s theorizing about the taken-for-granted in everyday life. Much of this taken-for-granted exists at the level of social identity commitments. Identity claims delimit the manner in which actors can strive for what Manning (2000) refers to as “credibility,” the undercurrent of much of Goffman’s work. We are accountable both to ourselves and others, based on the identities we attempt to claim and that we internalize; actions taken to produce identity-specific credibility, while patterned, involve individual choice and free will, and thus comprise identity agency.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 181)

“We do not simply act agentically with regard to temporally proximate goals (pragmatic agency), nor do we only act with situational goals in mind (identity agency).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 181)

“Both forms of agency focus primarily on present situations and the ways in which human actors mutually construct interactions and, by doing so, reproduce and potentially alter social structures. Agency is constituted, in these situations, through established self-in-situation processes implicating the reflexive aspect of the self. Some of our actions, however, occur with a broader sense of our futures involved, and these orientations are important for shaping individuals’ adaptations to situations (Lutfey and Mortimer 2003). We term attempts to exert influence to shape one’s life trajectory “life course agency.”” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 182)

“Life course agency contains two aspects, a situated form of agency (the exercising of action with long-term implications), and the self-reflective belief about one’s capacity to achieve life course goals. The former is a longer-range version of existential agency, a capacity all individuals possess. The latter is a self-belief, similar to notions of “personal control” (e.g., Mirowsky and Ross 2003), which reflexively guides decision making with extended time horizons.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 182)

“A focus on the life course highlights the historically contingent constraints within which individuals develop and exercise agency (Shanahan and Elder 2002). Life course theorists (e.g, Elder 1994, 1998; Mortmer and Shanahan 2003) highlight agency as one of the core principles for understanding the intersection of individuals and their life pathways, though the topic is not always employed consistently. Marshall (2000) sees at least three versions of agency in Elder’s writing: agency as capacity, resistance, and transition. In our typology, “resistance” can be exercised either pragmatically or through advocating important self-identities. Both forms have potentially transformative aspects.15 “Capacity” seems to be related to the motivating power of identity commitments as well as the existential ability to self-initiate” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 182)

“actions, what we term existential agency. “Transition” is closest to what we term life course agency, the ability of individuals to make choices at turning points in the life course.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 183)

“Life course agency is an analytical construct that we can apply to the study of individuals from a cross-situational perspective: “agency at the level of the person can be defined as the ability to formulate and pursue life plans” (Shanahan and Elder 2002:147).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 183)

““The increasing individualization and mobility of Western societies have shifted the burden of responsibility for creating and sustaining identity to the individual” (Baumeister and Vohs 2003:198). Agency is often treated as precisely the residual from normative patterns of behavior (Marshall 2000).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 183)

“As individuals organize their lives, they can be prompted to focus on major life events, major occupational transitions, issues of personal relationships, educational histories, and the like. Life course agency refers to individual capacities to orient themselves toward long-term outcomes, across social domains” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 183)

“Individuals are active agents in shaping their biographies—within a myriad of constraints, of course—but people differ in their ability to successfully implement these strategies.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 183)

“It highlights the variable nature of the life course at particular junctures based on social structural position and personal resources that reflect what Shanahan and Hood (1998) term “bounded agency” (see also Evans 2002).” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 184)

“The process of identity selection—or ascription—occurs most often at major transitions (Elder and O’Rand 1995) such as the transition to adulthood (Graber and Brooks-Gunn 1996). Such transitions are rarely spontaneous, at least early in the life course (in contrast to the death of a parent or spouse, or losing a job), but fundamentally affect the self. These transitions are normative, but they allow for personal discretion; within limits, the timing and order of these choices are up to individuals.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 184)

“What we term life course agency leads, then, over time to the accumulation of identities that are claimed at the level of identity agentic actions. Over time, these actions get folded into our sense of self and become guiding forces for identity agency.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 184)

“Humans are fundamentally active beings.” (Hitlin and Elder, 2007, p. 185)