Relational agency Burkitt, Ian
European journal of social theory,
08/2016, Volume:
19, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article explores how the concept of agency in social theory changes when it is conceptualized as a relational rather than an individual phenomenon. It begins with a critique of the ...structure/agency debate, particularly of how this emerges in the critical realist approach to agency typified by Margaret Archer. It is argued that this approach, and the critical realist version of relational sociology that has grown from it, reify social relations as a third entity to which agents have a cognitive, reflexive relation, playing down the importance of interaction. This upholds the Western moral and political view of agents as autonomous, independent, and reflexive individuals. Instead, the article considers agency from a different theoretical tradition in relational sociology in which agents are always located in manifold social relations. From this, an understanding is created of agents as interactants, ones who are interdependent, vulnerable, intermittently reflexive, possessors of capacities that can only be practised in joint actions, and capable of sensitive responses to others and to the situations of interaction. Instead of agency resting on the reflexive monitoring of action or the reflexive deliberation on structurally defined choices, agency emerges from our emotional relatedness to others as social relations unfold across time and space.
De Sicilia examines the Kantian roots of a Marxist problematic. One of the fundamental tensions within Marx's writings arises from the complex relationship between the systematic and historical ...aspects of his description of capitalist society. A century and a half after the publication of Capital--and in light of the historical adventures of communism that must, for the most part, be considered as an accumulation of catastrophic failures--this tension continues to both energize and attenuate the reception of Marx's thought, symptomatically expressing the radically distinctive and still elusory practical-theoretical foundations of his project. On the one hand, capital is depicted by Marx as an ensemble of social relations forming an apparently closed totality capable of reproducing itself purely through its own internal dynamism: capital as self-sufficient system.
This paper examines agroecology within Europe, its dynamics, its position within a broader politico-economic framework and its political significance. It argues that agroecology is contesting and, at ...least in some places, effectively changing the main social relations of production in today's agriculture. In this respect, it has a strategically important potential for allowing farmers to regain control over the labour process. Empirically, the paper builds on the case of the Northern Frisian Woodlands, a large territorial cooperative that, has been developing a range of agroecological practices, and (often successfully) advocating for their more widespread adoption.
Drawing on my research in refugee settings in Greece, I relate the biopolitics of humanitarianism with the Greek notion of "hospitality" and established cultural schemata of social relations. The ...dominant discourse on hospitality is reproduced in the humanitarian setting of a camp where asylum seekers are produced as worthy guests, placed in the middle ground between mere biological life and full social existence. Volunteers working with refugees on the street, by contrast, attempt to challenge biopolitical power through the reversal of hospitality, through which the refugee is symbolically reconstituted as a host (though a disputable one) and a political subject.
El taller del marxismo en Colombia Calderón Castillo, Javier
Tabula rasa (Bogotá, Colombia),
08/2022, Volume:
42, Issue:
42
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
El artículo aborda la pregunta sobre la existencia de un marxismo en Colombia, con una respuesta provisoria relacionada con la articulación de un «taller» compuesto por intelectuales orgánicos y ...académicos que construyeron, en desarrollo de encendidas polémicas, un marxismo práctico que buscó una revolución socialista. Propone el análisis sobre núcleos intelectuales que desarrollaron los procesos de edición y publicación, y por supuesto de formulación académica y política de las ideas de Marx, en relación con la interpretación de las relaciones sociales en el proceso capitalista en Colombia. Se describen las corrientes, la síntesis de sus aportes, se detallan algunos de los principales exponentes, que conformaron el «taller» de un marxismo práctico: anticolonial y antimperialista. Un proceso que elaboró una nueva historia de Colombia explicó el proceso capitalista y fue parte del movimiento real, con grandes tensiones como la ortodoxa alineación internacional como camino para la vía socialista.
Many topics in organizational research involve examining the interpersonal perceptions and behaviors of group members. The resulting data can be analyzed using the social relations model (SRM). This ...model enables researchers to address several important questions regarding relational phenomena. In the model, variance can be partitioned into group, actor, partner, and relationship; reciprocity can be assessed in terms of individuals and dyads; and predictors at each of these levels can be analyzed. However, analyzing data using the currently available SRM software can be challenging and can deter organizational researchers from using the model. In this article, we provide a “go-to” introduction to SRM analyses and propose SRM_R (https://davidakenny.shinyapps.io/SRM_R/), an accessible and user-friendly, web-based application for SRM analyses. The basic steps of conducting SRM analyses in the app are illustrated with a sample dataset of 47 teams, 228 members, and 884 dyadic observations, using the participants’ ratings of the advice-seeking behavior of their fellow employees.
A nova condição do rap Santos, Daniela Vieira dos
Estudos de sociologia (Araraquara, Brazil),
04/2022, Volume:
27
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
O artigo visa caracterizar a chamada nova condição do rap, categoria que sintetiza as transformações do lugar social e simbólico dessa prática artística no Brasil a partir de 2010. Busco explicitar a ...expansão dessa música para além de gênero musical. Para tanto, alguns casos empíricos são mobilizados: a estreia da LAB Fantasma na São Paulo Fashion Week em 2016 e a hamburgueria gourmet Rap Burguer. Cada qual a sua maneira demonstra tanto o processo de legitimação social dessa manifestação artística urbana juvenil quanto os sentidos e as novas relações sociais que orientam o rap e os seus agentes na medida em que ele se desloca do seu lugar de enunciação.
Dependence on others has often figured, in liberal thought, as the opposite of freedom. But the political anthropology of southern Africa has long recognized relations of social dependence as the ...very foundation of polities and persons alike. Reflecting on a long regional history of dependence 'as a mode of action' allows a new perspective on certain contemporary practices that appear to what we may call 'the emancipatory liberal mind' simply as lamentable manifestations of a reactionary and retrograde yearning for paternalism and inequality. Instead, this article argues that such practices are an entirely contemporary response to the historically novel emergence of a social world where people, long understood (under both pre-capitalist and early capitalist social systems) as scarce and valuable, have instead become seen as lacking value, and in surplus. Implications are drawn for contemporary politics and policy, in a world where both labour and forms of social membership based upon it are of diminishing value, and where social assistance and the various cash transfers associated with it are of increasing significance. Dans la pensée libérale, la dépendance vis-à-vis d'autrui est souvent considérée comme l'opposé de la liberté. Pourtant, en Afrique australe, l'anthropologie politique reconnaît depuis longtemps les relations de dépendance sociale comme la base même de la cité comme de la personne. La réflexion sur cette longue histoire régionale de la dépendance comme « mode d'action » ouvre une perspective nouvelle sur certaines pratiques contemporaines que la « pensée libérale émancipatrice », comme nous pourrions l'appeler, fait apparaître comme de pitoyables manifestations d'une nostalgie du paternalisme et de l'inégalité. Loin de cela, l'article fait valoir que ces pratiques constituent une réponse tout à fait contemporaine à la récente émergence d'un univers social dans lequel les gens, longtemps considérés (dans les systèmes sociaux précapitalistes et les premiers temps du capitalisme) comme rares et précieux, ont perdu leur valeur et sont considérés comme surnuméraires. L'auteur en pointe les implications pour la politique et l'action publique contemporaine, dans une monde où la main-d'oeuvre et les formes d'appartenance sociale qui lui sont liées se dévaluent et où l'assistance sociale et la circulation d'argent associée sont de plus en plus importantes.
The Anthropocene deserves spatial as well as temporal analysis. “Patchy Anthropocene” is a conceptual tool for noticing landscape structure, with special attention to what we call “modular ...simplifications” and “feral proliferations.” This introduction suggests guidelines for thinking structurally about more-than-human social relations; “structure” here emerges from phenomenological attunements to specific multispecies histories, rather than being system characteristics. Indeed, we discuss “systems” as thought experiments, that is, imagined holisms that help make sense of structure. Ecological modeling, political economy, and alternative cosmologies are systems experiments that should rub up against each other in learning about the Anthropocene. We address the misleading claim that studies of nonhumans ignore social justice concerns as well as suggesting ways that ethnographers might address “hope” without rose-colored glasses. This introduction offers frames for appreciating the distinguished contributions to this supplement, and it traces key changes in anthropological thinking from the time of this supplement’s predecessor, the Wenner-Gren Foundation–sponsored 1956 volume, Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Rather than interrogating philosophies of the Anthropocene, the supplement shows how anthropologists and allies, including historians, ecologists, and biologists, might best offer a critical description.
The traditional architecture in the M'zab Valley was a real response to the needs of the natural community and a direct reflection of its lifestyle, nature of activities, environmental requirements, ...individual and collective life practices within the intellectual system and its natural framework. Therefore, we do not find any part in this architecture that does not serve a specific function or symbolize a certain goal, considering that all material production in this society is a homogeneous and harmonious expression between needs, aspirations, goals, religious values, organizations and interactive social relationships with nature and climatic factors. Thus, architectural production in general and traditional housing in M'zab specifically testify to all these values and ideas manifested in their patterns, plans, units and architectural elements, It was necessary to study the impact of these social organizations and practices on the traditional dwelling in M'zab, considering it as a fundamental urban unit in shaping its palaces and a real product that reflects the values and ideas of this society. And since the dwelling is part of this human production, its relationship with social practice is a strong and organic relationship.
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