Agency is a variety of social power relating to intentional and meaningful action. The concept refers to the capabilities of people and is a major dimension of social practice. In contrast with the determinism of functionalist (qv under structure) or structuralist approaches which subject people to determining structures, humanistic approaches, such as many variants of
postprocessual archaeology, stress the creative role of human agents who intend, have motivations, rationalise and reflexively monitor action. Any account of past societies must therefore take account of these micropolitical aspects of everyday social practice and experience. The relation between agency and social structure is explicitly considered in the structuration theory of Giddens which attempts to transcend a rigid dualism of agency and structure, corresponding to a dualism of determinism and voluntarism.
For some the concept of agency is part of a project of empowerment: generally a stress on agency is an important recognition of the creative and productive power of people.
Problems with agency concern its relation to the idea, sometimes criticised as ethnocentric, of the individual and autonomous human subject; poststructuralism, for example, has effectively criticised the centrality of this figure of traditional humanism. Human agency, an important idea in any theory of historicity (the capacity to act as an historical agent), might also be regarded as historical itself, changing in its character and experiences.
References
Dobres, M-A., and Robb, J. (eds) 2000.
Agency in Archaeology. London: Routledge.
Kristiansen, K., 2004: Genes verses agents. A discussion of a widening theoretical gap in archaeology,
Archaeological dialogues 11(2), 77-98.
Theory
