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Notes: Steven Loyal, Barry Barnes - Agency as a Red Herring in Social Theory
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 31 No. 4, December 2001, pp. 507-524

Abstract
The central argument of this article is that there is no fact of the matter, no evidence, however tentative or questionable, that will serve adequately to identify actions chosen or determined for the purposes of sociological theory. This argument will be developed with reference to the two theorists of the greatest importance in advocating the sociological value of the concept of agency: Talcott Parsons, with his voluntaristic theory of action, set the scene for the whole agency and structure debate in modern sociology, and Anthony Giddens, in his theory of structuration, provides the most comprehensive recent account. Both theorists put forward grounds and justifications for their use of the concepts of choice and agency, but it will be argued here that in the last analysis, none of them has any sociological merit.

Notes
Concepts of agency and structure acquire their meanings relationally Agency in the common contemporary context: o Agency stands for the freedom of the contingently acting subject over and against the constraints that are thought to derive from enduring social structures. Independence Ability to oppose to structural constraints Lack of agency automata, following the dictates of social structures and exercising no choice in what they do Sociological utility of the concept none! o There is no evidence that would identify actions as chosen or determined for the purposes of sociological theory PARSONS VOLUNTARISM 508 o The structure of social action The Unit Act: 1. The act implies an agent, an actor. 2. The act must have an end, a future state of affairs toward which the action is orientated. 3. The act must be initiated in a situation in which intervening action is necessary to bring about the state of affairs that is the actors end. This situation is in turn analysable into two kinds of elements: those over which the actor has no control and those over which she has control. The former are conditions of action and the latter the means of action. 4. The means and ends of action are to be understood by reference both to individual factors (wants or need dispositions in the case of ends, individual rational calculations in the case of means) and to a social, normative element involved in their constitution. o Parsons account of action suggests an utilitarian understanding typical for rational choice theorists 509 P: Reductive rather behaviour than action If everyone pursued their ends egoistically, there would be chaos (Hobbes) 1

simon.fiala@seznam.cz Can be overcome only by social order Individual need dispositions + normative orientations established during socialization, constituting an alternative basis for action Still reductive still suggests causation Causation relevance to choice The actor cannot choose the pains and pleasures associated with action but can choose how far to take account of them in acting The fact, that the actor most commonly decides to conform to social structures doesnt undermine her agency Internal and external pressures o External are secondary, they matter as internalized o Sanctions merely intensify and extend the realm of intern. norms People freely choose to act while taking account of the ext. pressures 512 BUT there is no evidence, which suggest the superiority of the voluntaristic account over the deterministic one o Action can still be thought as determined through maximization of net costs/benefit Parsons wanted to withhold predictability while not to succumb to determinism BUT there is no sociologically interesting difference between his voluntarism and a causal equivalent AGENCY IN GIDDENS o Giddens: Parsons account is in fact deterministic But Giddens and Parsons share much in their approaches (action, intentionality, meaning, ) o Theory of structuration Insists on the freedom of the acting subject 513 Giddens refuses the division of the constituents of the mental realm (ego, conscience, ) He claims it to be inseparable and embodied An agent embodied unit disposing of causal powers to be employed in interaction with the world A person (i.e. agent) could have acted otherwise. Inseparably tied to power action depends on the individuals capability to make a difference to the course of events Through their agency, humans maintain society as their achievement Critique of parsons: The same values that make the consensus universal, as incorporated by unconscious psychic processes of actors, are the motivating elements of personality o there is no room here for the creative capacity that Parsons advertises by naming his account voluntaristic According to Loyal and Barnes: A misconception of Parsons o Giddens faces the same problem as P. had earlier: How to reconcile choice with pattern? Where Parsons employed norm-induced guilt Giddens deploys ontological security Ontological security: 2

simon.fiala@seznam.cz Actor desires to maintain routine at the expense of disruptive change o Taken-for-grantedness of realities of the social life o Constraints on choice: 1) material, 2) deriving from sanctions, 3) structural There is agency even when there is no choice there always is a choice 517 The fact that there is only one feasible option doesnt negate choice o L&B: Giddens account of choice formally identical to Parsons Stresses voluntarism, introduces constraints; empirically indistinguishable from determinism o L&B: There is no reason to insist on voluntarism to stress that human action cannot be wholly structurally explained 518 Parsons seeks an actor capable of struggling against self-interest and animal drives. Analogously, Giddens needs an actor capable of struggling against the status quo and its constituent routines. o The intention is to produce sociologically sound yet politically optimistic picture of the human condition But lack of evidence which would support such a choice vis--vis other options There is no need for asserting choice and/or agency here in order to be sociologically realistic o Voluntaristic discourse is outdated, doesnt provide the optimistic political vision sought In 1984 (the novel), the account of agency legitimates the terror thought-crime The distinction between determined and voluntary action is unsatisfactory o The theoretical difficulty often is resolved by resorting to ethnometodological perspective members achieving a shared sense of action being caused (or chosen) as their collective accomplishment o voluntarism/determinism according to personal taste of a theorist? It is impossible to decide by the means of sociological inquiry But we should care Its not that it didnt matter o a chosen action is identified as the kind of action that could be modified or inhibited by symbolic communication The distinction between voluntary and caused behaviour doesnt seem to have any analytical consequences. BUT we can identify where persuasion is worthwhile Choice, agency the context of the institution of responsible action. Persons, within the context, regarded as moral agents The discourse of freedom and causation helps to map the susceptibility of actors to persuasion So what theorists need to know: o the antecedents of action to make that action intelligible and predictable o how resistant to modification different actions may be And what theorists need not to know: o how the antecedents feature among the causes of action, or how they condition the choice of a course of action o how far a course of action could have been otherwise, for there is nothing here to be known Therefore, the question of voluntarism is a red herring of sociological theory, as it more reflects moral and political needs than analytical concerns