Hum Stud (2010) 33:85–101

DOI 10.1007/s10746-010-9137-x

RESEARCH PAPER

‘‘My Attitude Made Me Do It’’: Considering the Agency

of Attitudes

Mark van Vuuren • François Cooren

Published online: 15 April 2010

! Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract In proposing a next step in loosening the restriction of action to humans,

this paper explores what we call the agency of attitudes and especially the ethical
and practical questions that such recognition should entail. In line with Actor-
Network Theory, we suggest that attitudes, passions and emotions can be seen to
have agency in a similar vein as tangible agents (e.g., technological devices, texts,
machines). We illustrate this suggestion using an example of socialization towards
pain experienced during sports. Finally, we propose that the awareness of attitude’s
agency extends rather than reduces the ownership of choice of people, as it facili-
tates making ‘‘true decisions.’’

Keywords Actor-network theory ! Agency ! Attitudes ! Undecidability !

Responsibility

Since Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s Laboratory Life (1979), a vast body of
studies has demonstrated how fruitful it can be, theoretically, analytically and even
practically speaking, to acknowledge what nonhumans do in our lifeworld. Whether
it is through a speed bump that slows down vehicles (Latour 1999), a memo that
informs employees of a new policy (Cooren 2004), an artifact that engages us in its
functioning (Verbeek 2005), we, human beings, are surrounded by objects, devices,

M. van Vuuren (&)

Institute for Behavioural Research, University of Twente, PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede,
The Netherlands
e-mail: h.a.vanvuuren@utwente.nl

F. Cooren
Département de Communication, Université de Montréal, CP 6127, Succursale Centre-Ville,
Montréal, QC H2T 2T4, Canada
e-mail: f.cooren@umontreal.ca

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and machineries that appear to do things and whose contributions seem

consequential in the way our societies, collectives and organizations function. As
shown repeatedly by numerous authors, noticing and acknowledging such an agency
does not mean that we, the humans, surrender our own agency; it just means that we
share it with other beings that compose the world in which we inhabit (Latour 2004,
2005; Pickering 1995).
But if more and more scholars seem ready to acknowledge these nonhuman
forms of agency, a sort of blind spot still remains. Indeed, very few authors have so
far explored the agency of more abstract ‘‘things’’ like attitudes, ideas, emotions,
passions, values, identities, just to name a few of them. This hesitation can be
understood for three reasons. First, acknowledging these potential forms of agency
amounts, at first sight, to reifying what precisely appear to be abstract and
intangible. In other words, a first reaction consists of saying that passions, ideas,
values and attitudes are not, per se, ‘‘things,’’ with their own identity and
materiality, which then explains why we should not speak of their potential agency.
Second, speaking of the agency of emotions or ideas, for instance, forces us to
open the black boxes we call human beings, which results in the fragmenting of the
latter’s identities. Acknowledging the agency of an attitude, for instance, would
enjoin us to conceive of human beings as being themselves made up of various
agencies (biological, chemical, ideal, attitudinal, etc.) that appear to threaten their
integrity and individuality. Although some seem ready to acknowledge that the
world is a plenum of agencies, that is, literally filled with various forms of agency,
human and nonhuman (Cooren 2006), we do not appear to be intellectually and
intuitively ready to recognize that we too, the human beings, can be seen as
collectives (Latour 2002; Tarde 1895/1999; Whitehead 1929/1978).
A third (and maybe more important) objection that can be also be invoked is that
recognizing nonhuman forms of agency in general and especially the agency of
‘‘things’’ like attitudes, values and emotions paves the way to a form of
deresponsibilization of human beings. According to this position, only humans
can be said to do things because only they can be held accountable for what they do.
Opening the door to other forms of agency would then be both ethically and
politically irresponsible.
Despite these three objections, which at first sight ruin any attempt to address
this controversial question meaningfully, this paper proposes to explore what we
call the agency of attitudes and especially the ethical and practical questions that
such recognition entails. As we will see, contemplation of this idea indeed raises
several questions regarding ethics, responsibility and decision making, which
includes ownership of choice and the role interactions play in attitudes’ agency.
The paper opens with a reflection on the concept of agency. A short overview of
previous work on the agency of nonhumans illustrates the responsibility issues that
arise when the possibility of acting nonhumans is considered. Second, we reflect
on the idea that abstract entities, like attitudes, passions and emotions, can have
agency. We illustrate the agency of attitudes using the example of socialization to
pain experienced during sports. Next, we suggest that one needs to balance
between two extremes, i.e., claiming that attitudes do not have any agency at all,
and claiming that human action is entirely dominated by attitudes. Finally, we will

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propose that taking the agency of abstract entities into account is a better way to
be a responsible person, as it provides the means to reach a true decision.

Nonhuman Agency and Responsibility

Agency, defined as the capacity to make a difference (Cooren 2004; Latour 2005),
refers to actions, and for a long time the ability of agency was restricted to living
creatures (Giddens 1984). This seems reasonable as common sense suggests that life
and intentionality are conditions for action. But precisely this suggestion has been
questioned since Michel Callon and Bruno Latour (Callon and Latour 1981; Latour
1993) introduced the idea of attributing agency to beings as diverse as machines,
devices and animals, loosening the restriction of action to humans. This was a
‘‘radical move’’ (Taylor and Van Every 2000, p. 160), in which Latour laid bare the
agency of artifacts through their mediation in human agency (Verbeek 2005). In an
apparently implicit way, agency is often attributed to things in daily conversations:
cameras are said to allow remote surveillance (see Cooren et al. 2006, p. 535) and
speed ramps lead drivers to reducing the speed of their cars. But the subsequent
explicit acknowledgment of the active contribution of things runs into fierce
resistance (e.g., McPhee 2004).
To show the importance of the acknowledgment of the agency of artifacts and
machines, we will use the case of obstetric ultrasound as an example to show the
ethical consequences of the agency of technology. Verbeek (2008) shows how
ultrasound changes (the image of) a fetus in different ways. The fetus is represented
on a screen as the size of a newborn baby (cf. Boucher 2004) and shown isolated
from its mother. This representation suggests individual personhood (Sandelowski
1994). Moreover, it changes the relationship between parents and a fetus, as the
fetus can be screened for the risk of certain diseases. The mediation of ultrasound
does not only provide a baby’s first picture, but transforms the fetus into a possible
patient and the expecting parents into decision-makers regarding the life of the
unborn child (Verbeek 2008). Whether those involved are aware of this role change
or not, the mediation of technology redefines relationships between people without
depriving the latter of their own capacity to make a difference, i.e., to make a
decision, for instance. According to this position, acknowledging the hybrid nature
of entities (Latour 1993) and their influence on our world (Verbeek 2005) is the only
way to consciously consider the responsibilities of living with machines.
Writing, in this regard, can be seen as producing a text that will constitute some
kind of machine (Derrida 1988; cf. Cooren 2000, 2008), turning text into agents too
(Cooren 2004; Putnam and Cooren 2004; Cooren et al. 2006; Hardy 2004). For
example, signs invite, memos dictate, letters tell and codes of conduct guide (see
Cooren 2004, for a broad range of assertives, commissives, directives, declarations
and expressives that texts may or may not perform). A baffling plea for recognizing
that texts can make a difference is provided by Boris Brummans (2007), as he
reflects on the euthanasia declaration of his father. When his father’s health
declined up to the point where he had mentioned beforehand that he wanted to die,
this text reminded his family ‘‘of the people we once were and the promises these

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people made towards themselves and each other’’ (Brummans 2007, p. 723, italics
in original). Their previous selves were re-presented through this text, giving a
certain authority to people they now perceived as naı̈ve, as they (themselves in the
past, made present again through the text) had been following ‘‘meager ideas about
a life not yet fleshed out’’ (Brummans 2007, p. 722).
The examples of both the ultrasound and the euthanasia declaration make clear
that discriminating between human agency and the agency of things like texts and
technological devices appears to be far from downplaying the question of
responsibility. When only humans are considered to act, they appear obviously
responsible for their actions, but acknowledging things’ agency does not make them
irresponsible. When texts and devices are identified as meaningful chains in
discourse and practice, they are acknowledged as exercising their own causal
influences upon the flow of events. In this chain of agencies, several types of agents
seem to make a difference in various settings and all actions are imbricated (Taylor
and Van Every 2000, p. 94), but this does not seem to prevent people from having to
make decisions and be responsive/responsible for what they do, even if their action
is precisely shared with other beings whose contribution is acknowledged.
In other words, recognizing that the world we live in is a plenum of agencies
(Cooren 2006) does not preclude us from asking humans to respond for their
contributions in these processes. Furthermore, it allows us to decenter the question
of responsibility as we see that responsibility consists of one’s capacity to respond
not only for one’s own contribution to a certain state of affairs, but also for other
beings’ contribution to this state of affairs. In other words, we will see that
decentering the reflection on agency invites us to decenter our reflection on
responsibility. But first, let’s look at the question of attitudes.

What About Attitudes?

Following our initial questioning, is it conceivable to also extend agency to more

abstract entities? People are, for instance, said to have emotions and feelings, which
suggests ownership, but sometimes it is said that emotions ‘‘take over’’ the stock
market or that people are warned not to do something they will regret later when
they ‘‘are moved by’’ certain feelings. So, the next step is to explore is the agency of
things like emotions, attitudes and passions, in a similar vein as tangible agents
(technological devices, texts, machines).1 Suggesting whether ‘‘intangible things’’
can also be considered to be links in the chain of agency is, as mentioned
previously, almost unexplored. In a clinical context, it seems that mental disorders
and depressions are sometimes regarded as ‘‘non-human agents that periodically
intervened into people’s lives irrespective of the efforts of human agents to prevent
them from doing so’’ (Weinberg 1997, p. 220). Especially addictions are addressed
that way:

1
However, it is noteworthy that beings do not have agency in themselves, but only in a chain of agency,
what ANT precisely calls a network. This means that attitudes can only have agency in contingent
contexts.

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My reasonable side of me can be as sure as it wants to be but when those drugs

appear in front of me the insane one takes over and all those reasons I had not
to use are just gone. […] It’s like my mind just goes dead and my addiction
takes over. (Weinberg 1997, p. 221)
This perspective sheds new light on phrases like ‘‘being under the influence’’ of
something in this regard. Again, something inside taking over one’s will is a well-
known problem in the courts. This is shown in cases about ‘‘crimes out of passion’’
(cf. Cooren 2008, p. 28). Killing someone ‘‘in the heat of passion’’ is regarded as
manslaughter and not as murder, suggesting that passion makes the killer less
blameworthy, less responsible. The ‘‘rest’’ of the blame is attributed to the
temperature of one’s mood, which apparently changes the verdict, differing between
the heat of passion and killing in cold blood. The outer reaches of adequate
provocation were defined by the ‘‘nineteenth century four’’: adultery, mutual
combat, false arrest, and a violent assault. In these specific situations, the loss of
self-control was supposed to be ‘‘reasonable.’’ Next to the question of what
reasonable is in the first place, the question arises who (or what) takes over the
control? One is tempted to say that passion, emotions or impulses are. If we
acknowledge the contribution of passions, feelings and emotions, Cooren (2008)
suggests that ‘‘nothing should prevent us from identifying them as actants, that is, as
at least partly responsible for what is said and done and how something is said or
done’’ (p. 27).
So given what we said about passions, emotions and impulses, can agency be
ascribed to attitudes, too? We will first consider the concept of attitude in an attempt
to make its agency a tantalizing probability. Definitions about attitudes share the
notion of a state of mind about a person or a thing, leading to acting or reacting in a
characteristic way. This accordance suggests a process that includes both (a) the
emergence of a state of mind and (b) an effect of this state leading to behavior that
corresponds with the attitude. We will describe both aspects in terms of attitude’s
agency.
The emergence of a state of mind. Cultures are often reproduced through acts of
socialization that shape attitudes (Marcus 2000). Consider the following four classic
definitions of culture (all emphases added):
By culture we mean all those historically created designs for living, explicit
and implicit, rational, irrational, and non-rational, which exist at any given
time as potential guides for the behavior of men. (Kluckhohn and Kelly 1945)
Culture…consists in those patterns relative to behavior and the products of
human action which may be inherited, that is, passed on from generation to
generation independently of the biological genes. (Parsons 1949, p. 8)
The essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and
selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the
one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning
elements of further action. (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952, p. 181)
…the collective programming of the mind. (Hofstede 1984, p. 51)

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If cultures are inherited and programmed, guiding and conditioning behavior as the
way to do the things around here (cf. Deal and Kennedy 1982), it seems reasonable
to suggest the influence/agency2 of attitudes, at least from an ANT-perspective.
Of course, scholarly work has gained much more insight into cultural dynamics
since these classic definitions were written and organizational culture has become a
dominant lens for understanding people’s behavior in work and organizational
contexts (Eisenberg and Riley 2001). From an actor network perspective, one could
even contend that culture actually is a very poor explanans (it does not really
explain anything). It is what needs to be explained, i.e., an explandum (Latour
2002). Communication scholars thus stress the role interactions play in the
reproduction and evolution of an organization’s culture, conceived as ‘‘the framework
against which organizational communication is evaluated and the avenue for creating
ongoing collective and individual action’’ (Keyton 2005, p. 28). According to this
approach, the appropriateness of several attitudes is negotiated between the
organization members in order to build a shared understanding of preferences among
alternatives. A framework for interpretations is enacted and courses for action are
shaped right through the jungle of alternatives.
The attitudinal outcomes of such negotiations become explicit when newcomers
are socialized into the organization. In fact, every new member is a potential threat
to the continuity of a culture. Organizations (through their representatives) therefore
provide new employees with a framework for the ‘‘right way’’ of responding to their
work environment. Employees have to align their attitudes to the social context and
learn to appreciate it to a certain extent in order to fit in (Louis 1980; Schneider
2001). If this does not happen, this will severely influence their ability to work as
‘‘the culture here won’t allow us to…’’ (Eisenberg and Riley 2001, p. 292).
Experiencing structural misfit of attitudes among the participants is seen as a major
reason for turnover (Schneider et al. 1995).
The effects of such a state of mind. As the severe consequences of a lack of
socialization indicate, harmonizing attitudes is considered to be important. Again,
the effects of the ‘‘right’’ state of mind invoke issues of responsibility. We will give
three examples of this.
First, attitudes encourage obedience. Explaining gruesome levels of obedience to
authority, Milgram (1974) suggests that an agentic shift occurs when people
attribute responsibility for their actions to the person in authority. A direct
consequence of the social influence on attitudes is the move from the ‘‘autonomous’’
level to an ‘‘agentic’’ level of responsibility (Card 2005, p. 397). This agentic level
suggests that—in contrast to individual impulses—directions from a higher level are
obeyed and not assessed against the internal standards of moral judgment. The
agentic shift suggests that people take for granted the authority of something or

2
At this point, one might wonder why we do not simply speak of influence instead of agency, given that
speaking of an attitude’s influence seems, at first sight, less controversial than speaking in terms of
agency. It is actually on purpose that we chose the word ‘‘agency’’ as we want to stress the (controversial)
idea that attitudes do things to the extent that influencing precisely is a verb of action. As long as we speak
of causalities and influences, we remain in a scientific vocabulary that can problematically hide not only
that a capacity to make a difference is at stake, but also that this raises important questions in terms of
ethics and responsibility.

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someone (an institution, a person, a text). Irrespective whether the authority refers to
an ostensive (physical) actant or is defined in terms of performance and action
(Latour 2005, p. 34), it shows the influence of an organizational culture and attitudes
on individual behaviors.
Second, attitudes lead to compliance. When the agency of attitudes is considered
in organizational research it is important to understand that attitudes are used as
labels in managerial discourse. People’s mental models are labeled and measured in
terms of attitudes that are considered to be fundamental for organizational
functioning (e.g., commitment and satisfaction). The first author experienced this
process himself when conducting a survey in an organization. The survey assessed
different attitudes by employing validated scales of a broad range of attitudes. It
turned out that the labels that were attached to these attitudes were adapted directly
into practical managerial discourse, offering the terms in which a newly developed
strategy was written.
Because the organization had not used these labels before, attitudes were called
into being in a very strict way. Several organization members and groups referred to
themselves as having a certain level of organizational citizenship behaviour; as
acting according to the ‘‘scores’’ they had on the items of the survey. Such
consequences of actions are well worth considering when conducting a survey in an
organization. Validated scales of a wide range of constructs are perceived as
appropriate reflections of organizational reality. But instead of reflections, these
operationalizations may well serve as conceptualizations of this ‘‘reality.’’ They
become a meta-text for describing behavior, and include the dominance of a certain
discourse over alternatives. Both these labels and the attitudes they are thought to
refer to are emancipatedly turned into agents and take their place in the chain of
agencies. Individual conceptualizations of negotiated attitudes are the performative
chains in socialization and serve as the major currency of employees’ behavior.
Thirdly, attitudes can press people to perform actions beyond the limits of health. A
clear example is how strong work attitudes can disturb the work-life balance, leading
to burnout (Schabracq 2003, Chap. 3). Another example is escalation of commitment
(Staw 1981), where people are locked into a costly course of action. But the effects do
not have to be negative altogether. Spector and Fox (2002) showed how affective
experiences towards work may have consequences that are counterproductive as well
as signs of a mere positive organizational citizenship behavior.
So, the emergence of a state of mind through socialization may lead to at least
three different effects of attitudes’ agency, i.e., obligation, compliance and health
effects. To illustrate this process, we will now reexamine an ethnographic study by
Nancy L. Malcom (2006) about the way girls who play softball are socialized in
their attitudes towards pain experienced during sports.

An Example of Socialization

Anyone who plays sport has to deal with certain amounts of pain. Top athletes
sometimes continue playing while they are severely injured. ‘‘This is simply what
athletes do. But athletes do not necessarily start out with this attitude’’ (Malcom

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2006, p. 496). Malcom describes how adolescent girls are socialized to softball sport
ethics, which is interesting as this process involves ‘‘the clash of norms between
traditional femininity and the sport ethic’’ (p. 496), in which sacrifices for the game
are to be made. The route from regarding pain and injuries as ‘‘attention-getting
devices’’ (p. 504) to ‘‘shaking the pain off’’ (p. 496) involves different tactics by
coaches and team members.
Malcom (2006) shows these strategies that are used to teach the traditional
ballplayer attitude towards pain and injury. The first strategy is to ignore the
complaints. Malcom—herself a coach—viewed these complaints as distractions
from the game. As she writes, ‘‘I did not want to reinforce their improper behavior
by paying attention to their minor injuries’’ (p. 505). When ignoring did not work,
coaches turned toward the strategy of teasing and joking about the pain, suggesting
it to be part of the game. If that did not work either, the strategy turned to explicitly
state the norm not to ‘‘fret over’’ (p. 506) such pains. The coaches also showed the
norms via role modeling when they got hurt themselves: Ignoring it, joking about it
or even suggesting that the pain was a pleasant thing were common reactions,
showing that pain was nothing to worry about. Malcom describes an occasion in
which one of the coaches challenged the girls to throw a ball to him hard enough so
that it would hurt him. As he was not wearing a glove, the barehanded catch caused
him to say: ‘‘That’s it. That hurt. Good throw!’’ (p. 509).
In time, some team members started to rebuke other girls when they complained
about their injuries. Moreover, they took pride in their past injuries, bruises and
pains and got involved in ‘‘membership talk’’ (p. 510), trying to outdo each other in
boasting of their toughness. They ‘‘wished to embrace the identity of a softball
player’’ (p. 517) so much that the initial norm of femininity was downplayed. Based
on this ethnography, Malcom (2006) concludes that socialization is a process in
which norms are learned and several strategies emerge as introductions and learning
opportunities. From a perspective in which attitudes are actantialized, at least three
additional things can be shown.
Regarding the emergence of this state of mind, it seems that attitudes make
individuals divide a bunch of people in terms of members and non-members. Each
girl’s attitude towards pain indicates whether she belongs to the group or not. Some
of the athletes confirm their belonging through engagement in membership-talk,
‘‘reminiscing fondly about serious injuries’’ (Malcom 2006, p. 510). Interactions
provide participants with different ways to frame such occasions. Socialization
suggests a choice of these alternatives in line with the favored attitudes and provides
a frame of reference for assessing their own and others’ behavior. As one of the girls
said when another girl did not flinch when hit hard by a ball: ‘‘You’re tough! I’d
have been crying if that happened to me’’ (p. 509). On the one hand, Malcom uses
this example to underline the fact that toughness is the norm, and a useful label for
describing appropriate behavior. On the other hand, it shows that a strong
incorporation of such a norm defines how players evaluate each other and
themselves in terms of their attitudes.
Regarding the effects of attitudes, this example shows that an attitude can lead to
pain. Whether it is called ‘‘heroic’’ (Malcom, p. 499) or ‘‘courageous’’ (p. 504), the
attitude that comes with the sport ethic makes girls do things they would not have

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done previously. This is not only a matter of perceptions, but attitudes can have
harmful physiological consequences.
Thirdly, this example shows how the perception of a situation is influenced by
attitudes. Attitudes are so internalized that people are often unaware of them.
Writing an ethnographic paper requires highly reflectively writing, but still the
norms can be found between the lines. Malcom is aware of the socialization process,
but this does not always work out that way. On the one hand, she states that ‘‘these
norms are learned’’ (p. 520), and she seems to be able to see the difference between
herself as a coach an as a researcher. However, in a moment of reflection she is
aware that ‘‘the norms of the sport ethic are so closely held, so taken for granted,
that the coaches who have internalized these norms forget that they are even
learned’’ (p. 507). At several points in the paper she seems unaware of her own
(dis)qualifications: one of the girls was ‘‘complaining excessively’’ (p. 515), while
another girl reacted to an incident ‘‘within the bounds of acceptability’’ (p. 516).
The internalization of the norms is so deep that they even slip through this highly
reflective writing exercise.
Thus, attitudes seem to influence, in some respects, behavior, which is another way
to speak of their agency, i.e., of their capacity to make a difference. Attitudes do things
to the extent that they influence people’s conduct. Sometimes this can be harmful for
one’s physical health. Sometimes this leads to identification or dis-identification with
others, and those involved may not even be aware of this influence of attitudes. The
example of socialization shows that people have to acquire certain attitudes through
interactions with others and through the interpretation of lived individual experience.
‘‘Acquired’’ in the sense of ‘‘what is left over as a trace of memory of yesterday’s
organizing’’ is the phrase that Jim Taylor and Elisabeth Van Every use for what we
think of as an organization (2000, p. 163).

The Issue of Responsibility in a World Where Attitudes Have Agency

Acknowledging the agency of attitudes poses the question of attribution of

responsibility with full force. The entire range of the examples (obstetric ultrasound,
euthanasia declarations, crimes out of passion, socialization processes, and survey
questionnaires) explicitly or implicitly questions the attribution of responsibility to
links in the chain of agency. When actants are identified as meaningful mediators
and chains in discourse and practice, they come to exercise their own causal
influences upon the flow of events. It seems that considering this flow of events as a
chain of agencies imbricates (Taylor and Van Every 2000) a person: it not only
separates the ‘‘publicly identifiable’’ person and one’s self, being ‘‘that inner unity
to which all personal experience belongs as attributes of a subject’’ (Harré 1987,
p. 42), but also singularizes attitudes from a single self.
Opening the black box called ‘‘responsible person’’ enables the discernment of a
chain of agency inside, including values, attitudes, emotions, and ideas. This chain
suggests a dynamic interaction between attitudes and other parts of the self, an
existential kind of monologue interieur. Several cases have illustrated this
perspective, varying from Bulgarian women facing infertility who separate the

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(‘‘defective’’) body from the (‘‘willing’’) mind (Todorova and Kotzeva 2006) to the
way troublesome manifestations of mental disorders are attributed as being within
their person, but still agents other than their selves (Weinberg 1997).
The question that arises is what remains of people’s autonomy and personal
responsibility when their attitudes are said to influence their decisions. What is left
of a person when attitudes are regarded as agents? To what extent does such
separation dehumanize people? In this paper, we have tried to avoid the extreme
idea that attitudes do not have any agency. On the other hand, however, it would be
a mistake if this leads to another extreme option, i.e., that human action is entirely
dominated by attitudes.
The dominance of attitudes’ agency over humans has been reported implicitly in
several studies, most notably by a description of mental disorders (Weinberg 1997).
The extreme determinations of people are exceptions, precisely cases where
addiction or insanity seems at stake. Interestingly, our vocabulary then tends to
change. For instance, we will say that people are consumed by their jealousy,
trapped by their addiction, devoured by their passion, taken over by their ambition,
or that someone is possessed, not him/herself anymore, alienated. All these
expressions point to situations where people appear to be a priori moved by
impulses, forces, passions that overwhelm or literally possess them, i.e., have them,
in the strongest sense of the term. In such cases, calculation and reasoning seem to
disappear or, more precisely, a (too) basic and simple calculation takes place: He or
she cheated on me, therefore he or she must die (jealousy); I need my fix, therefore I
am stealing this money (addiction); I have to buy this rare stamp, therefore I am
selling my house (passion). Everything thus happens as though alternative courses
of action could not even be considered because a specific reason (which we then
tend to call a passion, an impulse, an addiction) was suppressing all the others.
Passions, impulses, and addictions indeed constitute reasons for specific
behaviors or conduct, but as with any reasoning they can, in extreme forms, come
to decimate all the others. In these specific cases, people can actually be said to lose
agency to the extent that other parts of what is supposed to constitute their self do
not seem to make a difference anymore: they appear to be possessed, alienated,
taken over, consumed, devoured by something, as many terms that precisely
indicate a very strong possession, which can lead to a complete annihilation of what
is supposed to be their persona. Note that this same vocabulary of possession also
appears when we speak of being fooled or tricked by someone else as in ‘‘You got
me’’ (which we also find in French: ‘‘Tu m’as eu’’). Such expressions thus refer to
situations where someone’s conduct seems to have been determined by something
they have no or very little control over.
Complete determinism is mostly mentioned in the context of illness (e.g.,
insanity, addiction, depression), suggesting that this is an extreme and undesirable
situation. The attribution of agency to attitudes is restricted to negative situations,
which at least calls suspicion on the person that he or she tries to pass the buck.
Especially in situations where negative and painful behavior has to be attributed,
this may be used as a rhetorical trick: In the dance of agencies (Pickering 1995), it
will never be my fault to step on someone’s toes. Card (2005) places this ‘‘erosion
of agency’’ in an organizational context:

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[G]iven the difficulty of locating precisely what constitutes ‘our action’ within
a hierarchical context, this leads to the continual erosion of agency itself
within organizations (and hence to the erosion of personal responsibility.
(pp. 400–401)
Even when no one aims for a public hanging when errors occur, the systemic factors
that influence individuals’ contribution to organizing is an easy way of shunting
responsibility by reducing one’s role to being made a cat’s-paw.
In all, the other extreme situation, i.e., dominance of attitudes over humans, can
also have important implications for organizational functioning. In normal, less
problematic situations, however, it is best to explore ways to balance between the
two extremes. The question then becomes: How can we extend agency to attitudes
without dismissing agency from the humans who hold them?

Balancing Agencies, Responsibility and Decision Making

We have stated that we need to balance between two extremes that have to be avoided
at all cost: (1) claiming that attitudes do not have any agency versus (2) claiming that
human action is entirely dominated by attitudes. Normally, attitudes, positions,
temperament, and inclinations, are different to the extent that possession appears
somewhat limited. The vocabulary also seems to change: we speak of attitudes that
a priori lead us to adopt some specific behavior or guide us in our conduct. An attitude
therefore looks like an arrow on a wall. It indicates or tells us what direction we should
follow in order to fulfill a specific objective, but it does not a priori determine our
conduct (we can decide not to follow the sign). Cooren et al. (2006) state that
[s]peaking about non-human agency does not mean that objects become
completely autonomous and that humans are reduced to puppets. On the
contrary … their mode of action usually requires human participation. For
instance, when we enter a bank and see a small hallway delimited by a cord
that visitors are supposed to follow in order to be served by the cashiers, this
hallway cannot be said to be determining completely our behavior. It needs
our participation/collaboration/consent. Certainly, this hallway enjoins us to
follow a specific pathway, but enacting this type of behavior still is a matter of
personal decision. (pp. 537–538)
We therefore propose that the awareness of attitude’s agency extends rather than
reduces the ownership of choice of people. In that sense, ANT’s principle of
generalized symmetry is telling. It is called a generalized symmetry because all
kinds of actants (human and nonhuman) should be allowed to be incorporated in the
conceptual framework. Without this general invitation we cannot get a truly rich
understanding of the dynamics in an emerging network. However, it would be an
analytical and ethical mistake to condemn this general, even generous, invitation as
practical submission to determinism. Non-human agency is not a Trojan horse,
smuggling behaviorism back into town. On the contrary, generalized symmetry
underlines the possibility that all of these actants can make a difference in a given

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context; hence the agency to influence the direction of the evolvement of that
particular situation. By taking all possible contributions to any unique situation into
consideration, an ANT-perspective helps to extend one’s ownership of choice:
recognition of the influences and options is the only way to make a true decision. It
is the paradox of any decision which is made visible. Through the looking glass of
attitude’s agency, we can indeed see the paradox of any decision that Jacques
Derrida (1992), for instance, has shown (see also Clegg et al. 2007). Any choice,
any decision must experience what he calls undecidability, which preserves the
possibility of adopting alternative courses of action, alternative attitudes. As he
says, ‘‘the undecidable remains caught, lodged, at least as a ghost—but an essential
ghost—in every decision, in every event of decision’’ (Derrida 1992, p. 24). If an
attitude leads us to adopt specific behaviors, we can definitely speak in terms of
agency for the attitude, but this does not mean that our own agency, as a whole self,
suddenly vanishes. Our agency precisely consists in this je ne sais quoi, this
capacity we are all supposed to have as human beings, which consists of being able
to not only weigh, to balance, and to calculate between various reasons, motives,
and inclinations, but also to experience the undecidable, the incalculable, and the
irrational (in the etymological sense of the term, where ratio means calculation).
According to this approach, we are indeed moved or animated by specific
attitudes, reasons, passions, emotions—and it is in this respect that we can speak of
agency for these types of dispositions—but as long as we do not fall into some form
of addiction, insanity, or brainwashing, our own agency as a whole appears
preserved to the extent that such dispositions can be weighed, examined and
balanced. Recognizing attitudes’ agency therefore does not force us to eliminate the
question of people’s responsibility. People can respond for their actions—i.e., be
responsible, in the etymological sense of the term—precisely because there is this
moment of appropriation, this leap of decision, this ‘‘je ne sais quoi’’ that marks
ownership of what is accomplished, even if what is accomplished is the product of a
configurations of agencies.
Indeed, such ownership can, according to this reasoning, never be absolute; it can
only be relative, at least theoretically speaking. As soon as we recognize that some
attitudes indeed lead to specific behaviors, we precisely recognize that it is also our
responsibility in general, as human beings, to do what we can to examine, change or
reinforce such attitudes. If, as Latour (1996) points out, action is always shared with
others, this means that our own agency also is shared, somehow, with our own
attitudes, but this does not prevent us from having to respond for our action and
attitudes. Attitudes have agency to the extent that we can retrospectively point to
what made someone choose a specific course of action instead of another, but
human actions are not entirely dominated by attitudes to the extent that we are not
supposed to be robots blindly following a program. As Derrida (1992) again points
out,
A decision that would not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not
be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding
of a calculable process. (p. 24)

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This is the paradox of any decision. If a situation appears decidable, we are simply
following a program of action, an algorithm, a calculable process, an attitude, and
no decision seems really made, since we (decide to) let this program decide for us,
so to speak. However, if a situation appears undecidable, as in dilemmas for
instance, it is at this very moment that decisions take their full meaning, since it is
then that ownership appears the strongest.
Attitudes thus function as many programs of action that are internalized and daily
guide our conduct. If no form of undecidability or incalculability is experienced, we
almost let them decide for us, so to speak: Their agency appears strong and ours, as
a whole, weak, which does not mean, of course, that we become irresponsible. They
hold us because we (decide to) strongly hold to them (and they do not appear to be
incompatible). But even in these situations, our responsibility is at stake to the
extent that we (and not, of course, our attitudes) can still be asked to respond for our
deeds and attitudes. In other words, even recognizing the strong agency of attitudes
does not amount to downplaying our capacity to respond for them.
Furthermore, it is when we experience the undecidable, the incalculable, that our
agency suddenly appears stronger. It is the event of the true decision, even if it is
also in the name of certain attitudes, principles or values that such decisions are
made. What we mean is that we never fully lose our agency (except maybe, as we
saw, in extreme forms of addiction or insanity), but our attitudes never fully lose
theirs. In this tension, our responsibility never vanishes, to the extent we can always
be asked to respond for what led us to do what we did, which is another way to say
that we respond for our attitudes.
We will go one step further. The agency of attitudes does not only show how
humans can reach a true decision, but it is precisely because humans have attitudes
that we can also define who they are. As Tarde (1895/1999) and Greimas (1987)
remind us, being and having should not be considered in opposition, since they are
actually defining each other. We are what we are partially because of the attitudes
we have. Being something or someone can always be translated into having
something or someone.
Tarde (1895/1999) illustrates this point very well when he notes,
So far, all of philosophy has been founded on the verb To be, whose definition
seemed to have been the Rosetta’s stone to be discovered. One may say that, if
only philosophy had been founded on the verb To have, many sterile
discussions, many slowdown of the mind, would have been avoided. From this
principle ‘I am,’ it is impossible to deduce any other existence than mine, in
spite of all the subtleties of the world. But affirm first this postulate ‘I have’ as
the basic fact, and then the had as well as the having are given at the same
time as inseparable. (p. 86, Latour’s (2002) translation)
Although we do not follow Tarde when he goes as far as postulating the primacy of
having over being (for us, they inter-define each other), his rehabilitation of having
is interesting because of what it means when applied to attitudes. Starting from the
fact that we have attitudes indeed forces us to recognize that who we are in terms of
attitudes is in many respects the product of our interactions with what surrounds us.

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As pointed out by Malcom (2006), being a softball player implies the internalization
and translation of several norms, attitudes, and values that will come to guide or
even dictate our conduct. As Tarde notes, focusing on ‘‘having’’ allows us to deduce
other existences than ours to the extent that what is has necessarily to come from
outside (as he says, the had and the having are inseparable).
Again, this does not mean that we are completely at the mercy of these attitudes, but
it does mean that possession or ownership is a two-way road. Indeed, if we hold some
specific attitudes, it means that in many respects, these attitudes also hold us. Tarde
(1895/1999) seems aware of this crucial aspect of ownership and possession when he
defines what he means by society, a term he uses (paralleling Whitehead 1929/1978)
to refer not only to social entities, but also to humans, cells, molecules, atoms:
What is society? One could define it according to our viewpoint: the
reciprocal possession, under very various forms, of all by each… Subscriber
to a newspaper, I possess my journalists, who possess their subscribers. I
have my government, my religion, my police force, as much as my specific
human type, my attitude [tempe´rament], my health; but I also know that my
country’s ministers, my cult’s priests or my county’s policemen count me in
the number of the herd they are in charge of, just as the human type, should
it personify itself somewhere, would only see in me one if its particular
variation. (pp. 85–86)
If we hold specific attitudes vis-à-vis pain, for instance, it means that these attitudes,
by definition, also hold us, that is, they guide us in our conduct; they lead us to adopt
some specific behaviors.
To illustrate this point, let us go back to Malcom’s (2006) study. When the coach
says, ‘‘That’s it. That hurt. Good throw!’’ (p. 509), he is communicating an attitude
vis-à-vis pain, something that could be summarized as ‘‘pain is good’’ or ‘‘pain is
part of the game.’’ It is the attitude he or she is holding and supposedly having. But,
following Tarde (1895/1999), we could also say that this attitude also holds him or
her (or even, but maybe too strongly, has him or her) to the extent that it is this
attitude he or she supposedly has about pain (and we can imagine that he or she is
sincere about it) that leads him or her to say what he or she says. In other words, it
is, ceteris paribus, because he or she has this specific attitude about pain that a good
throw is for him or her a throw that may be painful to the catcher.
Importantly, such reasoning does not lead us to some form of absolute
determinism. To claim that, ceteris paribus, it is his or her attitude about pain that
made the coach say what he or she said is a retrospective account about what
happened. It is only retrospectively that we can conjecture that it might be this
attitude that made him or her say what he said, but prospectively, no attitude can
determine anything. An attitude can lead or guide our conduct or behavior, but it
cannot determine it absolutely.
A specific move—for instance, throwing a ball very strongly to a catcher—does
not necessarily lead to another specific move on the catcher’s part—for instance,
saying, ‘‘That’s it. That hurt. Good throw!’’ A priori, an attitude is supposed to lead
or guide the conduct of the person who holds it; it does not determine it, which is
why recognizing their agency does not question people’s capacity to respond for

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them. It is only retrospectively that we can speak of determination. Causality can

therefore be only noticed retrospectively, that is, after a form of calculation or
reasoning minimally took place.
So attitudes a priori guide us, lead us, but it is only retrospectively, after the fact,
that we can say that they made us adopt some specific behaviors. Should we remove
this je ne sais quoi, this moment of relative in/determination,3 we would remove
what constitutes a certain freedom of will, i.e., our capacity to make choices and
decisions, our capacity to act ethically or unethically. Because of this relative in/
determination, acting as responsible people in a contingent network of relations
implies walking a tightrope between determinism and voluntarism.

Conclusion

What is key in this reasoning is that we cannot escape from the fact that we are
guided or held by our attitudes, but it is precisely this relative possession that
implies decision and therefore a form of responsibility. If the coach’s attitude is that
‘‘pain is part of the game,’’ will this attitude lead him or her to go as far as hurting
the players? Maybe yes, maybe not. But we could imagine that other attitudes might
also prevail, like ‘‘My players should not get hurt.’’ What we mean is that we
normally remain held by several principles, norms, and values that form as many
attitudes that might suddenly appear to be incompatible. As analysts, we therefore
have to recognize their relative agency, while also acknowledging that the bearers
of these attitudes have, as a collective of attitudes, to respond for them and for their
actions.
As in any collective, an actor has to speak in its name in order to mark its
identity, its integrity (Taylor and Van Every 2000). Something or someone has to
speak on its behalf. Someone has to respond for its deeds. What is true of an
organization is also true of a human being if we consider that the latter also is a
collective. Interestingly, this might be why we sometimes use the term ‘‘individ-
uals’’ (i.e., etymologically speaking, that cannot be divided) when we refer to
human beings. Normatively speaking, people are normally considered to be in-
dividable precisely because we want to avoid the diffusion of responsibility. We
want to be able to identify who is in charge and this is supposed to be the whole
human being, not just parts (attitudes, passions, impulses, ideas, etc.).
But this is, of course, a normative decision. Individuals, as we saw, can be
divided, analyzed, fragmented, etc. (and this is not just a philosophical gesture, as it
is, as we saw, a common practice in court decisions). We can identify what kind of
attitudes tend to make them adopt specific conducts. The paradox thus becomes that
by ascribing agency to attitudes, we are better able to recognize and maybe enact
our own agency as a totality, a collective, a society. Especially in the reality of

3
By in/determination, we mean that the logic we are promoting lies precisely in this middle ground that
traditional concepts does not allow us to refer to (no complete determination, but no complete
indetermination either). It is therefore also a logic of im/purity.

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contemporary organizations, it is our responsibility to decide where our attitudes

may lead us.

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