How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement

Full text

WORKING PAPER 5
How is agency possible?
Towards an ecological understanding of
agency-as-achievement.
Gert Biesta and Michael Tedder
February 2006
Copyright lies with the authors. If you cite or quote, please be sensitive to the fact
that this is work in progress.
Contact author:
Prof. Gert Biesta
School of Education and Lifelong Learning
St Lukes Campus
The University of Exeter
Heavitree Road
Exeter, EX1 2LU
Email: g.biesta@exeter.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1392 264750

2
The Learning Lives Research Project
The Learning Lives research project began in June 2004, and runs until the end of January 2008. The
project is a collaboration between the University of Exeter, the University of Brighton, the Univesity of
Leeds and the University of Stirling, all in the UK. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC) as part of it Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). The award number
is RES-139-25-0111.
The focus of the research is on the interrelationships between learning, identity and agency in people’s
lives. There are two strands to the data collection, involving the integration of three different
methodologies. The first strand is a qualitative study of around 120 people, drawn from different walks
of life, living in different parts of the country, and of different ages, gender and ethnicities. Each of the
university partners has its own sub-sample, with different core interests. The Exeter team (Gert Biesta
and Mike Tedder) are focused on learning, identity and agency in relation to family and the local
community. The Brighton team (Ivor Goodson and Norma Adair) are focused on issues of migration,
including within country migration. The Leeds team (Phil Hodkinson, Heather Hodkinson, Geoff Ford
and Ruth Hawthorn) are focused on people engaged in adult learning and/or guidance, and on older
adults. The Stirling team (John Field and originally Irene Malcolm, now Heather Lynch) are focused on
work and unemployment. Of course, these issues overlap. On the qualitative strand, we are combining
two normally separate methodologies: life history research and longitudinal qualitative research.
Though we will have a shorter engagement with some of the sample, we are following most subjects for
over 3 years, involving about six sweeps of interviewing.
The second strand of our work is quantitative. A second Exeter team (Flora Macleod and Paul Lambe)
is using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) – a data set of 10,000+ adults from across the UK
who have been interviewed annually since 1991 – to develop robust measures of formal and informal
learning, identity and agency in their different dimensions and to test the validity of these measures
against a range of outcome variables. Once these theoretically informed instruments have been
developed using BHPS variables, longitudinal data analysis techniques (multilevel models of individual
change and hazard/survival models of event occurrence in both discrete and continuous time) will be
applied to explore the significance of learners’ identities and agency for their learning, dispositions,
practices and achievements and how transformations in a given individual’s dispositions, practices and
achievements impact upon their sense of identity and agency and their ability to exert control over their
lives.
To establish an iterative relationship between the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative
data we are mapping the case study participants’ learning trajectories onto wider trends and processes
in the UK as revealed through analysis of the BHPS.
Working Papers
This paper is one of a series of working papers being produced as part of the Learning Lives research.
These papers are of very different types, and their prime purpose is to help the team with its on-going
analysis and synthesis of findings. Consequently, they represent work in progress. A second purpose
is to share some of our preliminary findings and thinking with a wider audience. We hope that you will
find this paper, and others in the series, of interest and value. If you have constructive critical
comments to offer we would love to hear from you. Please send any comments to the contact author,
identified on the front cover.

3
How is agency possible?
Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement.
Gert Biesta and Michael Tedder
PART 1
INTRODUCTION
THE QUESTION OF AGENCY
The Enlightenment Legacy
The idea of ‘agency’ in social theory
Agency, learning and Learning Lives
Agency and late-modern society: Giddens and Bauman
Biographical learning
The purpose of the working paper
WHAT IS AGENCY?
Theoretical traditions
A definition of agency
A conceptualisation of agency: The ‘chordal triad’
The iterational dimension of agency
The projective dimension of agency
The practical-evaluative dimension of agency
Context and interaction
Three questions for empirical research
Disucussion
SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR DATA-ANALYSIS
HOW IS AGENCY ACHIEVED? SOME FURTHER OBSERVATIONS
Overcoming individualism and decentering agency: Hannah Arendt on action
The ego and its identity as the agentic core of personality structure: Levine
Agency and control
Agency: Initiative or response?
CONCLUSIONS
PART II
CASE STUDY: DIOGENES
Introduction
Composition and Configuration [step 1 & 2]
Transaction and Action [step 3 & 4]
Ecology of agency [step 5]
Agentic Orientations [step 6]
The temporal dimension [step 7]
Endnote
REFERENCES

4
PART I
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this working paper is twofold. On the one hand we wish to contribute
to the theorisation of one of they key concepts of the Learning Lives concepts, viz.,
the concept of agency. On the other hand we wish to make a start with a more
systematic analysis of data from the Exeter case studies. In this working paper the
second purpose is linked to the first in that we have tried to focus our data analysis on
questions about agency – in relation to learning and with attention to life-course and
identity. The working paper not only proposes a particular way of understanding
agency based upon a review of relevant literature, but also explores the extent to
which such an approach is useful in understanding the relationship between agency
and learning in the life-course.
THE QUESTION OF AGENCY
The Enlightenment legacy
The idea of agency has been central to educational thinking and practice at least since
the Enlightenment. Kant famously defined Enlightement as “man’s [sic] release from
his self-incurred tutelage,” and saw tutelage as “man’s inability to make use of his
understanding without direction from another” (Kant 1992[1784], p.90). This led him to
articulate the ‘motto’ of Enlightenment as “Sapere aude! Have courage to exercise your
own understanding!” (ibid.). Kant not only provided a concise definition of
Enlightenment. He also made an explicit connection between Enlightenment and
education. In his treatise on education (Über Pädagogik) he argued that the “propensity
and vocation for free thinking” of the human being – which he saw as the “ultimate
destination” and the “aim of his existence” (Kant 1982[1803], p.710) – could only be
brought about through education. He even argued that human beings could only become
human through education (“Der Mensch kann nur Mensch werden durch Erziehung.”;
see ibid., p.699).
The idea that education is the process though which human beings develop their rational
faculties so that they become capable of independent judgement which, in turn, forms
the basis for autonomous action, has had a profound impact on modern educational
theory and practice. There are, for example, direct lines from Kant to the work of Piaget
and Kohlberg who both understand the highest stages of cognitive and moral
development in terms of (rational) autonomy. The idea of rational autonomy is also a
guiding principle in liberal education and is central to discussions about critical thinking
as an educational ideal (see, for example, McPeck 1981; Siegel 1988; Thayer-Bacon
2000; Biesta & Stams 2001). Through the influence of (neo-)Marxism it has also
become a leading idea in critical and emancipatory approaches to education, both in
Europe and North America (see Biesta 1998). Some even argue that rational autonomy is
not simply an educational aim, but that it is the one and only aim of education (e.g.,
Siegel 1988; Hirst and Peters 1970). This not only holds for the education of children.
There is also a strong tradition which sees adult education as a lever for empowerment
and emancipation (see, e.g., Fieldhouse 1996; Welton 2005; English 2005). Whereas in
the tradition of liberal education, but also in Continental traditions such as
Geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik and the Bildungs-tradition, empowerment and

5
emancipation are basically understood in individualistic terms – i.e., in terms of
individual development and growth – critical traditions stress that there can be no
individual emancipation without societal emancipation (see, e.g., Mollenhauer 1983).
Thus they highlight that agency is not exclusively an individual achievement but is
connected to contextual and structural factors.
It is important to note that in these traditions the link between agency and education is
predominantly understood in normative terms. The idea is that education should have a
positive impact on the individual’s ability to exert control over his or her life and should
result in emancipation and autonomy. Agency is seen as an educational aim and
educational ideal and as the desired outcome of educational processes. This explains
why agency primarily figures as a justification of particular educational arrangements
and interventions. Whether education actually has a positive impact on agency and does
result in empowerment and emancipation is entirely an empirical matter – although it
shouldn’t be forgotten that what counts as evidence for success crucially depends on
how agency is defined and understood (see Biesta in press[b]).
The idea of ‘agency’ in social theory
Agency is not only a central concept in modern educational theory and practice, but is
also a key notion and issue in contemporary social theory, particularly in sociology,
economics and political science. The question in social theory in first and foremost about
the empirical conditions of agency, i.e., the question how and when agency is possible,
and about ways in which the phenomenon of agency can be conceptualised and
theorised. (This does not preclude, of course, that research on agency might be motivated
by the conviction that agency is basically ‘a good thing’; see, e.g., Emirbayer & Mische
1998, p.973.)
Within sociology “the term agency is usually juxtaposed to structure and is often no
more than a synonym for action, emphasizing implicitly the undetermined nature of
human action, as opposed to the alleged determinism of structural theories” (Marshall
1998). If it has a wider meaning, “it is to draw attention to the psychological and social
psychological make-up of the actor, and to imply the capacity for willed (voluntary)
action” (ibid.). This resonates with a general definition of agency as “(t)he capacity for
autonomous social action” (Calhoun 2002) and. more specifically (but here the definition
becomes almost tautological) as “the ability of actors to operate independently of the
determining constraints of social structure” (ibid.). A more ‘situated’ definition is given
by Emirbayer & Mische (1998, p.971) who see agency as “the capacity of actors to
critically shape their own responsiveness to problematic situations” (see also below). In
the Dictionary of Social Sciences (Cahoun 2002) it is suggested that (t) he origins of the
term agency lie in the legal and commercial distinction between principal and agent, in
which the latter is granted the capacity to act autonomously on behalf of the form”
(Cahoun 2002).
Much discussion in sociology commonly opposes agency to social structure. The
‘structure-agency debate’ came to the fore in sociology in the 1970s and 1980s “in the
context of increased attention to practice or action and an increased concern for the
analysis of power relations and conflict” (Cahoun 2002). It can even be argued that the
structure-agency debate has become one of the defining discussions of modern
sociology. This is, for example, visible in the fact that sociological theories are often
characterised according to the relative emphasis they place on agency or structure (see

6
Marshall 1998; see also Evans 2002). This is not to say that the structure-agency debate
is the only way in which work on agency emerging from social science disciplines can
be captured. It is probably more useful to follow Hollis (1994) who distinguishes
between holistic and individualistic strategies for understanding or explaining agency.
Whereas structural and cultural approaches to the question of agency would count as
holistic strategies, rational choice theory can be seen as an example of an individualistic
approach, as can be psychological theories which focus on the ego as the main ‘driver’
of agency (see Levine 2005). More recently, sociologists have made attempts to
overcome the structure-agency dualism, most notably through the idea of ‘habitus’ (see
Bourdieu 1977; 1990) and the theory of structuration (see Giddens 1984). Whether this
actually moves the discussion forward by asking new questions about structure and
agency or whether it results in a situation where structure and agency are presented as so
closely intertwined that “it becomes impossible to examine their interplay” (Archer
1988, p.80; emph. in original; see also Archer 2000) remains an open question. Finally it
should be mentioned that although much of the discussion about agency is informed by
social theory and (social) psychology, many of these discussion go back to earlier
philosophical work on questions about human freedom. Seen in this light it can be
argued that the question of ‘agency’ is also a constant in Western philosophy (for recent
contributions to this discussion see, e.g., Davidson 2001; Mele 2003).
Agency, learning and Learning Lives
The question of agency plays a central role in the Learning Lives project. The project is
not simply interested in adult learning or adults’ learning biographies but aims, among
other things, to understand the relationship between learning and agency. This is
expressed in general terms in the project’s intention “to deepen understanding of the
meaning and significance of learning in the lives of adults” or, in shorter formula, in the
intention to understand what learning ‘means and does’ in the lives of adults. There is at
least a double relationship between agency and learning possible. On the one hand the
project seeks to understand how learning impacts on agency, both positively and
negatively. The question here is how different forms, practices and processes of learning
influence the capacity of individuals to give direction to their lives. On the other hand the
project seeks to understand how agency impacts on learning. Here we can think, for
example, of situations in which adults consciously decide to engage in forms of learning,
for example to overcome particular problems, deal with challenges or give their life a
new direction or at least create the conditions for doing so. The fact that the Learning
Lives project focuses on learning biographies makes it possible to examine relationships
between learning and agency in a temporal way, both in relation to the lived lives of the
participants and in relation to wider societal transformations (which includes the
question of generations; see, e.g., Antikainen et al., 1996; Alheit 2005). The biographical
approach also makes it possible to gain an understanding of the role of narrative – life
stories – in understanding relationships between learning and agency (see below) while
the interest in identity makes it possible to investigate how relationships between
learning and agency are mediated by the participants’ sense of self.
Agency and late-modern society: Giddens and Bauman
Although the Learning Lives project is partly motivated by the idea that learning can be
a good thing and can contribute to empowerment and emancipation – which can be
inferred from the fact that one of the aims of the project is “to identify ways in which the
learning of adults can be supported and enhanced” – the project’s interest in the
relationship between learning and agency is not exclusively motivated by normative

7
concerns. Another reason for the interest in agency stems from recent sociological
analyses of modernisation and the transformation of modern societies into late, high or
post-modern ones (see Beck 1992; Giddens 1990; 1991; Bauman 2000). The general
thrust of the argument here is that as a result of the erosion of traditions and normative
frameworks – itself a characteristic of modernisation – life becomes less and less
something that is ‘given’ and ‘pre-structured’ and increasingly turns into a ‘task’ for the
modern individual. As Giddens has put it: “in the context of a post-traditional order, the
self becomes a reflexive project” (Giddens 1991, p.32). Although he acknowledges
that transitions in individuals’ lives “have always demanded psychic reorganisation,
something which was often ritualised in traditional cultures in the shape of rites de
passage (...) in the settings of modernity, by contrast, the altered self has to be
explored and constructed as part of a reflective process of connecting personal and
social change” (ibid.). This suggests, to put it briefly, that modernisation, understood
as the erosion of structuring traditions and frameworks, makes agency increasingly
necessary.
1
Giddens sees high or late modernity as the current phase of development of modern
institutions, a phase “marked by the radicalising and globalising of basic traits of
modernity” (ibid., p.243). High modernity “is characterised by widespread scepticism
about providential reason, coupled with the recognition that science and technology
are double-edged, creating new parameters of risk and danger as well as offering
beneficent possibilities for humankind” (ibid., p.28). According to Giddens this
results in an intensification of uncertainty, particularly because of the ‘disturbing’
influence of (social) scientific knowledge on the reflexive project of the self. “The
chronic entry of knowledge into the circumstances of action it analyses or describes
creates a set of uncertainties to add to the circular and fallible character of post-
traditional claims to knowledge.” (ibid., p.28) Whereas “in a post-traditional social
universe, an indefinite range of potential courses of action (with their attendant risks)
is at any given moment open to individuals and collectivities” so that “(c)hoosing
among such alternatives is always an ‘as if’ matter, a question of selecting between
possible worlds” (ibid., p.29), in circumstances of late modernity “many forms of risk
do not admit of clear assessment, because of the mutable knowledge environment
which frame them; and even risk assessments within relatively closed settings are
often only valid ‘until further notice’ (ibid., p.32). Giddens thus suggest that under
conditions of high or late modernity agency becomes even more necessary but at the
same time it becomes more difficult to ‘achieve.’
Giddens’s observations resonate with the work of Bauman in that both agree that
modernity forces individuals to ‘take charge’ of their own lives. For Bauman
modernisation has always implied individualisation, that is, the overcoming of the all-
encompassing influence of social, cultural and religious traditions. Individualisation,
he writes, “consists of transforming human ‘identity’ from a given’ into a ‘task’ and
charging the actors with the responsibility for performing that task” (Bauman 2000,
p.31). Individualisation thus entails the establishment of what Bauman calls de jure
autonomy (ibid., p.32). What distinguishes old or ‘solid’ from new or ‘liquid’ or
1
Support for this idea at a more ‘micro’ level can be found in a comparative study by Evans about the
relationship between labour markets and young people’s actions in Germany and England. One of the
conclusions of the research was that the more insecure and flexible system in England “necessitates
greater proactivity and the maintenance of the positive approach to ‘opportunities’” (Evans 2002,
p.515).

8
‘fluid’ modernity, according to Bauman, is not the process of individualisation as such
nor the intensification of the conditions under which individualisation occurs. Bauman
argues that what is typical of liquid modernity is the existence of a ‘yawning gap’
between the right of self-assertion and the capacity “to control the social settings
which render such self-assertion feasible” (ibid., p.38). The “main contradiction of
fluid modernity” (ibid., p.38) lies in the “wide and growing gap between the condition
of individuals de jure and their chances ... to gain control over their fate and make the
choices they truly desire” (ibid., p.39), the gap, in other words, between de jure and de
facto autonomy. Bauman argues that this gap “cannot be bridged by individual effort
alone” (ibid.). The gap has emerged and grown precisely “because of the emptying of
public space, and particularly the ‘agora’, that intermediary, public/private site ...
where private problems are translated into the language of public issues and public
solutions are sought, negotiated and agreed for private troubles” (ibid.). This is why
Bauman argues that in contemporary individualised society we need “more, not less,
of the ‘public sphere’” (ibid., p.51), we need the ability to congeal and condense
“private troubles into public interests that are larger than the sum of their individual
ingredients ... so that they can acquire once more the shape of the visions of the ‘good
society’ and the ‘just society’” (ibid.) – which itself is a process that requires
particular forms of (demcoratic) learning (see Biesta 2005; in press[a]). This now only
shows how Bauman’s analysis of late or post-modern society is different from
Giddens’s. Bauman also argues that the question of how agency is achieved cannot be
understood by focusing exclusively on the ability of individuals to give direction to
their lives. Bauman suggests a definition of agency which includes (a certain amount
of) control over the conditions that shape one’s opportunities for action.
2
Biographical learning
All this suggests an interesting difference between the normative and the
empirical/sociological interest in agency and its relation to learning. Whereas in the
normative tradition it is argued that people need to be educated and need to learn
particular things in order to become (more) agentic, the empirical/sociological line
suggests that modernisation forces people to be (more) agentic, that is, to ‘take control
of their lives’ (Evans 2002), which then raises the question what kind of learning – if
any – is involved in and/or follows from living one’s life under such
post/late/high/liquid/fluid-modern conditions. It is the latter line of thinking which
mainly explains the recent interest of researchers in social science and adult education
in life-histories and (learning) biographies (see, e.g., West 1996; Dominicé 2000;
Bron et al., 2005). At the same time it helps to explain the rise of biographical
learning itself, defined by Alheit as “a self-willed, ‘autopoietic’ accomplishment on
the part of active subjects (...), in which they reflexively ‘organise’ their experience in
such a way that they also generate personal coherence, identity, a meaning to their life
history, and a communicable, socially viable lifeworld perspective for guiding their
actions” Alheit 2005, p.209; see also Alheit & Dausien 2000; and Bron 2001; Bron &
Lönnheden, 2004).
The purpose of the working paper
This brief overview already shows that the question of agency is a complex question
which has been discussed in different ways across several disciplines. The purpose of
2
Interestingly enough this is precisely one of the ways in which Dewey defines democracy (see Biesta
in press/2007).

9
this working paper is to explore in more detail some of the ways in which agency has
been defined, conceptualised and theorised in order to develop a working definition of
‘agency’ and generate a set of questions which might guide and inform the analysis of
life history data and possible further thematic data-collection. In part II of this paper
we apply some of the theoretical considerations developed in part I on case studies
from the Learning Lives project in order to test their fruitfulness for data-analaysis.
At this point we wish to suggest a first definition of (the phenomenon of) agency as
the situation where individuals are able to exert control over and give direction to the
course of their lives. This definition is more general than the definition of agency as
‘the capacity for autonomous social action’, because this definition already assumes
that agency is an individual ‘capacity’ and has to do with action in the social domain
that is characterised by autonomy. Our initial definition is also more general than the
idea that agency refers to the ‘the capacity of actors to critically shape their own
responsiveness to problematic situations’, a definition which also assumes that agency is
an individual capacity and one which restricts the purpose of agency to dealing with
problematic situations. At this point we also would like to keep in mind Bauman’s
suggestion that agency not simply refers to an ability to give direction to one’s own life-
course but includes influence over the conditions that shape the context for action.
In what follows we will focus on attempts to theorise agency in its own right. This is not
only because, as Emirbayer and Mische have argued, the notion of agency “has all too
seldom inspired systematical analysis (Emirbayer & Mische 1998), p.962). It is also
because “in the struggle to demonstrate the interpenetration of agency and structure,
many theorists have failed to distinguish agency as an analytical category in its own
right” (ibid., pp. 962-963). This is not to suggest, of course, that agency is entirely an
individual matter or that structures don’t matter in understanding and explaining
agency, but it is to highlight that the structure-agency debate in sociology is not the
only way in which questions about agency can be posed and addressed (which is a
further reason why Hollis’s distinction between holistic and individualistic strategic
for understanding/explaining human action is a more useful way to distinguish
between different sociological theories and approach than to refer to those approaches
as ‘structural’ and ‘agentic’). (Another way of putting this is in terms of the
distinction between ‘agency as phenomenon’ and ‘agency as theory’ [see for a similar
distinction Dannefer 2003, p.647]. From one set of perspectives agency refers to a
construct, a phenomenon to be described, understood and explained. From another set
of perspectives, however, agency refers itself to an explanatory theory which proposes
to understand and explain human action in terms of its ‘agentic causes’.)
WHAT IS AGENCY?
An interesting contribution to the discussion about agency has been made by Mustafa
Emirbayer and Ann Mische in their paper ‘What is agency?’ published in the
American Journal of Sociology (1998). In their approach to agency – to which they
refer as ‘relational pragmatics’ – they seek to overcome the one-sidedness they see as
characteristic of much existing literature on agency which either focuses on routine,
on purpose, or on judgement. Emirbayer and Mische argue for a conception of agency
which focuses on the dynamic interplay between these three dimensions and takes

10
into consideration “how this interplay varies within different structural contexts of
action” (Emirbayer and Mische 1998, p.963). They therefore suggest to
reconceptualise human agency
as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed
by the past, (in its habitual aspect), but also oriented toward the
future (as a capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward
the present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits and future
projects with the contingencies of the moment) (ibid., p.963)
The further argue that the agentic dimension of social action can only be captured in
its full complexity “if it is analytically situated with the flow of time,” to which they
add “that structural contexts of action are themselves temporal as well as relational
fields – multiple, overlapping ways of ordering time toward which social actors can
assume different simultaneous agentic orientations” (ibid., pp.963-964). Emirbayer
and Mische not only claim that actors are embedded in many of such ‘temporalities’
at once, but that in relation to such temporalities “they can be said to be oriented
toward the past, the future, and the present at any given moment, although they may
primarily be orientated toward one or another of these within any one emergent
situation” (ibid., p.964). Against this background they then argue that “(a)s actors
move within and among these different and unfolding contexts, they switch between
(or ‘recompose’) their temporal orientations – and thus are capable of changing their
relationship to structure” (ibid.). This leads them to the suggestion that the “key to
grasping the dynamic possibilities of human agency is to view it as composed of
variable and changing orientations within the flow of time” (ibid., emphasis added).
This, so they argue, makes it possible to make clear “how the structural environments
of action are both dynamically sustained by and also altered through human agency –
by actors capable of formulating projects for the future and realizing them, even if
only in small part, and with unforeseen outcomes, in the present” (ibid.).
Theoretical traditions
Emirbayer and Mische trace their position back to the work of Jeffrey Alexander (see
particularly 1988 and 1992) and to pragmatism (Dewey and Mead) and (American;
GB) phenomenology (Schutz). They credit Alexander with being “the first major
theorist to systematically disaggregate the concept of agency itself” by distinguishing
between two basic dimensions of action: interpretation and strategization (ibid.,
p.967). This allowed Alexander to overcome a dualism which goes at least back to
Kant, viz., between normative (interpretation) and utilitarian (strategization)
perspectives on and forms of action. What Alexander’s approach did make visible was
“the interpretive processes of contextually embedded actors” (ibid.). What he
neglected, however, was to situate his analysis of agency within a specifically
temporal framework. Emirbayer and Mische argue, however, “that agentic processes
can only be understood if they are linked intrinsically to the changing temporal
orientations of situated actors” (ibid., emph. added). It is for the latter that they turn to
pragmatism where they find an approach which does not view human action “as the
pursuit of preestablished ends, abstracted from concrete situations,” but holds “that
ends and means develop coterminously within contexts that are themselves ever
changing and this always subject to reevaluation and reconstruction on the part of the
reflective intelligence” (ibid., pp.967-968; see for the philosophical background of
such ideas in Dewey’s work Biesta & Burbules 2003; for Mead see Biesta 1998).

11
Emirbayer and Mische particularly mention Mead’s work, and specifically his ideas
about “time as constituted through emergent events” (ibid., p.968, emph. in original;
see also Osberg & Biesta 2004) and “the concept of human consciousness as
constituted through sociality” (ibid., emph in original; see also Biesta 1999). They
summarise Mead’s ideas about the first point as follows:
As actors respond to changing environments, they must continually
reconstruct their view of the past in an attempt to understand the causal
conditioning of the emergent present, while using this understanding to
control and shape their responses in the arising future. (ibid., pp.968-
969)
This process forms the core of what Mead calls the ‘deliberative attitude’, which is
the capacity to “get hold of the conditions of future conduct as these are found in the
organized responses we have formed, and so construct our pasts in anticipation of that
future” (Mead 1932, p.76, quoted in Emirbayer & Mische 1998, p.969; for similar
ideas in Dewey’s work see Biesta 1992).
A definition of agency
Against this background Emirbayer and Mische suggest to 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” (ibid.,
p.970; emph. in original). This definition encompasses Mead’s conception “of the
positioning of human actors within temporal passage, involving the continual
reconstruction of their orientations toward past and future in response to emergent
events” (ibid., p.971). In addition, this definition of agency also incorporates Mead’s
insight that it is the capacity for “imaginative distancing, as well as for
communicative evaluation, in relation to habitual patterns of social engagement that
drives the development of the reflective intelligence” and that it is reflective
intelligence which allows actors “to critically shape their own responsiveness to
problematic situations” (ibid., p.971). This suggests that agency has to do with the
ability to shape one’s responsiveness to problematic situations – agency is, another
words, depicted as a ‘capacity’ that ‘works’ upon the self (although this way of
putting it leaves open whether this capacity has to be understood as a given or as
something which itself is the product of social interaction; the latter is the view taken
by Mead and Dewey). This also seems to follow from the point mentioned earlier that
agency has to do with ability to change one’s temporal orientations and thus one’s
relationship to structures. It further suggests that in Emirbayer’s and Mische’s
approach agency always has to do with overcoming problematic situations (or, in
terms of pragmatism: indeterminate actor-context transactions) and is not understood
in creating different ‘futures’ just for the sake of it (see below).
A conceptualisation of agency: The ‘chordal triad’
In their conceptualisation of agency Emirbayer and Mische make a distinction
between three dimensions or elements:
(1) the iterational element, which refers to “the selective reactivation by actors
of past patterns of thought and action, routinely incorporated in practical
activity, thereby giving stability and order to social universes and helping to

12
sustain identities, interactions, and institutions over time” (ibid., p.971; emph.
in original);
(2) the projective element, which encompasses “the imaginative generation by
actors of possible future trajectories of action, in which received structures of
thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in relation to actors’
hopes, fears, and desires for the future” (ibid.; emph in original);
(3) the practical-evaluative element, which entails “the capacity of actors to
make practical and normative judgements among alternative possible
trajectories of action, in response to the emerging demands, dilemmas, and
ambiguities of presently evolving situations” (ibid.; emph. in original).
Whereas the first element is linked to the past and the second to the future, the third is
related to the present.
Emirbayer and Mische stress that these are analytical distinctions and that in concrete
instances of action all three dimensions are to be found in varying degrees. This is
why they speak of a “chordal triad of agency within which all three dimensions
resonate as separate but not always harmonious tones” (ibid., p.972; emph. in
original). This is not to suggest that all three dimensions are always present with
equal strength. It is possible to speak of action that is predominantly oriented towards
the past, towards the present or towards the future. Emirbayer and Mische also
maintain that “each dimension of agency has itself a simultaneous internal orientation
towards past, future, and present” although they add that for each aspect of agency
one temporal orientation is “the dominant tone” (ibid., p.972).
Although Emirbayer and Mische basically locate agency in the actors’ orientations,
they do not restrict this to orientations at the level of concrete action. They also
suggest that “(t)he ways in which people understand their own relations to the past,
future, and present” make a difference to their actions (ibid., p.973; epmh. added’),
which means that “changing conceptions of agentic possibility in relation to structural
contexts [can] profoundly influence how actors in different periods and places see
their worlds as more or less responsive to human imagination, purpose and effort”
(ibid.; emph added). This means that people’s sense of agency, and possibly they way
in which they (are able to) talk about their orientations towards the past, future and
present – the narration of their orientations – is an important factor in their actual
agency as well.
Emirbayer and Mische also stress the social and relational aspects of their conception
of agency in that it “centers around the engagement (and disengagement) by actors of
the different contextual environments that constitute their own structured yet flexible
social universe” (ibid., p.973). Viewed internally “agency entails different ways of
experiencing the world”; viewed externally “it entails actual interactions with its
contexts” (ibid.). This is why they conclude that agency is “always a dialogical
process by and through which actors immersed in temporal passage engage with
others within collectively organized contexts of action” (ibid., p.974).
In their paper Emirbayer and Mische provide a very detailed discussion of the three
dimensions of agency (the iterational, the practical-evaluative and the projective) (see
ibid., pp.975-1002). What emerges from this discussion is an approach which
understands agency first and foremost (and to a certain extent exclusively) in terms of
problem solving, but where problem solving itself is understood in what in

13
pragmatism is referred to as a transactional framework (see Biesta & Burbules 2003),
an understanding of the human organism as living by means of an environment rather
than ‘in’ an environment and where the activities of the organism have to do with the
(re)construction of viable patterns of (trans)action, i.e., those patterns which allow for
maintaining a dynamic equilibrium of organism and environment. Whereas the
practical-evaluative dimension refers to the process of re-establishing a co-ordinated
transaction with the environment in ‘real time’, the iterational dimension refers to the
way in which the actor is able to draw upon previously established/acquired patterns
of action (in Dewey’s vocabulary such patterns of action are called ‘habits’ which for
Dewey are predispositions to act, not actions or patterns of action as such), while the
projective dimension refers to the orientation towards the future which is present in
all (trans)action. In this respect we can say that the three dimensions always have to
operate together because they are not three modes of action or three components of
action, but rather analytic distinctions with a ‘unified whole’ (Dewey).
The iterational dimension of agency
With regards to the iterational dimension of agency the locus of agency lies in what
Emirbayer and Mische refers to as the “schematization of social experience” (ibid.,
p.975). This is manifested in the actors’ ability to recall, select and apply more or less
tacit and taken-for-granted schemas of action that they have developed through past
interactions. The agentic dimension does not simply lie in the possession of such
schemas – which exists both as corporeal and cognitive patterns – but in “how actors
selectively recognize, locate and implement such schemas in their ongoing and
situated transactions” (ibid., p.975; emph. in original). This shows that Emirbayer’s
and Mische’s understanding of the locus of agency for the iterational dimension is
located in the actors orientations towards their schemas – not the schemas
themselves. Emirbayer and Mische helpfully show that the basic ideas behind their
understanding of the iterative dimension of agency builds upon pragmatism
(particularly ideas developed by Dewey in Human Nature and Conduct, 1922), and
the work of phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Schutz. While Dewey and
Merleau-Ponty emphasise the “sedimentation of meaning in the body” (ibid., p.977),
Schutz emphasises the social dimension “of prereflexive life” (ibid.). More recently
Bourdieu and Giddens have developed similar ideas, Bourdieu with the notion of
‘habitus’ and Giddens with the idea of ‘practical consciousness’ (see ibid.).
Emirbayer and Mische distinguish between three different processes in the ways in
which actors orient themselves towards the past: selective attention, recognition of
types and categorical location (see ibid., pp.979-980). To this they add ‘maneuver
among repertoires’ as a ‘subtone’ in the chordal structure of iteration that most
approximates the practical-evaluative dimension of agency and “expectation
maintenance” as the subtone that has to do with the projective dimension.
An interesting aspect of Emirbayer’s and Mische’s discussion is the way in which
they relate their analysis of the iterative dimension of agency to examples of
empirical research, suggesting that the “iterational orientation of agency has already
proved a rich source of research questions in a variety of social science disciplines”
(ibid., p.981). The example most relevant in the context of the Learning Lives project
is their discussion of research on ‘life course development’ which “inquires into the
formative influence of past experiences on agentic processes” (ibid., p.982). Such
research, they maintain, “explores the connection between social structures and
social-psychological development, as manifested in the life-trajectories resulting from

14
particular intersections of biography and history” (ibid., p.982). This means that
neither structures not psychological traits in themselves determine habits and patterns
of action, because “actors develop relatively stable patterns of interaction in active
response to historical situations” (ibid., p.982), which, in turn, means that “(t)he
individual life course has to be conceptualized (...) as the result of the subject’s
constructive activity in dealing with the available life course programs” (ibid., p.983).
Whether this is done in a conscious or less conscious way is presumably an empirical
question. (This touches upon questions about social reproduction which Emirbayer
and Mische briefly mention in this context as well; see ibid, p.981). Although we
could say that the iterational dimension represents the accumulation of past learning,
Emirbayer and Mische say remarkably little about any learning processes involved in
building up ‘schemata’. What can be inferred from their discussion is that such
learning is at least partly ‘habitual’, i.e., pre-reflexive and located at the level of the
body.
The projective dimension of agency
The importance of distinguishing the projective dimension of agency is to highlight
the fact that human beings are able to challenge, reconsider and reformulate their
schemas. As Emirbayer and Mische put it: “we maintain that human actors do not
merely repeat past routines; they are also the inventors of new possibilities for
thought and action” (ibid., pp.983-984). The “imaginative engagement with the
future” allows actors” to distance themselves (at least in partial exploratory ways)
from the schemas, habits, and traditions” that constrain them (ibid., p.984). Emirbayer
and Mische emphasise the subset of words to describe this ability can range from
strongly purposive words like goal, plan and objective “to the more ephemeral
language of dreams, wishes, desires, anxieties, hopes, fears and aspirations” (ibid.,
p.984). The locus of agency here lies in what they call “the hypothesization of
experience, as actors attempt to reconfigure received schemas by generating
alternative possible responses to the problematic situations they confront in their
lives” (ibid., p.984; emph. in original). It is about constructing “changing images of
where they thing they are going, where they want to go, and how they can get there”
(ibid., p.984). This relates to Schutz’s idea of ‘the project’ which represents “the
completed act-to-be as imagined in the future perfect tense” (ibid., P.987).
Emirbayer and Mische suggest that the “internal chordal structure of projectivity”
consists of three ‘dominant tones’ – narrative construction, symbolic recomposition,
and hypothetical resolution – and two ‘secondary tones’ – identification and
experimentation (see ibid., p.988). All aspects of projectivity have to do with
envisaging possible lines of action. This process begins with ‘anticipatory
identifications’, that is attempts to understand and clarify the situation on the basis of
one’s available stock of knowledge. This then moves to ‘narrative construction’, “the
construction of narratives that locate future possiblities in relation to more or less
coherent causal and temporal sequences” (ibid.). Emirbayer and Mische argue that
narratives “provide cultural resources by which actors can develop a sense of
movement in time” (ibid., p.989). ‘Symbolic recomposition’ is about the ‘free play of
possibilities’ which allows actors to explore alternative means-ends sequences (see
ibid., pp. 989-990). This then moves to ‘hypothetical resolution’ and from there to
actual implementation of the best line of action (‘experimental enactment’) (see ibid.,
pp.990-991).

15
Emirbayer and Mische argue that projectivity “needs to be rescued from the
subjectivist ghetto and put to use in empirical research as an essential element in
understanding processes of social reproduction and change” (ibid., p.991). They
therefore argue that instead of an exclusive focus on the past to explain the present,
life course research should focus on the relevance and influence of future
expectations and, more specifically, on the ways in which such expectations are
structured and articulated through narrative (see ibid., pp. 991-992).
The practical-evaluative dimension of agency
The practical-evaluative dimension of agency, finally, is that which responds to the
demands and contingencies of the present. Here the locus of agency lies primarily in
what Emirbayer and Mische refer to as the “contextualization of social experience”
(ibid., p.994; emph in original) – which might best be understood as the way in which
actors bring their past experiences and future orientations to bear on the present
situation. It is important to see that for Emirbayer and Mische the point here is not
simply to adapt to a particular situation. They stress that engaging with problematic
situations will almost definitely lead to a transformation of the situation – or in more
Deweyan terms: it will result in a change of the organism-environment transaction.
Eirbayer and Mische analyse the internal structure of practical evaluation with a 5-
step model that is reminiscent of Dewey’s theory of inquiry (see Biesta & Burbules
2003, part. chapter 3) and which consists of three dominant ‘tones’ –
problematisation, decision and execution – and two secondary tones – the
characterisation of a given situation against the background of past patterns of
experience (which brings in the past dimension), and the deliberation over possible
trajectories of action (which brings in the future dimension). A central aspect of the
practical-evaluative dimension is the role of judgement, which not only has to do with
strategic decision-making (i.e., finding the most effective and efficient means to reach
particular, pre-determined ends) but also has to do with decisions about the
desirability of likely ends (a distinctions which is linked to Weber’s distinction
between Zweck- and Wertrationalität; see ibid., p.995). It suggests, in other words,
that the practical-evaluative dimension entails judgements and deliberation both about
the means and the ends of action. Agency is here understood as “the capacity for
practical evaluation” that enables actors (at least potentially) “to pursue their projects
in ways that may challenge and transform the situation contexts of action themselves”
(ibid., p.994).
Emirbayer’s and Mische’s analysis of agency can be mapped in the following way
(the dominant tones of each dimension of agency are highlighted):
THE CHORDAL TRIAD OF AGENCY (Emirbayer and Mische 1998)
past present future
iterative selective
attention
recognition of
type
categorical
location
maneuver
(present)
expectation
(future)
practical-
evaluative
characterization
(past)
problematization decision execution delibration (future)
projective anticipatory identification (past) experimental enactment
(present)
narrative
construction
symbolic
recomposition
hypothetical
resolution
Context and interaction
Emribayer and Mische do emphasise that although their analysis of agency is about
aspect of the individual’s activities, agency is only ‘achieved’ (our term) when the

16
three dimensions “enter into different and changing relationships with the temporal-
relational contexts of action” (ibid., p.1002). This means that an understanding of
agency is only complete when it is able to account for “the variable nature of the
interplay between structure and agency” (ibid., p.1002). It is important to note that
their way of putting this falls into the trap of using ‘agency’ in two different ways: as
referring to what they in their own definition call “a temporally embedded process of
social engagement” and as referring to the individual as an ‘element’ of this process.
Or, in more technical terms: they use ‘agency’ both as explanans and explanandum.
(See also the distinction made above between ‘agency as phenomenon’ and ‘agency
as theory’.) To prevent this confusion it might be better to speak about the interplay
between individuals and contexts as a/the way to understand agency. Emirbayer and
Mische seem to try to get out of this trap by making a distinction between agency,
action and structure (see ibid., p.1004). For them agency is a dimension that is present
in all empirical instances of human action. Hence they conclude that “there are no
concrete agents, but only actors who engage agentically with their structuring
environments” (ibid., p.1004). This implies that all social action “is a concrete
synthesis, shaped and conditions, on the one hand, by the temporal-relational contexts
of action and, on the other, by the dynamic element of agency itself” Ibid., p.1004).
Emirbayer and Mische maintain that it is the latter – the dynamic element of agency
itself – which guarantees “that empirical social action will never be completely
determined or structured” (ibid., p.1004). But this doesn’t mean that agency itself is
free of structures. Agency, so we could say, always operates in transaction with
environments or contexts. Emirbayer and Mische summarise this as follows.
We content that as actors alter or shift between their agentic
orientations, dialogically reconstructing the internal composition of
their chordal triad, they may increase or decrease their capacity for
invention, choice, and transformative impact in relation to the
situational contexts within which they act. (ibid., p.1003)
Three questions for empirical research
For Emirbayer and Mische all this mans that empirical research should focus on
“locating, comparing, and predicting the relationship between different kinds of
agentic processes and particular structuring contexts of action” (ibid., p.1005). For
such research they suggest the following three central questions.
(1) How do different temporal-relational contexts support (or conduce to) particular
agentic orientations?(ibid., p.1005, emph. in original)
The task here is to locate “which sorts of socio-structural, cultural, and social-
psychological contexts are more conducive to developing the different modalities of
agency” (ibid., p.1005). Is to gain an understanding, in other words, of the conditions
(understood transactionally, that is in terms of the interplay between individual and
context) which bring a bout or promote a particular ‘mix’ of iterational, projective
and practical-evaluative orientations of individuals. What is it, in other words, that
engages people mainly in habitual schematic responses? What is it that makes it
possible for people to engage in imaginative, projective responses? And what makes
it possible for people to engage with the present situation in an agentic way? These
are not simply questions about how particular ‘internal’ or ‘external’ processes impact
on agentic orientations. These are also questions about how change might result in a
‘shift’ of agentic orientation. And these are questions about learning opportunities and

17
learning processes if we assume, that is, that changes in agentic orientations can be
the result of more or less conscious or deliberate learning. Although Emirbayer and
Mische don’t mention learning explicitly, they do suggest that changing
circumstances can demand or facilitate a reconstruction of agentic orientations which,
in turn, can alter the individual’s ability to respond to the concrete situation (see ibid.,
p.1006). Emirbayer and Mische also suggest the possibility that being positioned at
the intersection of multiple temporal-relational contexts can result in (which can
either mean ‘demand’ or ‘facilitate’) “greater capacities for creative and critical
intervention” (ibid., p.1007; emph in original).
(2) How do changes in agentic orientations allow actors to exercise different forms of
mediation over their contexts of action?(ibid., p.1008, emph. in original)
Here the focus is on exploring how changes in agentic orientations “give actors
varying capacities to influence the diverse contexts within which they act” (ibid.,
p.1008). It is important to bear in mind that this should be understood in a
transactional or contextualised way. The ‘achievement’ of agency always depends on
the interplay between individual and structure. This means that while individuals may
be quite creative and projective in one situation, may have a much more iterative
orientation in another situation. It is the ‘switch’ in agentic orientation in function of
particular contexts-of-action which seems to be central, therefore, in understanding
how agency is ‘achieved.’ Again the question of learning is an important one, not in
the least in trying to understand the learning involved in shifting one’s agentic
orientation, which brings us to the third question Emirbayer and Mische suggest.
(3) How do actors reconstruct their agentic orientations and thereby alter their own
structuring relationships to the contexts of action? (ibid., p.1009, emph. in original)
This refers to the “self-reflexive dimension of agentic orientations, that is, the
capacity of actors to reflectively reconstruct their own temporal orientations towards
action” (ibid., p.1010). In this context Emirbayer and Mische refer to Mead’s alleged
claim that this is due “to the ability of conscious beings to direct attention and
intervention toward their own patterns of response” (ibid., p.1010). (It is important to
bear in mind that this should not be understood as a natural capacity of ‘conscious
beings’ but rather as something that is the result of social interaction itself – a point
discussed in detail in Biesta 1998; 1999.) Emirbayer and Mische particularly refer to
life course research with its focus on trajectories and turning points, “especially work
examining the subjective and/or narrative reconstruction of the self through self-
interpretive activity during critical life transitions” (ibid., p.1010). This is probably
an uncessarily individualistic way of understanding such learning processes.
Although at the end of the day the change in agentic orientation resides in the
individual, the processes leading to such a shift may well be predominantly social or
intersubjective. Emirbayer and Mische particularly emphasise the role of imagination
in such processes, because it is “(b)y subjecting their own agentic orientations to
imaginative recomposition and critical judgement [that] actors can looses themselves
from past patterns of interaction and reframe their relationships to existing
constraints” (ibid., p.1010, emph. in original).
Discussion
With their fine-grained analysis Emirbayer and Mische provide a thought-provoking
contribution to the discussion about agency. What is particularly significant about
their approach is the attempt to theorise agency in its own right (i.e., not simply as the

18
‘opposite’ of structure), whilst at the same time acknowledging that structures and
contexts do matter in the ways in which agency is ‘achieved.’ What is also important
is their attention to time, both in their attempt to understand agency itself as a
temporal phenomenon and in emphasising the fact that contexts for action themselves
are not static. This is all captured in their definition of 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” (ibid., p.970; emph. in
original).
One shortcoming of their analysis is that they pay far more attention to the different
ways in which individual actors can engage with ‘temporal-relational contexts’ than
with understanding how such contexts ‘engage’ with actors – although they might
argue that this is much more an empirical question than one that needs theoretical
exploration. (Alheit [2005] provides an interesting take on this issue, partly based on
empirical data, but also informed by a further theorising of the significance of and
impact of contexts and structures on action.) The other thing that is remarkably absent
in Emirbayer’s and Mische’s discussion is explicit attention to the role of learning in
understanding how agency is ‘achieved’ – which is particularly remarkable because
learning is at least one of the ‘mechanisms’ which could help to understand and
explain changes in agentic orientations over time. The point here is not that they make
it impossible to focus on learning in understanding how agency is achieved; the point
is only that Emirbayer and Mische do not use the discourse of learning to
conceptualise and theorise changes in agentic orientations (see below). A third
shortcoming, as we mentioned before, is that Emirbayer and Mische focus almost
exclusively on the ways in which people achieve agency in dealing with the
complexities of the present (which follows from pragmatism’s focus on ‘problem
solving’). This makes it more difficult to understand those situations in which people
decide to change their lives and work towards a different future in ways that are not
meant to address issues in the present. (This is at least a theoretical possibility,
although it is an empirical question to what extent such attempts to change the
direction of one’s life are not connected to the past of the present. Emirbayer and
Mische would probably argue that there is always a connection.)
There are two theoretical insights that we wish to take from – or better: articulate in
response to – Emirbayer’s and Mische’s work. The first is that agency should not be
understood as a capacity, and particularly not as an individual’s capacity, but should
always be understood in transactional terms, that is, as a quality of the engagement of
actors with temporal-relational contexts of action. The transactional approach here
implies (1) that the distinction between actor and environment is seen as an analytical
and not as an ontological distinction, and (2) that both actor and environment are
affected by the ‘engagement’ (see Dewey & Bentley 1949; Biesta & Burbules 2003).
This calls for what we wish to refer to as an ecological understanding of agency, i.e.,
an understanding which always encompasses actors-in-transaction-with-context,
actors acting by-means-of-an-environment rather than simply in an environment (for
the notion of ‘ecology of agency’ see Costall 2000). The second, related, insight is
that agency should not be understood as a possession of the individual, but rather as
something that is achieved in and through the engagement with a particular temporal-
relational situation. The idea of achieving agency makes it possible to understand why

19
individual can be agentic in one situation but not in another. It moves the explanation
away, in other words, from the individual and locates it firmly in the transaction
(which also implies that the achievement in one situation does not mean that it will
necessarily be achieved in other situations as well). This also makes it possible to
understand fluctuations in an individual’s agency over time. Although such
fluctuations may have to do with the learning (and un-learning) on the side of the
individual, the answer to the question how agency is achieved ultimately depends on
the transactions of individuals with particular situations, within particular ecologies.
All this implies that agency is not something people can have. It is, as we suggest,
something that people can achieve, and they can only achieve it in transaction with a
particular situation. This allows for the empirical possibility that in some cases the
achievement of agency requires more effort from the individual than in other cases,
something which is connected to the availability of resources (see below). To
understand and explain how agency is achieved therefore requires a focus upon the
particular temporal-relational ecology of such achievements (which also implies that
agency can only be understood and explained ex post facto, i.e., after the event).
SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR DATA-ANALYSIS
Emirbayer’s and Mische’s framework is not only helpful for theorising the
phenomenon of agency; it also suggests a set of questions which can be used to
interrogate life (hi)stories. The three main questions mentioned above provide the
general framework for this, but need some further unpacking and some additions.
[1] The first step in interrogating life (hi)stories in terms of agency follows from using
the distinction between the three aspects of agency in a descriptive manner. The idea
here is to capture the particular ‘composition’ of iterational, pragmatic-judgemental
and projective aspects of people’s agentic orientations, i.e., the particular composition
of the ways in which people engage with (the events that make up) their life. The
question here is not whether people either engage in a habitual, a pragmatically-
engaged or a projective way. The task is, first of all, to capture the particular
‘composition’ of these three dimensions, the particular way in which the ‘agentic
chord’ sounds.
[2] This is, of course, not a characteristic of the individual, but always of the
individual-in-transaction, which suggests that the description of a particular
configuration of the agentic orientations needs to be linked to the particular situation
in which this configuration is ‘active.’ It may, of course, turn out that for some
individuals the configuration of their agentic orientations is relatively stable across a
wide range of situations. From a transactional point of view, this is an important
finding which needs further exploration.
[3] Such descriptive work is necessary before it becomes possible to address
Emirbayer’s and Mische’s first question, which asks for an answer to the question
how different temporal-relational contexts “support (or conduce to) particular agentic
orientations.” Their way of putting it is slightly misleading, because it seems to
suggest that the achievement of agency is specific for particular contextual situations.
Again, the analysis has to be conducted in a transactional way, in order to understand
how the transaction between actor and context makes a particular configuration of

20
agentic orientations possible. This is not to deny that such an analysis can reveal
patterns and can help us to better understand how particular circumstances can
support or facilitate particular agentic orientations, but it is important to emphasise
that agency is not achieved by the individual but always by the individual-in-
transaction. This implies that at this step the analysis also needs to engage with wider
questions about structures and structural conditions for action, and with the issue of
their reproduction through action. What Emirbayer and Mische also seem to forget in
their understanding of the role of ‘context’ in agency is that a deeper understanding of
the ‘origin’ of a particular configuration of agentic orientations should also engage
with the temporal dimension of the (trans)formation of such configurations (see also
step 7 below). It needs to look at the ways in which the (trans)formation of such
configuration is embedded in biography and lifecourse.
[4] Whereas the first three steps focus on agentic orientations, Emirbayer’s and
Mische’s second question – How do changes in agentic orientations allow actors to
exercise different forms of mediation over their contexts of action? – focuses on the
ways in which agency is actually achieved. The assumption in this question is that
different agentic orientations – or again we should say: a different composition or
configuration of agentic orientations – allow for particular mediations ‘over the
context of action,’ i.e., particular ways to engage and ‘deal’ with the (present)
situation. The task here is first of all a descriptive one, viz., to capture the ways in
which agency is achieved in concrete situations. Part of the task here is to characterise
the agentic orientations at play. Is agency achieved in a projective way, i.e., do people
imagine a different future and does this imagined future allow them to deal with the
challenges of the situation in a particular way? Or is their response mainly iterational,
based upon established patterns of action and understanding? Or is it pragmatic-
judgemental, i.e., do people try to deal with issues in a way that is explorative and
experimental?
[5] The task here is not only to describe and characterise the efforts of the individual,
but also to focus on the ecology in which agency is achieved. It is here that the
question of resources becomes important as well, and one way to characterise the
resources is in terms of different ‘capitals,’ including economic, cultural and social
capital (see Field 2005). Whether there are other resources at play as well is, again, an
empirical question. Whether it is useful to characterise such resources in terms of
capital is a question for further discussion. Identity or the narration of identity might
be a resource people use to achieve agency (see also below), but whether referring to
this as ‘identity capital’ is a conceptual gain remains to be seen.
[6] The description and characterisation of the ways in which agency is achieved leads
again to questions of understanding and explanation, that is, trying to understand the
different principles and processes at work in the achievement of agency. It is here that
Emirbayer’s and Mische’s work suggests some interesting hypotheses and also allows
for an exploration of the role of learning. In their second question Emirbayer and
Mische focus on changes in agentic orientations and suggest that such changes allow
actors to engage in more effective and/or more satisfactory ways with events in their
life. This is related to a more specific hypothesis in Emirbayer’s and Mische’s
understanding of agency which has to do with Mead’s idea that key to agency has to
with the ability to shape one’s responsiveness to problematic situations (see above).
Agency is not about how we act in a particular situation. The agentic dimension lies in

21
the ways in which we have control over the ways in which we respond to the
situation. This is what lies behind Emirbayer’s and Mische’s emphasis on the
importance of changes in agentic orientation – or, to follow their more precise
approach: changes in the composition of one’s orientations. To focus on the changes
as such and to link this to ways in which agency is achieved makes visible how
agentic orientations impact upon our agency. To make visible how people actually
shape their orientations brings into view how people ‘exert’ their agency. With Mead
Emirbayer and Mische characterise this as a process of ‘reflective intelligence’ which
encompasses ‘imaginative distancing’ and ‘communicative evaluation’ (see
Emirbayer and Mische 1998, p.971). This suggests two empirical questions for the
interrogation of life (hi)stories.
The first question has to do with the extent to which people are able to distance
themselves from their agentic orientations, i.e., make such orientations the object of
reflection and imagination. It is here that there is not only a direct link with narration,
because it can be argued that reflection and imagination require a medium and the
narration of one’s life does precisely that. (The mediation does not necessarily have to
be ‘verbal’ but can also occur through images, metaphors, or other meaningful
practices.) There is also a direct link with the methodology of learning lives since the
very articulation of one’s life story through interviews provides opportunities for
making one’s agentic orientations the object of reflection (see also Dominicé 2000).
With this in mind we can say that Emirbayer’s and Mische’s question about the
change in and of agentic orientations is basically a question about learning; a
question, moreover, which locates the learning involved in agency in reflection upon
one’s agentic orientations. Questions here are about what is involved in such learning
and what makes such learning possible. There are further questions, of course, about
whether such learning indeed has a positive impact on one’s agency – and one of the
important questions related to this is who decides whether the impact is positive.
There is also the question whether such learning is always a good thing.
The second empirical question has to do with the communicative dimensions of this
process. The question here is to what extent communication is necessary or at least
helpful in the reconstruction of one’s agentic orientations. Is this something people do
with others? Or can they also do it on their own? Does the interaction with others alter
the process? Does it impact upon the quality of the process? And how important is the
communicative dimension from the point of view of learning?
[7] The final aspect of this analysis is the temporal dimension. There is not only the
question how composition of agentic orientations and the actual achievement of
agency differ in (response to) different situations. There is also the question how this
differs over time. The first aspect of the temporal dimension focuses on the individual
and his or her life history and the question here is whether there are changes over the
duration of the individual’s life and how these changes can be understood. This is
partly a question about context: do different situations ‘trigger’ or ‘facilitate’ different
ways of being – and more specifically: different ways of being agentic. But it is also
the temporal dimension which allows for exploring the role of learning in changes
over time. It is here that the individual’s biography becomes important again as one
important ‘factor’ in the (reflective) transformation of one’s agentic orientations. The
second aspect of the temporal dimensions focuses on the changes in the contexts-of-
transaction. Here the analysis can focus on different time-scales, from short term

22
transitions in one’s life to much longer societal transformations (for the latter see, e.g.,
Antikainen et al., 1996; Gorard & Rees, 2002). It is here that macro-sociological
analyses such as those from Giddens and Bauman (see above) also have their place.
HOW IS AGENCY ACHIEVED? SOME FURTHER OBSERVATIONS
Whereas the seven steps presented above provide guidance for the interrogation of
life-stories from the point of view of agency, it is important to acknowledge that an
analysis of agency in learning biographies is not exhausted by this framework. In this
section we present some further reflections and observations around the idea of
agency which are important for a fuller understanding of agency in the life-course.
Overcoming individualism and decentering agency: Hannah Arendt on action
In our discussion of Emirbayer’s and Mische’s understanding of agency we
mentioned that one of the shortcomings of their analysis is that they pay far more
attention to the different ways in which individual actors engage with ‘temporal-
relational contexts’ than with understanding how such contexts ‘engage’ with actors.
Although, as we suggested, this is partly an empirical issue, it does result in a
conceptualisation of agency that is more focused on the activities of the ‘agent’ and
less about the ‘activities’ of the context of action. To talk about the activities of the
context may sound odd, but becomes an important issue once it is acknowledged that
the context for human agency is predominantly a social context, i.e., a context which
exists of other human beings and their actions. The fact that Emirbayer and Mische
say little about the context as a social contexts highlights that their conceptualisation
of agency is rather individualistic. It is in response to these observations that we
briefly wish to discuss another way to understand agency, one which situates agency
in a more radical way in processes of social interaction. This way of understanding
agency can be found in the work of Hannah Arendt (see particularly Arendt 1958; see
also Biesta in press[b]).
Arendt’s conception of agency is rooted in her understanding of the vita activa, the
active human life. Arendt’s philosophy centers around an understanding of human
beings as active beings, as beings whose humanity is not simply defined by their
capacity to think and reflect, but where what it means to be human has everything to
do with what one does. In this respect, Arendt’s philosophy is an antidote to the
mainstream of Western philosophy in which the question of what it means to be
human has always been answered in terms of reflection, thinking, rationality and
contemplation. In her book The human condition (1958) Arendt distinguishes between
three ‘modalities’ of the active life: labor, work and action. Labor is the activity that
corresponds to the biological processes of the human body. It stems from the
necessity to maintain life and is exclusively focused on the maintenance of life. It
does so in endless repetition: “one must eat in order to labor and must labor in order to
eat” (Arendt 1958, p.143). Work, on the other hand, has to do with the ways in which
human beings actively change their environment. It has to do with production and
creation and hence with ‘instrumentality.’ Work brings an artificial world of things
into existence, distinctly different from all natural surroundings. It is concerned with
making and therefore “entirely determined by the categories of means and end”
(ibid.). While labor and work are concerned with the interaction with our
environment, action is defined as the activity “that goes on directly between

23
men[sic],” without “the intermediary of things or matter” (ibid., p.7). Action thus has
to do with the domain of the social. But what does it mean to act? What does Arendt
mean by ‘action’ and how is ‘action’ different from labor and work?
For Arendt to act first of all means to take initiative, to begin something new, to bring
something new into the world. Arendt characterizes the human being as an initium, a
“beginning and a beginner” (Arendt 1977, p.170; emph. added). She argues that what
makes each of us unique is not the fact that we have a body and need to labor to
maintain our body, nor the fact that through work we change the environment we live
in. What makes each of us unique is our potential to do something that has not been
done before. This is why Arendt writes that every act is in a sense a miracle,
“something which could not be expected” (ibid.). Arendt likens action to the fact of
birth, since with each birth something ‘uniquely new’ comes into the world (see
Arendt 1958, p.178). But it is not only when human beings are born that something
new comes into the world. It happens all the time. We continuously bring new
beginnings into the world through what we do and say. This is of course not to deny
the role of routine and repetition in our everyday lives. But it is to acknowledge that to
a very large extent we indeed do and say things that have not been done or said before
– not in the least for the simple reason that they have not been done or said before by
us: the child who utters her first words, or the student who suddenly understands a
mathematical principle. Although action is about invention and creation, we shouldn’t
think of it as something exceptional or spectacular. Action can be very mundane. It
ranges from scientific breakthroughs and inventions to the ways in which we care for
others; it ranges from being a political leader to casting one’s vote – or, for that
matter, refusing to vote. Through all these words and deeds we begin, we bring
something new into the world, and, most importantly, we bring ourselves into the
world. “With word and deed,” Arendt writes, “we insert ourselves into the human
world and this insertion is like a second birth” (ibid., pp.176-177).
It is crucial to see, however, that ‘beginning’ is only half of what action is about.
Although it is true that we reveal our distinct uniqueness through what we do and say,
we should not think of this as a process through which we disclose some kind of pre-
existing identity. Arendt writes “that nobody knows whom he reveals when he
discloses himself in deed or word” (ibid., p.180). Everything depends – and this point
is absolutely crucial for an adequate understanding of Arendt’s notion of action – on
how others will respond to our initiatives. This is why Arendt writes that the agent is
not an author or a producer, but a subject in the twofold sense of the word, namely
one who began an action and the one who suffers from, who is subjected to its
consequences (see ibid., p.184). The basic idea of Arendt’s understanding of action is
therefore very simple: we cannot act in isolation. My activities only exist if they are
taken up by others. In order to act, in order, therefore, we need others who respond to
our beginnings.
The problem is, however, that others respond to our initiatives in ways that are not
predictable. As Arendt reminds us, we act upon beings “who are capable of their own
actions” (ibid., p.190). Although this always frustrates our beginnings, Arendt
emphasizes again and again that this frustration is the very condition that makes our
disclosure, our action and hence our subjectivity possible. The “impossibility to
remain unique masters of what [we] do” is at the very same time the condition – and
the only condition – under which our beginnings can come into the world (ibid.,

24
p.220). We can of course try to control the ways in which others respond to our
beginnings – and Arendt acknowledges that it is tempting to do so. But if we were to
do so, we would deprive other human beings of their opportunities to begin, we would
deprive then of their opportunities to to act. Action is therefore never possible in
isolation. Arendt even goes so far to argue that “to be isolated is to be deprived of the
capacity to act” (ibid., p.188). Action is not something we can do on our own. In order
to be able to act and hence to be a subject, we need others – others who respond to our
initiatives and take up our beginnings. This also means, however, that action is never
possible without plurality. As soon as we erase plurality we deprive others of their
actions, and as a result we deprive ourselves of our possibility to act, and hence to be
an agent. This is why Arendt concludes that “plurality is the condition of human
action” (ibid.).
The most important conclusion for our discussion is that Arendt provides an approach
in which agency is no longer seen as an attribute of individuals, but is understood as a
quality of human action – which, from Arendt’s point of view, is always interaction.
Arendt shows us that agency only exists in action – “neither before nor after” (Arendt
1977, p.153). This is why she suggests that we should understand action and agency
through the lens of the performing arts. The main reason for this is that performing
artists need an audience to show their ‘virtuosity’ (Arendt), "just as acting men [sic]
need the presence of others before whom they can appear" (ibid., p.154). The
difference between performing arts and creative arts is, of course, not that creative arts
– the arts of ‘making’ – can do without an audience. The crucial point is that the work
of art of the performing artist only exists in the performance. The script for a play may
have endurance just as a painting; but it is only in the performance of the play that the
play as a work of art exists.
Arendt thus provides us with an understanding of agency in which the agent is clearly
decentred, an approach in which the achievement of agency is not an achievement of
the agent alone but of the agent-in-interaction-with-others. What Arendt helps us to
see – at least as a theoretical possibility and hence as something which can guide data-
analysis – is that the achievement of agency crucially depends on others and the ways
in which others respond (in the wide sense of the world) to us, to our actions,
initiatives and beginnings. Arendt is, of course, neither the first nor the only
philosopher who has contributed to a decentred view of the human agent. Within
Western philosophy there is a much longer tradition, at least going back to Nietzsche,
in which questions are raised about the idea of the individual as the source and locus
of his or her own agency. This should at least act as a reminder of the fact that the
discourse about agency is strongly rooted in modern, Western thinking and thus
brings with it a whole set of assumptions about what it means to be human which are
not to be treated as universal (see Biesta 2006) and which, for this reason, may not
even resonate with the stories and interpretations that interviewees will give of their
learning biographies.
The ego and its identity as the agentic core of personality structure: Levine
Whereas Arendt’s work pushes our understanding of agency towards the
social/intersubjective end of the spectrum, we shouldn’t forget that there are other
theorists who defend much more individualistic approaches to agency. An example of
an approach which locates agency much more firmly in the individual, and more
specifically in the individual’s psychological ‘make up’ is presented in a recent paper

25
by Levine who, in a discussion of ‘post-modern’ views of identity asks the question
‘What happened to agency?’ (Levine 2005). Levine goes back to Erikson’s work and
some insights from Habermas, Marcia and Mead in other to provide an answer to the
question “how to conceptualize the constructs of identity as well as agency” (Levine
2005, p.178). Levine organises his discussion in terms of five constructs: self, self-
concept, social identity, personal identity, and ego-identity.
He defines the construct self as “others’ perceptions of a person’s behavioral
repertoires” (ibid., p.178). These repertoires can be identified in the enactment of
particular roles, in which case we can speak of a ‘social self’, or they can be perceived
as more general attributes of the person, in which case we can speak of a ‘personal
self’ (see ibid.). Self-concept refers to a person’s “subjective experience of a specific
behavioral repertoire performed in a specific context” (ibid.). Levine argues that
because such experience “is tied to and constructed from symbolic interactions about
the behavior,” self-concepts are “contextualized meanings about the self” (ibid.,
p.179). From this it also follows “that a person has many self-concepts, as many as the
number of distinguishable repertoires they reflect on” (ibid.). Self-concepts should be
understood as first-order cognitive reflections (see ibid) because of the fact that they
are derived from and having meaning in relation to specific interactive contexts. But it
is important to see that the self and self-concepts are not identities. Levine considers
personal and social identities as second-order reflections “on the first-order reflective
experiences called self-concepts” (ibid.). Personal and social identities consist of “the
internalized knowledge of self-concepts” (ibid.) which means that “to be aware of
one’s ... identity means that one is thinking about and deriving a generalized,
transcontextual understanding of the meanings of one’s personal and social self-
concepts” (ibid.). According to Levine these identities (or ‘identity domains’) “are the
major source of the ego’s sense of spatial and temporal continuity” (ibid.). Social and
personal identity constructs thus “’make sense of’ or ‘organize; a variety of self-
concepts that ‘seem’ to belong together” and thus produce “a coherent sense of who
[people] are ‘as a person’” (ibid.).
Levine refers to Erikson to introduce the fifth construct of his list, the notion of ‘ego-
identity.’ Ego-identity should also be understood as a second-order level of reflection,
but whereas social and personal identity are second-order reflections on self-concepts,
ego-identity, seen as the ability of the ego to reflect on itself, has to be understood as
“a second-order reflection on personal and social identities” (ibid.). For Erikson ego-
identity is closely related to self-control or agency, understood as “achieving a sense
of being the author of making choices in life” (ibid.) “(A) functioning ego-identity
enables persons to be aware that they can think about how and what they think as
preparation for making meaningful life choices” (ibid.). And it is for this reason that
Levine concludes that “the ego and its identity can be considered he agentic core of
personality structure” (ibid., p.180). But how do ‘the ego and its identity’ function in
the life of the individual? When, in other words, do ‘the ego and its identity’ become
operational? Although “the ego’s agentic role” does play a role in our everyday
dealings with problematic situations, Levine suggests that in most cases the problems
we have to deal with in ‘normal’ interaction do not require ‘deep’ adjustments of our
self-concepts. In many cases, everyday problems are not interpreted as challenges to
the legitimacy of the self performing a role or behaviour, which means that an
adjustment of one’s self-concept will suffice. In certain cases such adjustments “could
also require the use of the second-order reflection of social and/or personal identity to

26
maintain interaction” (ibid.). In all such cases ‘the agentic character of the ego’ is
involved, although not very strongly “because it is not the meaningfulness of the
actor’s personal and social identities that has required adjustment, only certain aspects
of their behavior and their awareness of it” (ibid.).
This is different, however, in those situations in which “the meaningfulness of the
personal and social identity domains is challenged” (ibid.). In such cases, Levine
writes, “the ego experiences threats to its sense of temporal and spatial continuity and
must sense within itself, through its own identity, a core being with sufficient
competence to initiate the redefinition (reconstruction) of its personal and/or social
identity domains an reestablish their legitimacy in interaction” (ibid., pp.180-181). In
this context Levine quotes Habermas who writes that ego identity “proves itself in the
ability of the adult to construct new identities in conflict situations and to bring these
into harmony with older superseded identities so as to organize himself and his
interactions ... into a unique life history” (Habermas 1974, quoted in Levine 2005,
p.181). It is on the basis of these observations that Levine suggests to conceptualise
agency – or to be more precise: the agentic core of the personality – as “the ego and
its identity” (ibid.). What Levine is suggesting here is that we should understood
agency is some kind of most inner self, i.e., the ‘part’ of the self which is able to
construct and reconstruct new identities in response to those (life) situations in which
existing identities are no longer ‘functional’. The ‘agentic ego’ is, in other words, the
‘director’ of one’s identity formation. It is the part of the self which is in charge of the
reflective and purposeful reconstruction of one’s personal and social identity, it is the
essential organiser “of the subject’s relations with the social world” (ibid., p.183).
Levine’s discussion of identity and agency is first and foremost helpful because it
broadens the spectrum of conceptions and definitions of agency discussed so far.
Levine clearly represents an individualistic account of agency, one which locates
agency in the capacity of the individual (ego) to reconstruct his or her identities. This
definition of agency does resonate with Emirbayer’s and Mische’s idea that agency
should be understood in terms of the individual’s response to his or her agentic
orientations although for them agency is much more located in the ways in which
individuals engage with their environment, whereas in Levine’s depiction agency
becomes very much an internal faculty or function, a function which is supposed to
retain a sense of continuity in a world of flux. Although Levine’s ideas can be
understood as a psychological account of agency – Levine himself presents it as a
form of social psychology – we shouldn’t forget that Levine’s line of thinking which,
with regards to agency relies heavily on Erikson, has it’s philosophical roots in the
Kantian idea of ‘apperception’ which is precisely understood as the faculty of the
human mind which is concerned with maintaining a sense of connection and
coherence in the world of experience (see Allison 1983). If we read Levine’s
approach through a Kantian lens it becomes possible to see the transcendental status
of the idea of agency in Levine’s exposition, i.e., the fact that in Levine’s account
agency seems to be something that has to be assumed in order to explain the
continuity of the self for the self over time and across a range of different situations,
rather than as something that is simply and (observable) empirical reality. To put it
differently: in Levine’s approach agency appears very much as theory rather than as a
phenomenon.

27
Agency and control
Many discussions about agency assume a link between agency and control. In some
cases there is a very strong link – e.g., agency as that part of the self which controls
the ‘identity-work’ of the self – while on other cases the link as weaker – e.g.,
Arendt’s idea of agency as being dependent upon the re-actions of others. Although it
makes sense to include the idea of control in a conceptualisation of agency, it is also
important to acknowledge that control is not an all-or-nothing concept. Not only are
there degrees of control; if we think of control in terms of controlling circumstances
of situations, it makes sense to make a distinction between situations and conditions
that are very difficult to influence (such as physical or mental disability), situations
and circumstances that might be influenced (for example those illnesses for which
there is a cure; it is important to be aware of temporal-contextual dimension of this,
since new therapies may become available at a particular point in someone’s life), and
situations and circumstances that in principle can be influenced (such as economic
resources, although for some individuals or for individuals at some stage in their lives
this might be more difficult than for other individuals or individuals in other stages of
their lives). For the empirical understanding of agency it is, therefore, important not
simply to equate agency with control, but to be aware of s spectrum of possibilities.
Agency: Initiative or response?
The final point we wish to make has to do with the question to what extent we should
understand agency in terms of taking initiative. Although the definition of agency as
having to do with the ability to exert control over and give direction to the course of
one’s life covers a rather broad spectrum, it is important to be aware of the fact that
not all instances of agency that would fall under this definition follow from the
individual’s ‘own’ initiative. The best example of agentic actions that seem to be
more responsive than initiated by the individual have to do with those situations in
which people experience a calling, have a sense of vocation, or, more generally feel
that there is a certain ‘theme’ or ‘direction’ in their life to which they should respond.
(Notions like destiny and karma can also be understood in this light.) It is therefore
important for data-analysis to be aware of the fact that agency is not necessarily the
same as taking initiative but can also be linked to those situations in which people
take control of their life and ‘move’ it into a new direction as a result of a perceived
calling or sense of duty. In this respect agency can also be understood as a response.
CONCLUSIONS
In the foregoing pages we have provides an overview of theories, conceptions and
definitions of agency and have suggested a particular way to understand and approach
the ‘phenomenon’ of agency. The two key ideas that we have put forward for
consideration are (1) the suggestion that agency should be understood in an ecological
way, i.e., strongly connected to ‘context’, and (2) the idea that agency should not be
understood as a capacity or possession of the individual, but as something that is
achieved in particular (transactional) situations. Against this background we have
suggested a set of seven questions that might be used to guide data-analysis of life
stories in order to gain an understanding of agency in relation to life-course, learning
and, to a lesser extent, identity. We have also presented some further observations
which should be seen as a reminder that there is more to say about agency than is
captured in the seven steps and that this might be taken into consideration in the

28
analysis of life stories. In the next part of this paper we present an attempt to utilise
our approach in the analysis of one life story.
PART II
CASE STUDY: DIOGENES
Introduction
The data for this study come from three interviews with Diogenes
3
, the first in
November 2004 and the others in May and June of 2005. (A fourth interview followed in
January 2006.) He has provided detailed information about some areas of his personal
life experiences and talks extensively about what he has said and done with service-users
and colleagues in the charity for which he works. There are also some areas about which
he seems reluctant to talk. At this stage of the research he is aged 60 and has worked
with homeless people for 33 years. Between 1972 and 1990 he worked for charities
providing for homeless people in London and subsequently for his present employer,
a registered charity in the south west of England. The charity runs a number of hostels
offering accommodation for up to six months for their service-users and they also
operate a number of day centres that provide a variety of different services, in some
cases oriented around an inexpensive café and in other cases oriented around medical
and health services, guidance or selling ‘The Big Issue’. Diogenes was originally
employed as the first paid warden of the charity’s first hostel and, while the
organisation has steadily grown and changed over the years, he continued in that role
until an opportunity arrived to do something different in April 2005. He has records of
helping nearly 700 people through the hostel over the fourteen years he was warden
and he claims success with more than half of the service-users .
Within Diogenes’ accounts of his life story there were four transitions that provide an
interesting frame within which to consider agency. The data for three of those
transitions came from narrative accounts of his earlier life but the fourth occurred
between the first and second interviews:
1 He joined the Army’s Intelligence Corps in 1966
2 He became involved in working with homeless people in London in 1972
3 He and his family moved to the South West of England in 1991 where he
secured employment with a charity for homeless people
4 In 2005 he agreed to be seconded from the hostel for which he was warden
to manage a day centre in a town 25 miles away
3
‘Diogenes’ declined to choose a pseudonym for himself until the third interview. The Oxford
Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion (2003) includes this entry: Diogenes the Cynic (c 4122/403
– c324/321 BC) … He evolved a distinctive and original way of life from diverse, mainly Greek
elements: the beliefs (espoused by certain types of holy men and wise men) that wisdom was a matter
of action rather than thought; the principle of living in accordance with nature rather than
law/convention; the tradition, perhaps sharpened by contemporary disillusionment with the city-state,
or promulgating ideal societies or constitutions; the tradition…of physical toughness as a requirement
of virtue… ‘Philanthropy’ (concern for one’s fellow human beings) is integral to Cynicism and
essential to Diogenes’ celebrated concept of ‘cosmopolitanism’ (the belief that the universe is the
ultimate unity, of which the natural and human worlds, human beings, and the gods are all intrinsic
parts with the Cynic representing the human condition at its best, at once human, animal, and divine)
.

29
The decision-making in those four transitions offers an empirical setting which can be
used to explore the approach to analysing agency outlined above, which takes its
inspiration from Emirbayer and Mische. They 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. (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, p.971)
Within each transition it is possible to identify elements of ‘habit, imagination and
judgement’ affecting the decision-making processes in Diogenes’ life and it is also
possible to describe such decision-making in social and temporal locations. However,
Emirbayer and Mische suggest that ‘agency’ is more than simply a decision-making
process that takes into account past, present and future considerations and that leads to
a judgement and action. They propose that agency can be conceived as an orientation
that combines in characteristic ways an iterative element, a projective element and a
practical-evaluative element. Within each of these elements there are dominant and
secondary features which, in combination, provide a distinctive tone to an individual’s
orientation towards different ‘temporal-relational contexts’, the social settings with
which an individual interacts in order to achieve or to effect agency.
The narrative evidence from the life story offers an opportunity for descriptive
analysis of decision-making processes within changes or transitions in Diogenes’ life
course and the data enable consideration of ‘the interplay of habit, imagination, and
judgement’ through different environments. Analysis using the fine detail of
Emirbayer and Mische’s model, however, requires acts of imagination and
interpretation.
Composition and Configuration [step 1 & 2]
The information obtained from interviews about each of the four transitions has varied
in depth: the interviews have recorded what Diogenes was prepared to talk about on
different occasions. The data suggest that there was an ‘interplay of habit,
imagination, and judgement’ which may offer some insight into the composition of
iterational, evaluative-judgemental and projective aspects of Diogenes’ agentic
orientations in each of the transitions. There follows descriptions of the situations in
which there is an attempt to capture the particular components of the ‘chordal triad’
within different configurations for action.
1. Joining Army Intelligence, 1966
The iterative element of Diogenes’ decision to join the army seems to have been
founded on formal educational experience and family tradition. Diogenes had been a
member of the Air Training Corps at school and, after graduating in history and
philosophy from university, he thought it a natural progression to join the Royal Air
Force. There was some tradition of men in earlier generations of his family joining the
army, during both World Wars and in nineteenth century military excursions.
Diogenes also recalled that, in the early years of the 1960s, there was a strong sense of
patriotism in the country so perhaps there was a projective element of his attraction to

30
military service that the decision might be seen as serving an ideal of service to
country. Such an action would also have its appeal as a reliable foundation for a
man’s career. The practical outcome of the decision was not quite as anticipated:
Diogenes wears glasses and his sight was not good enough to train as air crew. Instead
he applied to join the Intelligence Corps of the Army, attracted by the notion of
gathering intelligence about the Soviet Union and its activities in Europe. He signed
up for 2 years and eventually saw active service in the Far East and in Aden.
In interviews, Diogenes did not recall the decision to join the army as particularly
rational or deeply considered, it seemed to be more a case of following a well-
established pathway at the time for men of his ability and background. His agentic
orientation might be characterised firstly as strongly iterative: he was effecting action
to advance a career consistent with schemas derived from personal experiences and
from the experience of people like him. The projective element of his action in joining
the army conformed with prevailing notions of what starting a career should mean.
2. Working with homeless people in London, 1972
Asked about how he first became involved working with homeless people, Diogenes
referred in the first interview to efforts to trace a family member with psychological
problems who had become homeless and how those efforts led to direct contact with
provision for homeless people in London. He recalled:
I suppose some people would say a sort of ‘road to Damascus’ and anyway, I
thought, “Right, you need help” and well yeah, “So well, when could you
start?” So I said “Where can I hang my jacket up?” (Interview 1, 26 Nov 04)
The decision appears to have been instant although it was almost certainly influenced
by some of the experiences Diogenes related from his military service in the Far East
and in Aden. He talked of the abandonment of civilised conduct in jungle conditions;
he talked of witnessing acts of random brutality by other soldiers; he talked of
servicemen seeing close friends killed by insurgents. The instant decision to make a
commitment to homeless people needs to be considered in relation to the way his
thinking and his values had been affected by military service and the learning that had
taken place during that service. When he left the army, Diogenes spent three years
undertaking Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Africa and it is likely his ideals of
service to others had become substantially different. The iterative element, the
patterns of thought and action from his earlier life, had been subject to critical review.
The projective element of agency within Diogenes’ sudden decision to make a
commitment to working with homeless people might be considered as the opportunity
that was presented to engage with life in an ethically-informed and moral manner.
At the second and third interviews, the opportunities for learning that Diogenes found
through working with a charity for homeless people became apparent. He talked of his
involvement with the Simon Community in London in the early 1970s. He mentioned
the importance of the founder, Brother Anton, as a charismatic model and inspiration.
He recalled how, as a new recruit, he watched other workers to learn about their
approach to clients, the language they used, the solutions they found to problems. He
referred to literary and media sources as part of the environment within which people

31
become concerned with issues like homelessness at the time, recalling the impact of
television dramas like ‘Cathy Come Home’. He commented on shocking experiences
of street work in London at the time: meeting a paedophile who wore a church army
style of uniform and ran a hostel where young boys were sexually abused; meeting an
eleven year old prostitute who thought she might as well be paid on the streets for her
sexual favours rather than allow her stepfather to get them for nothing. The
importance of Diogenes’ early experiences, therefore, reveal the importance of an
inspirational model, fellow workers, media and literature contributing to a framework
in which he could locate personal experiences with people who were homeless.
3. Moving to the south west of England, 1991
The original involvement of Diogenes with the charity for homeless people in the
south west came about as a consequence of family circumstances. A sister and her
family had relocated to the area and when visiting her, Diogenes found the area
attractive. His wife had become seriously ill while they were living in London and
Diogenes thought moving to the south west would offer his family a better quality of
life. However, his wife died within a few month of the family relocating. Shortly
after, Diogenes responded to an advertisement for a hostel warden placed by a charity
set up by some local churches. The charity started as a venture in response to a need
identified by some church members to make provision for mainly older homeless
men. Initially the work was undertaken by volunteers but, as the demands grew, the
need for permanent and professional staff became apparent. With his experience in
London, Diogenes was well qualified to bring his experience and professionalism to
the undertaking.
The iterative element of this action, therefore, would include the years of experience
that Diogenes had acquired in working with homeless people, the knowledge and
skills he had developed both in relating to the people themselves and in acting as a
mediator between the homeless person and the state and voluntary agencies that
provide services to which they are entitled. The projective element might be seen as
the necessity to envisage a means of earning a living as a widower with school-age
children.
4. Managing a day centre, 2005
At the time of the first interview, Diogenes was the warden of a hostel for six people
that he had managed for fourteen years; by the second interview he had been
seconded to manage a day centre in a town about 25 miles away. The centre had been
in danger of closure after twenty years of existence and the charity had taken it over to
ensure its survival. At one level, the issue of agency in this situation concerns how far
Diogenes had control of the secondment and how far it was an organisational
decision. The charity’s senior executive had decided that someone with experience
and sensitivity was needed to take on the manager’s role because of the problems
confronted by the centre. When asked how far he had been involved in the decision-
making, Diogenes said that the issues surrounding the day centre had been discussed
at a meeting months before and he had signalled willingness to undertake the centre
manager role.

32
The iterative element of agency in this transition centres on the routines and practices
he had developed over fourteen years as hostel warden. He said that, in a hostel, the
task is to ensure a single homeless person is
equipped to deal with living in the real world, rejoining the job market, umm
going back into mainstream education, umm, training, finding employment.’
(Interview 3, 3 Jun 05)
For many this requires dealing initially with problems of addiction to street drugs and
alcoholism. For each individual in a hostel Diogenes agrees a set programme of work
and also helps her or him to learn everyday skills like shopping, cooking and
budgeting within a routine that observes a typical working week followed by a
weekend.
Diogenes suggested he had become complacent in doing the same job for 14 years,
had become accustomed to the routines of hostel management and able to arrange
standard solutions for most of the problems presented by the service users. He wanted
a challenge:
Although I am 60 years old… I needed that challenge. Umm, I’m not being
big-headed now I think I’ve started to find in the last year or so a bit too easy,
a bit too easy in the hostel, umm, because after a number of years I’ve got it
pretty well off pat. (Interview 3, 3 Jun 05)
Several times Diogenes has expressed a critical view of the town where the hostel is
located. A conspicuous prosperity and gentrification has followed sustained economic
development of the town while the day centre is located in a town where there is more
obvious social deprivation and where problems with drugs and drug-related crime
present a greater challenge.
Within the projective element of agency, there was some suggestion of nostalgia or a
desire to recapture in a new setting the enthusiasm of his first involvement in the field:
I thought it was actually quite a good idea to actually sort of go back to one’s
roots and I saw coming here was actually going back to my roots which was
like, night shelters, drop ins, day centres and so on, many, many years ago.
(Interview 3, 3 Jun 05)
Working at the day centre has not required Diogenes to learn significant new skills or
new information although he has had to adapt to a different environment. The staff at
the centre provide cheap meals in a café for people who are homeless and they may be
able to advice about accommodation matters. The day centre operates at a stage
before people arrive in a hostel, when the ‘raw spade work’ is undertaken:
You can find that you open the door a crack, you know, and that’s sort of like
talking through the door. Gradually you open the door wider to the point that
they’ll sit downstairs and will actually talk to you and unload and then you
work out a sort of programme. (Interview 3, 3 Jun 05)

33
Diogenes’ years with the charity had established him as a suitable person to undertake
the sensitive matter of managing the staff and the clients. He commented that there
had been ‘some hostility and animosity because people don’t like change’ and he
described some of the problems of ensuring that the rules of the establishment are
observed. His perception of the centre, however, was essentially: ‘different people,
different faces but the problems are the same.’
The iterative element of agency, the habitual component of Diogenes’ interaction with
the social world, would seem to be the distinctive feature of his agentic orientation
after fourteen years of work with homeless people while he had managed a hostel.
The circumstances of his employment, the organisational structure, his reputation and
standing within the organisation were conducive to maintaining routines and
established practices. The chance opportunity of there being a centre under threat of
closure created a space in which the projective element of agency gained greater
significance. There was a change in ‘tone’, a different balance: there was the
possibility of a working life with a new challenge, of new relationships that might
enable Diogenes to ‘go back to one’s roots’. There was the prospect of working and
perhaps eventually living in a new location.
Transaction and Action [step 3 & 4]
In this section, at issue is the question of how different ‘temporal-relational contexts’
relate to particular agentic orientations. The empirical data relating to the four
transitions provide an opportunity to consider how a transaction was effected between
Diogenes and different environmental structures. There is an interpretive challenge in
exploring the transaction between a particular configuration of agentic orientations
and those structures.
In the first transition, the decision to join the Intelligence Corps, it was evident that
Diogenes was a well-educated young man in his twenties in the early 1960s. It is
likely he enjoyed the optimism of youth, the orientation to the future of a young man
undertaking the first steps of a career. Within the social context of Diogenes’ family
there was a tradition of military service which perhaps made them better disposed
than some families to a military career. By attending university he had already made
some physical detachment from his family so joining the army was likely to be a
continuation of the detachment, a continuing process of his developing autonomy. The
specific action required to join the army comprised making an application and that
would then have required appropriate adjustments by the family and friends that
comprised his social world before the transition. Once he had joined the Intelligence
Corps, Diogenes was part of a social structure characterised by authority and
hierarchy with the constraints they impose on personal agency. In retrospect,
Diogenes is highly critical of the seductive advertising for military service he recalls
from the time, the depiction of army life as offering glamorous international travel
and an active life style. The meaning he saw in his military service was substantially
at odds with that portrayal.
In the second transition, Diogenes made a commitment to working with the homeless.
There was not an obvious point of formal commitment as there would have been in
joining the army, the nature of the commitment was rather different. Diogenes spoke
of it as a Damascene conversion, a sudden epiphany, recognition of a way of working
and living that promised to be more conducive for him. Of necessity, sustaining such

34
a commitment would make particular demands on individual agency. Working
initially as a volunteer there was not the same legal structure working for a charity as
there had been working for the armed forces. Diogenes’ narrative has suggested that
there was a powerful iterative impact of his recent military action and of his VSO
work and a definite decision not to return to the practices to which he had become
accustomed in those environments. However, there appeared to be a continuing
projective appeal of service to others but interpreted in a significantly different
manner.
In the third transition, Diogenes had moved geographically and was living in another
part of the country. The reason given for the move was the necessity to provide a
better quality of life for his wife but within a short time Diogenes’ social existence
was marked profoundly by her death. The significant ‘temporal-relational context’
with which he effected the transaction to become an employed hostel warden was the
organisation set up by local churches to support homeless people. Agency was evident
in simple actions like responding to local advertising, attending for job interview,
agreeing to the conditions of employment. Agency was also evident in actions taken
to establish a permanent hostel and create an environment in which the problems of
homeless people could be addressed. Religious organisations provided the ‘structural
environments’ through which such agency was to be achieved.
The fourth transition is the one about which we have most information as it has
occurred in the time of the project and has involved changes for Diogenes in his
working role and its location. He indicated that the decision to release him from being
a hostel warden and second him to the day centre was made by a committee of which
he was a member. He gave the impression in interviews that, other than making an
offer to take on the role when the matter was aired, and complying with the
arrangements when they were finalised, there was little deliberation over the matter.
He conveyed little sense of agency: it just happened. However, as we have seen, there
were several good individualistic reasons to make the change: a willingness to alter
the routines of hostel management and perhaps to restore some of the enthusiasm of
his early working life. The social situatedness of this development was also
significant. Diogenes is well known in the local area for years of experience and
respected for his commitment and dedication. He is sufficiently established in the
organisation that he could have declined the secondment if he had not wanted it. The
transfer to a day centre was not career advancement, it was not promotion in any
conventional terms, but he complied willingly with an internal structural re-
organisation. It is tempting to conclude that Diogenes has the potential to effect
change, to have control over social interactions within the charity, more fully than he
likes to appear.
Ecology of agency [step 5]
The question follows about the nature of resources needed to secure action within
different temporal-relational contexts, the access Diogenes had to different forms of
capital. It was apparent that Diogenes lives modestly and has few indicators of
material wealth. He seemed to value the continuation of a worthwhile job and of
leading a life that was relatively uncomplicated. He is vegetarian, no longer owns a
car, but smokes quite heavily. He has said that his sisters – who are materially very
successful - find his way of life and work incomprehensible. In conversation his views
are consistently critical of the materialism of modern life and he seems remarkably

35
free of concern for material reward. The opportunity to become a day centre manager
was not a promotion or career advancement in any conventionally recognised terms.
Such a disposition appears to render Diogenes free of the ambition which might be
thought an integral part of agency yet willing to accept changes in employment when
circumstances allow. It is not personal economic capital, therefore, that plays a part in
his achievement of agency; he in dependent more on the capital of the organisations
with which he is involved.
In relation to cultural capital, Diogenes is more favourably endowed. He is well-
educated, articulate, compassionate. His interest in history and literature are in
continuing evidence; reading and documentary television inform the views he
expresses about society and the political world. By the age of 60 he had spent more
than half his life working with problems of homelessness. He was seen by managers
in his organisation as capable of acting sensitively to the staff and users of the day
centre to which he was seconded and, no doubt, considered capable of implementing
whatever changes were necessary to ensure its continuation. Diogenes holds
significant cultural capital within the environment of a charity providing for homeless
people and within social networks where such experience and learning have value.
From his long involvement in the field of homelessness it is reasonable to assume
Diogenes can access considerable social capital because of his long service and
dedication. He is known across a wide geographic area in voluntary and government
agencies that work in the field of homelessness and he knows what such organisations
can offer to his work or the service-users. Two stories illustrated how he is known
among the general public. Firstly, his hostel has been a project supported financially
by people from well beyond the town such as the members of a Roman Catholic
congregation who made his hostel their favoured charity. He spoke of parents he had
never met phoning him for advice on what to do about teenage daughters they
perceived as in danger of becoming addicted to drugs. Diogenes appears able to take
advantage of social capital founded on his many years of experience and is able to see
networks develop based on his local reputation. Such capital is highly significant in
Diogenes’ capacity to support the homeless people with whom he comes into contact,
his ability to exercise agency to their benefit.
Agentic Orientations [step 6]
What principles and processes were at work in the achievement of agency? The four
transitions in this study mark changes in the composition of Diogenes’ agentic
orientations and suggest some of the principles that formed his agentic condition.
Prior to joining the army it seemed that conformity, a preparedness to follow almost
uncritically in the footsteps of others, was a response that Diogenes would make to
some key problems. After his experiences in the army and in VSO he emerged with a
much enhanced critical capacity. His level of education would suggest he had a
capacity for reflective intelligence but his military career brought that reflective
intelligence into contact with the challenging social and political conditions he
encountered. A continuing value can be traced of an ideal of service which was
conceived perhaps rather uncritically in his youth and constructed as patriotic service
to country. The experiences of military life gave a different perspective and Diogenes
spoke more of ‘service to one’s fellow man’ (sic; Interview 1, 26 Nov 04) firstly
through his period of VSO and subsequently through working with homeless people.
There seems to be an indication of a changing agentic orientation as a consequence of

36
greater critical engagement. The projective element, informed by an idealistic
imagination, appears to be a significant element through the second and third
transitions.
With respect to the most recent transition from hostel warden to day centre manager,
Diogenes’ values and ideals provide a central framework guiding the purpose and
manner in which agency is deployed within his work. Crucially, he continues to want
direct contact with people affected by homelessness, he would prefer to cook a meal,
provide a sleeping bag, to give advice on possible accommodation, rather than engage
routinely in discussions of policy or of organisational management. He is a significant
individual within the organisation and could probably have become a senior executive
in that or a comparable undertaking. Within the organisation, though, he has managed
to influence the working practices followed by his colleagues by example and advice,
he has the ability to shape responses to problematic situations. However, the
avoidance of more than cursory engagement in organisational issues lends him
detachment and the possibility that perhaps here is an instance of concealed agency.
The temporal dimension [step 7]
Diogenes holds a deep interest in history and will talk at length about periods in which
he has specialised, such as the Second World War. He has outlined a historical
perspective on issues of homelessness which can be summarised as follows:
1970s Optimism that homelessness is a finite social problem that can be
addressed and resolved
1980s Decline of traditional industries and communities resulting in
impoverishment and displacement of large numbers of people, some of
whom become homeless
1990s Economic depression leading to unemployment and house
repossessions contribute to homelessness
2000s High price of housing and the decline of family structures contribute to
continuing homelessness among some social groups
In considering such change in the context of his biography, Diogenes adopts a
dystopian outlook: imaginative anticipation of the future is not an optimistic or
positive undertaking. He sees the social problems with which he engages in the
context of economic and social change and no longer anticipates any end to them.
This understanding shapes the way he responds to the problematic situations
encountered with service-users. Although he describes his work in terms of finding
individualised solutions for the problems of the service-users, he does not present
individualised explanations of their problems.
He thinks his work has become increasingly difficult in recent years and has
commented on the different kinds of people who present his work problems. There are
growing numbers of young people, particularly teenagers, looking for support from
the charity. In his experience, they are more likely to have problems of drug and
alcohol dependency. He noted that ‘there is a lot more anger about’ and commented
that he found youngsters less patient, more inclined to be demanding than their
counterparts twenty years ago, and far more willing to be abusive. He attributes such
developments to their exposure to simulated violence on TV and other communication
media.

37
Perhaps the exercise of agency in response to these changes has been for Diogenes to
detach himself from the intensity of residential contact with young homeless people.
Diogenes continues to anticipate work with homeless people well beyond the statutory
retirement age but the quality of such engagement, the problems encountered, are
likely to be significantly different from those he has had to become accustomed to.
REFERENCES
Alexander, J. (1988). Action and its environments. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Alexander, J. (1992). Some remarks on ‘agency’ in recent sociological theory.
Perspectives 15, 1-4.
Alheit, P. & Dausien, B. (2000). ‘Biograpicity’ as a basic resource of lifelong
learning. In P. Alheit et al. (eds), Lifelong learning inside and outside schools
(pp.400-422). Roskilde: Roskilde University.
Alheit, P. (2005). Stories and structures: An essay on historical times, narratives and
their bidden impact on adult learning. Studies in the Education of Adults 37(2), 201-
212.
Allison, H. (1983). Kant’s transcendental idealism. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Antikainen, A. et al. (1996). Living in a learning society, London: Falmer Press
Archer, M. (1988). Culture and agency: The place of culture in social theory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Arendt H., (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Arendt H. (1977). Between past and future. Eight exercises in political thought.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society. Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
Biesta, G.J.J. (1992). John Dewey: Theorie & Praktijk. Delft: Eburon.
Biesta, G.J.J. (1998). Mead, Intersubjectivity, and Education: The Early Writings.
Studies in Philosophy and Education 17, 73-99.

38
Biesta, G.J.J. (1999). Redefining the subject, redefining the social, reconsidering
education: George Herbert Mead's course on Philosophy of Education at the
University of Chicago. Educational Theory 49(4), 475-492.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2005). The learning democracy? Adult learning and the condition of
democratic citizenship. British Journal of Sociology of Education 26(5), 693-709.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future.
Boulder, Co.: Paradigm Publishers.
Biesta, G.J.J. (in press[a]). What’s the point of lifelong learning if lifelong learning
has no point? On the democratic deficit of policies for lifelong learning. European
Educational Research Journal
Biesta, G.J.J. (in press[b]). Education and the democratic person: Towards a political
understanding of democratic education. Teachers College Record 109(3),
Biesta, G.J.J. & Burbules, N. (2003). Pragmatism and educational research.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
Biesta, G.J.J. & Stams, G.J.J.M. (2001). Critical thinking and the question of critique.
Some lessons from deconstruction. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 20(1), 57-74.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press.
Bron, A. (2001). Civil Society and Biographical Learning. In: M. Schemmann & M.
Bron Jr (Eds.) Adult Education and Democratic Citizenship IV (pp.17-27). Krakow:
Impuls.
Bron, A. & Lönnheden, Ch., (2004). Identitetsförändring och biografiskt lärande,
51-58 I: Bron, A. & Wilhelmson, L. Lärprocesser i högre utbildning. Stockholm:
Liber.
Calhoun, C. (2002). Dictionary of the social sciences [electronic resource]/ edited by
Craig Calhoun ... [et al.]. Oxford : Blackwell, 2002.
Costall, A. (2000). James Gibson and the ecology of agency. Communication &
Cognition 33(1), 23-32.
Dannefer, D. (2003). Toward a global geography of the life course. Challenges of late
modernity for life course theory. In J.T. Mortimer & M.J. Shanahan (eds), Handbook
of the life course (pp.647-659). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Davidson, D. (2001). Essays on actions and events. Oxford: Clarendon.
Dewey, J. and Bentley, A. F. (1949). Knowing and the Known, Boston: The Beacon
Press.

39
Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed), The Middle
Works (1899-1924), Volume 14. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois
University Press
Dominicé, P. (2000). Learning from our lives. Using educational biographies with
adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc. (xix)
Emirbayer, M. and Mische, A. (1998). “What is agency?” American Journal of
Sociology 103(4), 962-1023
English, L.M. (ed) (2005). International encyclopedia of adult education.
Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Evans, K. (2002). Taking control of their lives? The youth, citizenship and social
change project. European Educational Research Journal 1(3), 497-521.
Fieldhouse, R. (1996). A History Of Modern British Adult Education. Leicester:
NIACE.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Outlines of the theory of
structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens A, (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern
age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gorard, S. and Rees, G. (2002) Creating a learning society?, Bristol: Policy Press.
Hirst, P.H. & Peters, R.S. (1970) The Logic of Education. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Hollis (1994). The philosophy of social science. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Kant, I. (1982[1803]). Über Pädagogik, in I. Kant, Schriften zur Anthropologie,
Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik. Frankfurt am Main, Insel Verlag.
Kant, I. (1992[1784]). An answer to the question: What is Enlightenment? in P.
Waugh (ed.), Postmodernism. A Reader (pp.89-95). London: Edward Arnold.
Levine, C. (2005). What happened to agency? Some observations concerning the
post-modern perspective on identity. Identity: An international journal of theory and
research 5(2), 175-185.
McPeck, J. (1981). Critical Thinking and Education. St. Martin’s: New York.
Mead, G. H. (1932). The Philosophy of the Present. La Salle Ill.: Open Court.

40
Mele, A.R. (2003). Motivation and agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mollenhauer, K. (1983). Vergessene Zusammenhänge. München: Juventa.
Osberg, D. & Biesta, G.J.J. (2004). Beyond Presence: Epistemological and
pedagogical implications of ‘strong’ emergence. Paper presented at the Annual
Meeting of the British Educational Research Association (BERA), Manchester,
September 2004.
Siegel, H. (1988). Educating reason: Rationality, critical thinking and education,
London: Routledge.
Thayer-Bacon, B. (2000). Transforming critical thinking constructively. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Welton, M. (2005). Designing the just learning society: A critical inquiry. Leicester:
NIACE.
West, L. (1996). Beyond fragments: Adults, motivation and Higher Education.
London: Taylor and Francis.
Learning Lives: Learning, Identity and Agency in the Life-Course is funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council, Award Reference RES139250111, and is part
of the ESRC’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme. Learning Lives is a
collaborative project involving the University of Exeter (Gert Biesta, Flora Macleod,
Michael Tedder, Paul Lambe), the University of Brighton (Ivor Goodson, Norma
Adair), the University of Leeds (Phil Hodkinson, Heather Hodkinson, Geoff Ford,
Ruth Hawthorne), and the University of Stirling (John Field, Heather Lynch). For
further information see www.learninglives.org.