Time, Self, and The Concept of Agency

Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency*
STEVEN HITLIN
University of Iowa
GLEN H. ELDER, JR.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The term agency is quite slippery and is used differently depending on the episte-
mological roots and goals of scholars who employ it. Distressingly, the sociological
literature on the concept rarely addresses relevant social psychological research. We
take a social behaviorist approach to agency by suggesting that individual tempo-
ral orientations are underutilized in conceptualizing this core sociological concept.
Different temporal focithe actors engaged response to situational circumstances
implicate different forms of agency. This article offers a theoretical model involving
four analytical types of agency (existential, identity, pragmatic, and life
course) that are often conflated across treatments of the topic. Each mode of
agency overlaps with established social psychological literatures, most notably about
the self, enabling scholars to anchor overly abstract treatments of agency within
established research literatures.
Agency has been central to theorists throughout sociologys history, though with
different terminology in different eras. The current incarnation of this attempt to posit
individual action in a world of social structures involves the seemingly ubiquitous
agency vs. structure debates. This debate typically addresses the reciprocal nature of
person and society, but largely fails to engage relevant social psychological work, the
literature most amenable to understanding social actors. Sociologists place themselves
against a naive psychological reductionism in an effort to combat a (rather American)
tendency to reduce social phenomena to the level of the individual. However, this
has led to simplistic, straw versions of human actors within larger, structural models
about institutions and societies (Kohn 1989).
From a social psychological point of view, these debates over the relative
importanceand even existenceof agency are a bit peculiar. To maintain that social
actors make decisions, no matter how socially circumscribed, is a fairly banal state-
ment from a micro-analytic perspective. This is not, however, always the received
wisdom in sociology, where there are those who render the actions (motivations,
choices, goals) of actors as irrelevant, epiphenomenal, or error variation.
1
It seems
Address correspondence to: Steven Hitlin, Department of Sociology, W140 Seashore Hall, University
of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242. Tel: +319-335-2499; Fax: 319-335-2509; E-mail: steven-hitlin@uiowa.edu.
Support for this research was provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(T32-HD007376, Human Development: Interdisciplinary Research Training) at the Center for Develop-
mental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We would like to thank Scott Brown, Peter
Callero, Victor Marshall, members of Iowa Sociology Progress on Papers working group, the anonymous
reviewers, and the editors of Sociological Theory for comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Sociological Theory 25:2 June 2007
C
American Sociological Association. 1307 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005-4701
1
Lest you think, though, that my comments and criticisms are directed only to those sociologists
who call themselves social psychologists, I hasten to say that I think their sins of commission pale by
comparison to the sins of omission of other sociologists. Social psychologists at least recognize the existence
TIME, SELF, AND THE CONCEPT OF AGENCY 171
often as if the sociologists use agency as a placeholder for some vague sense of
human freedom or individual volition within a broader model.
For sociologists, the tools toward a more adequate understanding of the human
agent are located within the vast empirical and theoretical literature on the self,
a body of work rarely linked with discussions of agency. The notion of time, high-
lighted in Emirbayer and Misches (1998) notable treatment of agency, is conversely
rarely employed within models of the self. Temporal orientations are a fundamental
aspect of social interaction (Flaherty 2003), and form the basis for developing an un-
derstanding of the human agency that bridges multiple uses of the concept and links
to an established literature on the self. The self is at root a temporal phenomenon
(Flahterty and Fine 2002; Mead 1932), and provides a pivot for such a synthesis.
Actors temporal orientations are shaped by situational exigencies, with some sit-
uations calling for extensive focus on the present and others requiring an extended
temporal orientation. Agentic behavior is influenced by the requirements of the in-
teraction; as actors become more or less concerned with the immediate moment
versus long-term life goals, they employ different social psychological processes and
exhibit different forms of agency. The intra-personal perception of what might be
termed a time horizon, a concentrated focus on a particular zone of temporal
space, is a response to social situations and conditions of agentic action. Agency is
exerted differentially depending on the actors salient time horizon. Viewed this way,
agencys processes are less mysterious and draw on well-established scholarship on
self-processes.
We identify and describe four variants of human agency: existential, identity, prag-
matic, and life course. These are meant as heuristics for linking theoretical problems
with established research traditions; they have fluid boundaries and overlapping char-
acteristics. These ideal types are intended as guides for future syntheses, and gloss
over debates between social psychological theorists about the scope conditions of var-
ious approaches. Individuals exercise different forms of agency depending on their
temporal orientation, though the first type (i.e., existential) underlies the three more
socially interesting ones. These analytic types represent different relationships be-
tween an actor and the persons time horizon. We suggest that this approach will
likely foster communication between theorists and social psychologists concerning a
central concern of both, individual action within social structures.
A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF AGENCY
Agency remains a slippery concept because of inconsistent definitions across theo-
retical projects. Loyal and Barnes (2001) trace back the modern debate to Parsonss
volunteristic theory of action, and claim that the concept has no sociological
utility. Collins (2004) suggests that the agency/structure rhetoric is a conceptual
morass, distracting from the proper study of interactions prior to individual action.
As grounded within people, the concept of agency is certainly influenced by West-
ern conceptions of the actor (Holstein and Gubrium 2000; Meyer and Jepperson
2000), where individuals are the locus of social action in traditions focused on indi-
vidual freedom. Current models focus on how apparently free actions lead individuals
to (often) unconsciously reproduce their social structural milieu (e.g., Bourdieu 1977;
of people; other sociologists sometimes seem to act as if they thought that social institutions function
without benefit of human participants, or at any rate without benefit of participants who act human
(Kohn 1989:27).
172 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Giddens 1984; Layder 1997).
2
Most theorists addressing the agency/structure debate
over the last two decades reasonably conclude that positing a strict dualism between
agency and structure is erroneous (e.g., Cockerham 2005; Dunn 1997; Hayes 1994;
Sewell 1992). Following Giddens (1984), the majority of such theorists understands
the need to include both freedom and constraint while also noting the ways that free
actions reproduce social structures. Agency is not universally accepted or valorized
in sociological theory. Some (Fuchs 2001; Loyal and Barnes 2001; Meyer and Jepper-
son 2000) maintain that it does not exist, while others (Alexander 1993; Cahill 1998;
Collins 1992) focus on sociologists tendency to romanticize Western conceptions of
the agentic individual.
The most prominent recent theoretical attempts at describing agencys relation-
ship to structure offer minimal engagement with current empirical social psychology.
Emirbayer and Mische (1998) define agency as:
the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural
environmentsthe temporal-relational contexts of actionwhich, through the
interplay of habit, imagination and judgement, both reproduces and transforms
those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing his-
torical situations. (1998:970)
3
Sewell (1992) focuses on the importance of rules and resources(drawing on Gid-
dens 1984), yet like other theoretical treatments it is unclear what is the empirical
work flow from this understanding. Without a proper engagement, however, sociolog-
ical theorists run the risk of establishing a black box to be filled in by psychologists.
This, however, is a poor approach to understanding the social individual if we rely on
psychologists who tend not to find the existence of social constraints on individual
volition as problematic.
Psychologists, broadly speaking, typically employ some notion of agency, though
some are less dismissive of contextual influences (e.g., Bandura 2001, 2006). While
agency is assumed on many levels of analysis, only the field of life course studies
explicitly engages agency from an empirical perspective (e.g., Elder 1994; Shanahan,
Elder, and Miech 1997; Thoits 2003). To life course analysts, human agency is an
individual-level construct, fundamental for social action. Even there, however, dif-
ferent types of agency are conflated. Almost all of these approaches a omit serious
discussion of the self.
Empirically, agency has been imbued with multiple dimensions ranging from no-
tions of self-efficacy (Gecas 2003) to what Clausen (1991, 1993) has termed planful
competence. Alexander (1992, 1993) focuses on moments of freedom and effort,
while Thoits similarly discusses free will and the ability to initiate self-change.
Bandura (2001) identifies four aspects of agency: (1) intentionality, (2) forethought,
(3) self-reactiveness (self-regulation), and (4) self-reflectiveness (beliefs of efficacy).
Most social scientists intuitively recognize agency as important, even as defi-
nitions abound. Ahearn (2001:112) defines agency as the socioculturally medi-
ated capacity to act, an intentionally broad definition that is both helpful and
2
Evans (2002) offers a useful typology for these various theoretical treatments along three dimensions:
structure/agency; internal/external control; social reproduction/conversion.
3
Fuchs (2001) criticizes this definition as heavy rhetoric added to mostly trivial conceptions of
actors and intentions: actor has plans and will travel; plans dont work as planned; actor adjusts plans
over time. This is pretty thin for a novel, as well as for a sociological science (2001:29).
misleading. It highlights the primary theme that runs through a variety of defini-
tions of the concept, but its abstractness does not help us develop ways to identify
agentic action. Additionally, individual-level differences in capacity, skill, and fore-
thought are ignored. Theorists attempts at thorough definitions typically do not
lend themselves to empirical verification, while most empirical researchers tend to
identify either simplistic notions of agency or consider it tantamount to unexplained
variance.
Broadly understood, agency deals with questions of personal causality (Bandura
1982). Marshall (2003) poses an important dilemma: Is agency correctly thought of
as an aspect of human nature or as a variable? Is agency inherent to social action,
or is it a differential property that somewhether through structural advantage or
individual attributespossess more than others? Discussions of agency to date have
not dealt with different levels of analysis, and this leads to much of the confusion
surrounding the topic.
Theoretical questions about the existence of human choice appear rather pecu-
liar to microsociologists. For those focused on individual interaction, constraints
on and processes of agency are the concern, not if it exists. Empirical studies
point to the ubiquity of individual innovation and choice.
4
The existential ques-
tion shifts away from abstract conceptualizations about the potential illusion of
individual freedom. What concepts and empirical measures can we employ to ex-
plore the process ofand limits onindividuals agency? The field of self and iden-
tity (for overviews, see Owens 2003; Gecas and Burke 1995; Stryker and Burke
2000) has developed an extensive literature that empirically engages these very is-
sues. Study of the self, a phenomenon that allows for both choice and constraint,
individual spontaneity and social patterning, individuality and group and social
identification, is fundamental tobut missing fromdebates about the nature of
agency.
SELF AND TEMPORALITY
Curiously, the self is rarely implicated within current debates over the nature of hu-
man agency, though not for a lack of theoretical development (e.g., Burke 2004;
Hewitt 1989; Holstein and Gubrium 2000; Stryker and Burke 2000; Wiley 1994).
5
Joas (2000) refers to the self as one of social sciences greatest discoveries; consti-
tuting active, socialized, meaning-making individuals. The self is an organized and
interactive system of thoughts, feelings, identities, and motives that (1) is born of
self-reflexivity and language, (2) people attribute to themselves and (3) characterize
specific human beings (Owens 2003:206). Treatments of the self commonly imply
the capacity for agentic action, but such links are rarely explicated.
Meads focus on reflexivity as constitutive of the self is important for bridging
these literatures. Though not directly concerned with the self, Emirbayer and Mische
(1998) suggest that Mead (1932, 1938) offers the best conceptual tools for engaging
agency. Callero (2003:117) argues that the principle of reflexivity is at the core of the
Meadian tradition and provides a pragmatic foundation for understanding agency.
4
Bandura (2001) suggests agency can also be granted to meaningful social groupings, like social move-
ments and organizations. Giddens (1984) rejects this position. Individuals, only, can exercise agency. Groups
of individuals can represent the decisions of a majority of members, but the group as a whole does not
act.
5
See Baumeister (1999), Gecas and Burke (1995), and Owens (2003), for overviews of the self; see
Archer (2000), Callero (2003) for notable attempts to bring the self into discussions of agency.
Dunn (1997) highlights the prediscursive ability to act as fundamental to Meads
conception of the self. Meads approach captures both individual innovation, the
prelinguistic ability to act outside of social dictates, and a more socially mediated,
collaboratively generated aspect of the self (see Wiley 1994). Meads development of
the reflexive relationship between the spontaneous I and the more stable, socially
developed Me introduces an aspect of individual volition mistakenly ignored by
those who mistakenly deny human subjectivity and agency (Dunn 1997). The capacity
for reciprocal interchange between these two aspects of the self lies at the core of
reflexivity. Meads incorporation of time into the self is vital for linking self and
agency.
With few exceptions, notably life course studies and suggestive work by Flaherty
(1999, 2002), the temporal nature of human activity has largely been unexplored
within social psychological models. Life course studies are centered around the notion
of historical and unfolding time, but even there it is rare to find first-person temporal
orientations being the subject of inquiry. Meads discussions on time are not well
presented (Flahterty and Fine 2001; Joas 1985), perhaps contributing to the omission
of temporality in most discussions of his ideas. The self exists, for Mead, expressly
in the ever-passing present, a moment whereby the individual interprets situations
and symbols as well as his or her past and future. Anticipation and memory are
both shaped by the current moment, a moment that immediately becomes past as
the actor plans and reacts to current situations. In this sense, we cannot abstract
the actor from the situation; even the Me, Meads notion of the backward-looking
aspect of self, is interpreted by the actor in the current moment. Ones past is not a
stable part of the self, but subject to reinterpretation based on current circumstances.
The temporally extended self involves understanding that the links between the past
and present extend to the future (Lemmon and Moore 2001).
Humans are more capable of controlling their temporal orientation than Mead
suggested, and are able to engage in what Flaherty (2002, 2003) calls time work,
employing ones focus to control ones temporal experience. The perceived duration
of time is an interplay between self and situation (Flaherty 1999). Individuals do
not simply passively experience time. In Flahertys notion, individuals exert agency
(following Giddenss notion of could have acted otherwise) by shaping their experi-
ence of time; for example, self-consciously attempting to enact societally valued time
activities (being prompt) or resisting the temporal experience of situations (passing
time when bored in a college lecture). Agency, in this form, occurs at the level of
the actors control over his or her self-experience, skills we learn at around three or
four years of age (Barresi 2001).
Flaherty (1999) discusses the experience of time within situated activity, suggesting
that variation in the perceived passage of time reflects variation in the intensity
of conscious information processing per standard temporal unit. We distinguish
between Flahertys discussion of experienced time and a more agency-useful notion
of temporal horizons, a concern with the focus on temporality as dictated by the
situation that in turn influences the self. The type of agency discussed in Flahertys
models forms the basis for what we will discuss as existential agency, and underlies
agencys other three variants (pragmatic, identity, and life course). This dovetails with
Banduras (1982) focus on the importance of forethought for understanding agentic
action, but we build on Mead and Flaherty to differentiate the range of forethought
that situations call forth within actors.
TEMPORAL ORIENTATION AND VARIANTS OF AGENCY
We adopt the perspective, following the social behaviorism found in Meads and
Blumers work, that individuals actions are oriented toward meeting the condi-
tions of social life (Swanson 1992). Peoples actions do not occur in a vacuum.
This statement advances the sociologically banal observation that individual action
is inextricably social yet not fully determined (though a strict structuralist might
quibble with this assertion). We view agentic action as those actions whose osten-
sible origin begins within the actor, in the sense that, as Giddens (1984) maintains,
the actor might have done otherwise. This covers behavior ranging from automatic
(throwing a ball) to carefully considered (solving a math problem) to long term
(enrolling in a particular university). All of these sorts of behaviors implicate in-
dividual action, effort, and intention. Incorporating the self, however, allows for
the understanding of what these actions share beyond being self-initiated, and pro-
vides the opportunity to anchor discussions of agency within empirical research
traditions.
Agentic actions involve differential orientations toward the present and the future.
Temporal orientations can be analytically separated and implicate different aspects
of the self within action. Individuals shift their time horizons based on the prob-
lems that emerge within situated interaction. Agency stems both from individual and
external circumstances that direct ones attentional focus. An actors attention gets
focused on situational aspects perceived as most important. Our mental horizons,
similar to frames (Goffman 1974) shape which information we attend to or omit
(Zerubavel 1997) as situated activity evolves (Gonos 1977). Interactional models typ-
ically omit the nature of the actors temporal frames, over which we can exercise
control (Flaherty 2002) but that also respond to situational exigencies.
Circumstances may require heightened attention and thus extensive conscious con-
trol. Other situations involve monitoring ones role enactment and do not necessitate
the same heightened focus on ones own behavior; but, role internalization leads to
some automaticity in habits and routines. Even other actions are undertaken with
long-term, not immediate, concerns in mind. We name these types of agency prag-
matic, identity, and life course. Each type has, at its root, an existential capacity
for initiating and controlling self-behavior. These ideal types have admittedly fuzzy
boundaries, and systematically map onto actors future-oriented attentional foci. We
explain each of these types of agency and offer some speculative links to estab-
lished research literatures in order to anchor future discussions about agency within
empirical social psychological processes.
Three variants of agency/free will/personal control that are relevant to social life
are anchored within a fourth type, an existential capacity for exerting influence
on our environments. Four ideal types of agency serve to anchor the concept in
different levels of experience and help resolve seemingly incommensurate dimensions.
Discussions of agency can fail to anchor the concept in lived experience, referring
to it with a-situational abstractions. The more removed a discussion about humans
is from actual human experience, the more slippery the idea of agency becomes.
We ground the concept of agency by situating debates within social psychological
understandings of the person and social structures (see Table 1). A temporally based
heuristic offers a schematic for understanding multiple, sometimes conflicting, uses
of agency.
These analytic distinctions overlap in practice. They direct inquiry toward estab-
lished models of the self that might help scholars engage sociological questions about
T
a
b
l
e
1
.
T
y
p
e
s
o
f
A
g
e
n
c
y
R
e
p
r
e
s
e
n
t
a
t
i
v
e
A
g
e
n
c
y
T
y
p
e
A
n
a
l
y
t
i
c
a
l
S
c
o
p
e
T
e
m
p
o
r
a
l
S
c
o
p
e
C
h
a
r
a
c
t
e
r
i
s
t
i
c
s
T
h
e
o
r
i
s
t
s
E
x
i
s
t
e
n
t
i
a
l
A
l
l
c
i
r
c
u
m
s
t
a
n
c
e
s
A
l
l
t
e
m
p
o
r
a
l
h
o
r
i
z
o
n
s
P
r
e
-
r
e
f
l
e
c
t
i
v
e
c
a
p
a
c
i
t
y
t
o
d
e
f
y
s
o
c
i
a
l
d
i
c
t
a
t
e
s
M
e
a
d
F
u
n
d
a
m
e
n
t
a
l
e
l
e
m
e
n
t
o
f
f
r
e
e
w
i
l
l
P
r
a
g
m
a
t
i
c
N
o
v
e
l
s
i
t
u
a
t
i
o
n
s
K
n
i
f
e
s
e
d
g
e
p
r
e
s
e
n
t
m
o
m
e
n
t
A
b
i
l
i
t
y
t
o
i
n
n
o
v
a
t
e
w
h
e
n
r
o
u
t
i
n
e
s
b
r
e
a
k
d
o
w
n
D
e
w
e
y
/
J
o
a
s
H
e
i
s
e
/
S
m
i
t
h
-
L
o
v
i
n
I
d
e
n
t
i
t
y
R
o
u
t
i
n
e
s
i
t
u
a
t
i
o
n
s
S
i
t
u
a
t
i
o
n
a
l
l
y
-
o
r
i
e
n
t
e
d
g
o
a
l
a
t
t
a
i
n
m
e
n
t
C
a
p
a
c
i
t
y
t
o
a
c
t
w
i
t
h
i
n
s
o
c
i
a
l
l
y
p
r
e
s
c
r
i
b
e
d
r
o
l
e
e
x
p
e
c
t
a
t
i
o
n
s
S
t
r
y
k
e
r
/
B
u
r
k
e
L
i
f
e
c
o
u
r
s
e
L
i
f
e
p
a
t
h
w
a
y
s
L
o
n
g
-
r
a
n
g
e
f
u
t
u
r
e
l
i
f
e
p
l
a
n
s
U
m
b
r
e
l
l
a
t
e
r
m
f
o
r
r
e
t
r
o
s
p
e
c
t
i
v
e
a
n
a
l
y
s
i
s
o
f
d
e
c
i
s
i
o
n
s
m
a
d
e
a
t
t
u
r
n
i
n
g
p
o
i
n
t
s
a
n
d
t
r
a
n
s
i
t
i
o
n
s
E
l
d
e
r
/
C
l
a
u
s
e
n
the structural patterning of agentic action, what Evans (2002) and Shanahan (2000)
refer to as bounded agency.
6
Existential Agency
Much human action is self-initiated, even if it involves automatic processing. Existen-
tial agency is inherent in social action, and as such is a universal human potentiality.
This capacity for self-directed action underlies all of the types of agency we dis-
cuss and refers to a fundamental level of human freedom, Giddenss (1984) notion
that one might have acted otherwise. At this level, we are fully free within the con-
straints of physical reality. Writers ranging from Sartre to Hegel to Goffman have dis-
cussed the fact that, at a fundamental level, even those without power (slaves, mental
patients) have the ability to make decisions about their actions, though they face
severe consequences for those choices. Humans can control many of their actions,
but this capacity gets socially channeled, as we discuss below.
The capacity for self-initiated behavior, however, is of less interest than its social
dimensions and consequences. The capacity for action differs, for example, from the
perception of that capacity, self-efficacy. Some scholars (e.g., Bandura 1997, 2001;
Gecas 2003) view self-efficacy as the core of human agency, a reflectively accessible
belief about ones capacities. It is not the capacity, itself. The self-reflective beliefs we
have about our competence in various action domains is analytically separate from
the actual capacity for acting within those domains.
That said, self-efficacy theory highlights an important social psychological contri-
bution to understanding agency. Rather than being concerned with free will as an
end in itself, sociologists need to take into account self-reflective understandings of
our abilities and capacities within specific domains to exert this will: Once formed
. . . efficacy beliefs regulate aspirations, choice of behavioral courses, mobilization
and maintenance of effort, and affective reactions (Bandura 1997:4). We develop
a sense of personal empowerment (Little, Hawley, Henrich, and Marsland 2002)
that motivates and guides our existential capacity for action.
Pragmatic Agency
Our capacity to exert influence on our action is only sociologically consequential
insofar as it is utilized within social situations or with social outcomes. Meads
writings about the knifes edge of the present moment captures the fundamen-
tal present-ness of social action, the need to attend to ones surroundings as time
flows forward. Writing in response to the popular behaviorism of the time, Mead
focused on actors ability to process social stimuli and not simply react passively
(Flahterty and Fine 2001). This emergent, creative aspect of the person has formed
the basis for much symbolic interactionist and pragmatic thought, and anchors
pragmatic agency. Circumstances sometimes require heightened attentional concen-
tration on ones immediate surroundings in certain situations. We focus our attention
6
To reiterate, we present this typology as a heuristic. The goal of bridge building between pure theoretical
approaches and social psychology means that we gloss over debates within social psychology about the
scope conditions of the relevant research. Just as theorists fall into different camps or traditions, so,
too, do we find diversity among social psychologists about the importance of or mechanics behind various
self-processes. Our presentation is intended to demonstrate the utility of a particular approach drawing
on social psychological work; it certainly is not intended to definitively present a social psychological
position on the self.
most strongly on the present moment within problematic situations (Flaherty 1999).
This type of agency, pragmatic, highlights the overlap with pragmatist insights into
the contingent nature of human action (e.g., Dewey 1934; Joas 1993).
Pragmatic agency is expressed in the types of activities that are chosen when habit-
ual responses to patterned social actions break down. Much of our action involves
habit (Camic 1986) as we rely on available, preestablished routines to guide inter-
actions. If habits fail, however, we must make choices, and such choices necessarily
occur within the flow of activity, not abstracted from it (like in rational models of
social action). We are not dispassionate, analytical actors. We make choices within
the flow of situated activity, and emotions and personality traitsalong with idiosyn-
cratic personal histories, moral codes, and predispositionsinfluence the choices we
make in emergent situations.
People do not make completely random choices and new decisions in such situ-
ations. It is at this level that the self begins to be instructive for understanding a
temporal model of agency. We are guided by our self, the reflective, intuitive as-
pect of consistency that guides interactions (Hewitt 1989). Individuals consistent
responses within the flow of situated activity, especially with respect to novel situa-
tions, are yet to be fully fleshed out within action theory. Aspects of ones personal-
ity, biography, and values contribute greatly to the patterns of agentic decisions that
are manifested within these pragmatist-oriented situations of novelty and creativity
(Joas 1996).
Meads I is the active portion of the self-concept that carries on a dialogue with
the reflective Me, an interplay that fundamentally involves temporality, a neglected
distinction in the literature (Flahterty and Fine 2001). The I is an internal expe-
rience of reflexivity (Dunn 1997; Wiley 1994), and exists prior to language, though
over time it becomes socially shaped and channeled. The very existence of the I
allows for agency when compared to an oversocialized view of individual action
(Callero 2003). Sociological scholarship on the self has focused less on the I than
the various Mes that constitute the person (Thoits and Virshup 1997).
Meads I is conceptualized as a fundamentally spontaneous aspect of the self. It
is, however, far from randomidiosyncratic, possibly, but not unpredictable. If our
responses were, in fact, completely random, much social science would be untenable.
Hewitt (1989) extends Meads theory by noting that the I is more than simply a
product of social conditioning but is guided by its own inner logic, a fundamentally
creative aspect of the self possessing what we call patterned spontaneity. The I,
however, does not create itself anew in each situation. Rather, there is a patterned
development over time of this creative, spontaneous aspect of self. The self is both
a structure and a process, and the interplay between the socialized, developed Me
and the spontaneous I captures the process notion of this construct. The I acts,
and those actions are reflectively absorbed and compared with the Me. The I,
however, while situationally emergent also implicates our personality, and our moral
intuitions that circumscribe what we are really like. Over time, our sense of self is
developed in part by observing how we are predisposed to act in novel, nonroutine,
emergent situations. The personal anchor of the I may refer to those self-aspects
we use to discriminate among actions that may or may not reflect our true self
(Turner 1976). We rely on habitual responses to suffice for the engagement of many
problems in action; the I comes into play when routine situations are interrupted
and novel responses are called for, but these responses are not fully random.
Other than positing an enduring I, little of this section is new to sociologists
concerned with agency (e.g., Emirbayer and Mische 1998). Others have discussed
this process at more depth than we can engage here. We might suggest, however,
an empirical direction this work might take. The I is anchored in feelings, senses
of self that might draw on the burgeoning literature on emotions (see Turner and
Stets 2006). Emotions offer a window into the criterion that individuals use to judge
whether various possible actions fit with their self-conception, the referent that
people use while highly focused on agentic action in the present within problematic
situations. Relatedly, those looking for possible mechanisms behind agentic action
can look at affect control theory (Heise 1977; Smith-Lovin and Heise 1988) for a
model of the ways in which emotional feedback serves to orient the social actor.
The model, derived from Meads focus on language in interaction (Owens 2003), fo-
cuses on actors emotional consequences when situational emotional reactions differ
from culturally shared meanings (sentiments). We attempt to confirm cultural ex-
pectations of how we should feel, and when our transient feelings do not match we
attempt to shape our behavior to fall in line with cultural definitions or eventually
we reshape our definitions, themselves.
7
Emotions serve as a gauge of the difference
between internal expectations and internal results (Hochschild 1983), and are viewed
(in American culture, at least) as windows into ones true self. Thus, the standards
that guide the internal logic of the I and the emergence of pragmatic agency are
inextricably social.
Identity Agency
Identity agency represents the habitual patterning of social behavior. Following es-
tablished ways of acting, role enactment, or identity performance, involves agentic
action. When we are following the guidelines of a social identity, we are not cultural
dopes as Garfinkel terms it (see also Giddens 1991), blindly following social dic-
tates.
8
Social norms guide us as we quite intentionally strive to internalize and live
up to these norms and guidelines.
9
Achieving a situated identity involves another
level of agency, where interactional goals are less about reestablishing sustainable
interactions and more about achieving desired social or substantive ends. In such sit-
uations, enacting a role of teacher, spouse, or customer, our time horizon shifts away
from the knifes edge present. Because such interactions involve a great deal of the
taken-for-granted, our attentional focus becomes less concerned with the problematic
now and more with goal attainment or enjoying successful interactions.
10
While novel
situations require estimates about ones ability to act successfully, over time one no
longer needs to reappraise the fit between abilities and the task at hand. Much time
would be lost if living ones life required people to spend much of their time in re-
dundant self-referent thought (Bandura 1982:25). Playing the role of professor does
not involve a complete reconstruction of the self within a routine interaction; past
behavior and experience guide current role-based behaviors, and free up cognitive
space for focus on goals other than successful identity enactment.
7
ACTs mechanics are much more formalized and based on claimed identities than described here.
8
Social identities contrast with personal identity (Deaux 1992; Hitlin 2003; Onorato and Turner 2004).
Personal identity roots intuitions at the core of the Is patterned spontaneity.
9
Goffman (1983) states that we identify others both by categories and by individual attributes. Over
time, significant others develop identities that shape our interactions with them. The process whereby
we attribute identities to others is an intriguing corollary to this discussion of individual agency, but one
that would necessitate its own space. For a cultural approach to attribution of agency, see Morris, Menon,
and Ames (2001).
10
We do not refer to goals in a utilitarian sense. Following Collinss (1989) critique of Mead, we
accept that sociability is, in itself, a central motivation underlying a great deal of social action.
Even within routine situations, there is an element of unpredictability and con-
tingency. The effort needed to maintain routine interactions is rarely tied into the
concept of agency, but we do not passively enact claimed identities. The successful
achievement of an identityeven those highest in our salience hierarchiestakes ef-
fort and defines ourselves as agents. We are not the first to argue this (see Holstein
and Gubrium 2000), yet a multifaceted notion of agency is improved by noting this
kind of social achievement.
Identity agency captures the senseunarticulated in Goffman (see Schwalbe 1993)
and much symbolic interactionist work (Miyamoto 1970)of the motivating nature
of identity commitments (Gecas 1986, 1991). We do not simply act randomly in our
lives. We select into situations that allow us to build and fulfill important identity
commitments. Ones role as, say, a scholar puts a person in contact with very different
situations than many alternative career identities.
11
Over time, the various identities
we internalize motivate our actions, and we exercise agency in the very performance
of those identities. We internalize our recurrent identities and they guide subsequent
behavior (e.g., Stryker 1980; Stryker and Burke 2000). Within situations, we might
look to identity control theory (see Burke 2004 for an overview) for an insight into
the nature of identity influences on within-situation action. Feedback about our
behavior motivates us to act in line with our claimed identities. We exert agency
over our behavior, but with a different temporal focus than when our routines get
interrupted.
By discussing identity agency, we focus on agentic individuals within the interaction
order and not on the interaction order, itself. The self, comprising both the patterned
and spontaneous aspects of the agentic individual, is not only a performance, and it
is not constituted anew in each interaction. There are personal commitments to lines
of activity, captured through our understanding of identity processes, which motivate
our actions and serve as standards for maintaining behavior (Burke 2004; Burke and
Reitzes 1981). We do not passively live up to our identity commitments, nor do our
identities unreflectively guide our actions. Social interaction is a constant interplay
between internal standards and external feedback, between self-verification and self-
presentation. We modify our behavior based on feedback, and the maintenance of
successful interaction relies on agentic choices.
Agency does not stem from a blank slate; we have commitmentsto ourselves and
othersthat we enact and recreate within interactions.
12
It is these very commitments
that so often lead to the reproduction of structure highlighted in Bourdieus, Gid-
denss, and Sewells work. Not simply because various social positions act on us in
a deterministic way, but because it is important to our sense of self to play the part
well. This is in contrast to more process-oriented symbolic interactionists who privi-
lege agency only when rendered evident in problematic situations (Snow 2001), what
we regard as pragmatic agency. Both pragmatic and identity agency overlap and are
present within interactions, just as affect-control and identity-control processes are
both operating within situations. Analytically, however, separating these two terms
usefully points us toward a way to unify literatures that sometimes appear to talk
past each other.
11
It is important to note, but beyond the scope of this article, the limits placed on identity selection
by biology and social circumstance. For example, racial and gender prejudice limits individuals potential
identity claims.
12
We bracket an important notion of power inherent within interactions among various social identities.
For empirical approaches to this issue, see Cast (2003), or an overview of exchange theory in Cook and
Rice (2003).
Goffmans focus on saving face, or Scheffs (2000) discussion of the power of
shame, fit into the existentially agentic subtext to the identity-agency choices we
make. Shame and embarrassment stem from not fulfilling a valued role adequately,
and this threatens our sense of self (Owens and Goodney 2000). The stronger the
identity commitment, we hypothesize, the more existential the threat one feels at
failing to fulfill that identity.
13
There are certainly external sanctions, as well, that
lead toward the maintenance of identities. This often occurs in situations where
ascribed identities are forced onto individuals, as in situations of extreme racial
prejudice. Such negatively valued identities may be internalized.
What we refer to as identity agency relies on the personal autonomy we possess
even while following social dictates. Probably one of the most crucial and adaptive
aspects of the executive function [of the self] is the ability to guide current behavior
according to long-term goals that lie well beyond the immediate situation (Baumeis-
ter and Vohs 2003:200). While action that follows social guidelines can be described
as constrained action, individuals exercise agency in the successful (or unsuccessful)
enactment of these lines of activity. While social commitments can feel binding, they
are also motivating; we strive to live up to them and feel inauthentic if we do not.
We exercise agency as we follow social commitments. Agency is not present only
when acting in contrast to social expectations.
Identity agency is the level at which Giddenss discussion of structuration theory
best fits, the anchoring of practical consciousness in Goffmans theorizing about
the taken-for-granted in everyday life. Much of this taken-for-granted exists at the
level of social identity commitments. Identity claims delimit the manner in which
actors can strive for what Manning (2000) refers to as credibility, the undercurrent
of much of Goffmans work. We are accountable both to ourselves and others, based
on the identities we attempt to claim and that we internalize; actions taken to produce
identity-specific credibility, while patterned, involve individual choice and free will,
and thus comprise identity agency.
Goffmans (1983) discussion of the interaction order points to an important link
between identity agency and the self: much routine situated activity requires a great
deal of creativity and ingenuity with respect to the notions of self, meaning, situa-
tional propriety and so onthat is, the needs and requirements of the interaction
order (Layder 1997:235). The interaction order is a deeply moral domain (Rawls
1987) of face-to-face interactions grounded in universal preconditions of social life
(Goffman 1983). As Rawls (1989) develops this theme in Goffmans work, the in-
teraction order necessitates limits on both self and social structure. Our focus on
the self as a meaningful social phenomenon veers away from Goffmans vision of
what is sociologically important (see also Cahill 1998). Yet, the internal, reflexive
self underlies the myriad of techniques that individuals use to maintain the veneer
of successful social interaction patterns (see Schwalbe 1993).
Agency in the Life Course
We do not simply act agentically with regard to temporally proximate goals (prag-
matic agency), nor do we only act with situational goals in mind (identity agency).
13
An identity is not the same thing as a social role (Thoits and Virshup 1997), though they are commonly
conflated. Identities define oneself in social space relative to others; one may have an identity as shy
or humorous and align ones self with others who fulfill the content of those identities as they define
them.
Both forms of agency focus primarily on present situations and the ways in which
human actors mutually construct interactions and, by doing so, reproduce and po-
tentially alter social structures. Agency is constituted, in these situations, through es-
tablished self-in-situation processes implicating the reflexive aspect of the self. Some
of our actions, however, occur with a broader sense of our futures involved, and
these orientations are important for shaping individuals adaptations to situations
(Lutfey and Mortimer 2003). We term attempts to exert influence to shape ones
life trajectory life course agency.
14
This extended temporal horizon complicates
the nature of agency, as our reflexive capacities extend to incorporate distal goals
and our beliefs about our ability to reach such goals gets folded into such agentic
action.
Life course agency contains two aspects, a situated form of agency (the exercising of
action with long-term implications), and the self-reflective belief about ones capacity
to achieve life course goals. The former is a longer-range version of existential agency,
a capacity all individuals possess. The latter is a self-belief, similar to notions of per-
sonal control (e.g., Mirowsky and Ross 2003), which reflexively guides decision mak-
ing with extended time horizons. This belief influences perseverance across difficult
life course situations much like self-efficacy influences individual self-perceptions of
capacity for solving pragmatic agency problems; self-perceptions of agentic capacity
have social consequences. People who perceive more agency are more likely to perse-
vere in the face of problems, either within situations or in encountering obstacles that
represent structural impediments (e.g., Bandura 1992). For example, men are more
likely than women to dismiss negative feedback on mathematical abilities and overat-
tribute successes to their own ability (Correll 2001). Some people have self-concepts
about the possible success of their effortswhich may be accurate or inaccurate
that allow them to endure setbacks or plan their lives with longer-term goals in
mind, such as postponing employment to attend college. This distinction is captured
in Clausens (1991, 1993) notion of planful competence, an individual characteris-
tic underlying agency involving three dimensions: self-reflexivity, dependability, and
self-confidence. Agency, as planful competence, represents an individual-level con-
struct that dictates a persons facility with making (and sticking to) advantageous
long-term plans (Shanahan, Hofer, and Miech 2003).
A focus on the life course highlights the historically contingent constraints within
which individuals develop and exercise agency (Shanahan and Elder 2002). Life
course theorists (e.g, Elder 1994, 1998; Mortmer and Shanahan 2003) highlight
agency as one of the core principles for understanding the intersection of individ-
uals and their life pathways, though the topic is not always employed consistently.
Marshall (2000) sees at least three versions of agency in Elders writing: agency as
capacity, resistance, and transition. In our typology, resistance can be exercised
either pragmatically or through advocating important self-identities. Both forms have
potentially transformative aspects.
15
Capacity seems to be related to the motivat-
ing power of identity commitments as well as the existential ability to self-initiate
14
We bracket what we call the opportunity structure of agency (Hitlin and Elder forthcoming). Agency
is exercised within socially structured opportunities. Of course, members of privileged groups have more
structural opportunities to shape their lives and direct their actions. Males, whites, and individuals with
monetary resources are structurally more likely to have the resources to exercise the kinds of agency we
discuss here.
15
The concept of agency as resistance traces to a structurally-oriented view of society, with human
activity seen primarily as residual action over and above macro-structural forces. For an empirical attempt
to grapple with this conception, see Rudd and Evans (1998). See McFarland (2004) for an in-depth
discussion of resistance itself.
actions, what we term existential agency. Transition is closest to what we term life
course agency, the ability of individuals to make choices at turning points in the life
course. We can differentiate between agency as a capacity that all individuals possess,
like existential agency, and a variable capacity that some people utilize with greater
facility. Competent people can make decisions with a future orientation. Some people
have more opportunity, however, to develop a sense of confidence due to experienc-
ing successful decisions. We can analytically separate the pure capacity for life course
decisions from the ability to successfully implement them.
Life course agency is an analytical construct that we can apply to the study of
individuals from a cross-situational perspective: agency at the level of the person
can be defined as the ability to formulate and pursue life plans (Shanahan and
Elder 2002:147). It is exercised when individuals act in line with a distal, future
time horizon and points to a conglomeration of decisions and events that often
only get linked together in hindsight. The concrete events that make up a turning
point in ones life may not be immediately clear at the time. Life course agency
refers, we might say, to the selection of various identities in the process of making
(socially delineated) life course transitions. Identity agency focuses on the behaviors
that stem from the internalization of those identities. The possibility of possible
selves (Markus and Nurius 1987)cognitive representations of who we would like
to becomeare motivational, long-term goals for the self, and offer one way to
conceptualize life course notions of agentic action. These beliefs about possible future
selves motivate current agentic choices.
Life course research views agency as a central aspect of constructing the life course
(Elder, Johnson, and Crosnoe 2003), yet even here, empirical examinations are rare
(McMullin and Marshall 1999). Agency is often asserted, claimed to be the post hoc
result of differential life trajectories. The increasing individualization and mobility of
Western societies have shifted the burden of responsibility for creating and sustaining
identity to the individual (Baumeister and Vohs 2003:198). Agency is often treated as
precisely the residual from normative patterns of behavior (Marshall 2000). Empirical
treatments of agency are complicated by the constrained nature of individual agency
within social structures that channel life course options.
We must stress that there are extreme temporal variations within life course agency,
and a full article might be written discerning differences between types of future
horizons. Certainly, social domains (work, family formation) call on different forms
of long-term planning, and the concept might profitably be tied into literatures on
socialization and learning. We intend the concept to be broadly applicable to organiz-
ing scholarship on the creation of ones individual biography. As individuals organize
their lives, they can be prompted to focus on major life events, major occupational
transitions, issues of personal relationships, educational histories, and the like. Life
course agency refers to individual capacities to orient themselves toward long-term
outcomes, across social domains. Life course scholars can document transitions and
turning points in others lives after the fact, but we are focusing on individual, first-
person capacities for temporal focus on the future. Individuals are active agents in
shaping their biographieswithin a myriad of constraints, of coursebut people
differ in their ability to successfully implement these strategies.
Empirical measures on the topic are far from consistent. For example, Kiecolt
and Mabry (2000) examine the ways in which college students attempt to gener-
ate more positive self-conceptions, and the results of such choices are defined as
reflecting agency. Gecas (2003), in a recent review of the concept in life course
theory, focuses almost exclusively on changes in self-efficacy over time. Shanahan
et al. (1997, 2003) employ Clausens (1991, 1993) concept of planful competence
as a measure of individual skill with agentic choices. Hitlin and Elder (forthcom-
ing) incorporate optimism as an important psychological component of life course
agency. Thoits (2003) suggests that holding more identities reflects greater personal
agency.
Life course agency involves individual orientations toward potential self-capacities
for constructing and engaging in successful long-term plans. It highlights the variable
nature of the life course at particular junctures based on social structural position
and personal resources that reflect what Shanahan and Hood (1998) term bounded
agency (see also Evans 2002). For example, greater perceptions of personal control
one aspect of agencylead to greater health among elderly adults (Krause and Shaw
2003). This form of agency lessens across the life course, explained in large part by
physical impairment, less education, and poorer health (Schieman and Campbell
2001). Our agentic actions aim toward goals that change in relation to our location
in the life course (Schulz and Heckhausen 1999).
The process of identity selectionor ascriptionoccurs most often at major tran-
sitions (Elder and ORand 1995) such as the transition to adulthood (Graber and
Brooks-Gunn 1996). Such transitions are rarely spontaneous, at least early in the
life course (in contrast to the death of a parent or spouse, or losing a job), but
fundamentally affect the self. These transitions are normative, but they allow for
personal discretion; within limits, the timing and order of these choices are up to
individuals. Such limits can be both biological and structural; we do not have the
power to become richer, or smarter, or often to accumulate resources that enable
more privileged individuals more options. Much of sociology focuses on the lim-
its and social structural constraints that channel peoples choices. What can be
lost, however, is the fact that within these limits, choices are made. Agency is
present.
What we term life course agency leads, then, over time to the accumulation of
identities that are claimed at the level of identity agentic actions. Over time, these
actions get folded into our sense of self and become guiding forces for identity
agency. Life course agency focuses on the transitions by which we claimor leave
(see Ebaugh 1988)social identities (see also Heinz 2002). This type of agency may
not be present in patterned interactions, but rather is found in the big life choices
we make about the timing and sequence of new pathways to follow.
The self is well suited for understanding agency within a longitudinal approach
(e.g., Gecas and Mortimer 1987; Honess and Yardley 1987; Owens and Goodney
2000), and is central for understanding the construction of the life course (Heinz
2002). Evidence suggests continuities of the self over time (Alwin, Cohen, and New-
comb 1991; Markus and Wurf 1987), with small fluctuation around a moving base-
line (Demo 1992). Personal continuities in the self contribute, and derive from,
individuals constructions of their life courses (see Atchley 1999 and continuity the-
ory). Serpe (1987) focuses on the ways that socially structured identities remain
largely stable across time precisely as a result of the stability of social structures. Life
course agency is also strategic for understanding the interplay between individuals
and social structures, as seen in Emirbayer and Goodwins (1994) focus on persisting
networks that influence agency. A great deal of work (for some overviews, see Lutfey
and Mortimer 2003; Roberts and Bengtson 1999; Settersen 2003) discusses the inter-
play between social structure and individual life choices, but rarely does this work
extend downward to an extensive discussion of influences on the individual. Alwin
et al. (1991) offer support for rather striking continuities in individuals across their
lives, in large part because ones attitudes serve to select individuals into situations
and relationships that reinforce those attitudes over time. Agentic choices reproduce
social structures.
CONCLUSION
Humans are fundamentally active beings. Positing the existence of agency is an ed-
ifying theoretical exercise, but current treatments are unfortunately too abstract to
offer guidance for empirical research, especially across different dimensions of social
action. Agency, while an abstract concept, occurs through situated action (Howard
1994). Actors must solve problems and enact or construct identities and relation-
ships in order to maintain their place within institutions and structures. Theory and
research have largely occurred in isolation, but incorporating social psychological the-
ory and research on the self helps address core sociological concerns about agency
and structure, and can foster engagement with issues about constraints on or social
facilitation of different sorts of agency.
We offer a model of agency based on the temporal horizons of actors within action
situations. Being alive requires action, and for reflexive beings this involves choice,
analysis, reflection: Choice is part of the human condition, its content contained
in the subjective experience of the person emerging in and through the social pro-
cess (Stryker and Vryan 2003:4). From this perspective, agency is a necessary aspect
of organisms struggling to adapt and (in the case of humans) make sense of their
environments.
16
Some of the more theoretically-oriented discussions of agency have
lost touch with these necessary, lived realities, and in so doing show negligible en-
gagement with the robust social psychological literature that describes how people
interact with their environments.
This model is meant as a heuristic guide for directing theorists toward relevant
micro-literatures. There are fuzzy boundaries between the analytically separate lev-
els we discuss. Mapping types of agency and their relation to the reflexive self,
we provide a window into relevant social psychological literatures in order to fa-
cilitate more empirical treatments about the conceptto move forward from the
debates over the nature and existence of the topic. By incorporating a notion of
time, we suggest how overlapping, seemingly incommensurate notions of agency can,
in fact, be organized. Situations call forth differing temporal orientations on the
part of the social actor; agency occurs in the flow of responses to situational exi-
gencies. Routine identity enactment involves a different form of agency than does
novel action, but both are actions guided by the reflexive actor. The sociologi-
cal issue is not whether agency exists, but the extent to which we exercise it and
the circumstances that facilitate or hinder that exercise (Berger 1991). By anchoring
agency within established research traditions of social psychology, we hope to ad-
vance study of bounded agencyits precursors, processes, and influence on social
outcomes.
Human agency is inextricably social, structured by interactional situations. Ac-
tion problems orient actors toward immediate, routine, or long-range goals that im-
plicate different attentional and self-processes. Individuals approach situations with
frames that focus their attentional processes on relevant stimuli, and the feedback
16
While privileging a Western conception of self, we claim that this basic conceptualization can carry
across cultures. The symbolic content of what it means to be a human agent, and the weight given to
ones own feelings and intuitions, certainly varies by culture (Cross 2000; Kondo 1990).
they receive influences their temporal focus. People can and do exercise control over
these horizons (Flaherty 2003), employing an existential level of agency. However,
our focus within situations involves a combination of this existential capacity and
situationally circumscribed influences on our attentional processes. Social psycholo-
gists have only rarely engaged this temporal dimension, yet time is instrumental for
understanding the relationship between situated action and social structures.
We link types of agency to actors temporal orientations that derive from responses
to situations, shaped by cultural frames. A routine situation has established frames,
whereas novel situations require more focus on the self and the moment, suggesting
that applied frames either are not specific to that situation or are borrowed from
other situations. Actors temporal horizons shift in response to situational influences
and lead to different types of agentic action. Actors can, of course, agentically shift
their own temporal horizons (Flaherty 2002), but failure to properly be attuned to a
situation would likely lead to social sanctions of some form. This allows us to map
out differing uses of agency across theoretical and empirical treatments, improving
on the vague notion that humans have some sort of free will and are not simply
buffeted around by structural forces. This capacity for self-initiated action, however,
is not in and of itself enough to explain social processes surrounding the exercise of
personal agency.
Actors who are engaged in situations that we refer to as pragmatic are on
Meads knifes edge in the present moment, with their temporal focus squarely on
themselves and interactional goals. Much situated social behavior, however, is of the
more routine variety. That does not mean people are passive automatons, mindlessly
carrying out socially dictated roles. We know a great deal about the effort behind
maintaining even routine social action, and enacting claimed social identities. How-
ever, the temporal focus during these encounters is less immediate insofar as a novel
or ruptured situation drastically focuses ones attention. The agency involved during
these interactions is of a different sort, but still demonstrates self-initiated action.
17
Finally, situated actions are not always concerned with the situation. Major life de-
cisions occur through agents making choices, but those choices can be analytically
distinguished from attempts to save face or to enact a particular identity.
These actions can be studied analytically within a life course framework, keep-
ing in mind the distinction between the capacity to exert influence on ones life (a
universal capacity of socially competent individuals) and the self-perception of that
capacity (a sense of personal agency that may become a self-fulfilling prophecy). The
latter form involves measurable sociological constructs (e.g., as personal control or
planful competence) and its social antecedents and consequences can be determined;
perceptions are important to social-psychological analysis, not as independent but
as intervening variables (Kohn 1989:31). Much more needs to be learned about how
individuals generate and employ agency in the life course (Heinz 2002), but this is a
promising arena for interdisciplinary research.
Recent calls for exploration of mechanisms needed to explain empirical associ-
ations (Reskin 2003) suggest that relevant social psychological insights are not being
employed in the service of broader sociological work. Discussions of agency have
been largely uninformed by empirical social psychology. We offer this typology in
17
Perhaps the experience of agency is different depending on an actors self-orientation. For example,
Turners (1976) suggestion that some people feel real in situations when relying on impulse while others
feel real during institutional settings might theoretically map on to our distinction between pragmatic and
identity agency.
order to build bridges between related literatures addressing similar questions. Study
of the self, quite popular across social psychological disciplines, can be harnessed
to guide inquiries about the social nature and distribution of individual freedom
within social structures. Social psychologists have not, on the whole, been adequately
concerned with issues of time (George 1996). The temporal nature of the self has
been theorized, but not systematically linked to macro-sociological concerns about
the nature of agency. Individuals exercise different forms of agency as their socially
patterned selves interact within bounded situations and social structures. We hope
to encourage scholars concerned with notions of agency to draw more extensively
upon established research literatures that deal, though often implicitly, with similar
concerns about the relationship of the self and social structures.
REFERENCES
Ahearn, L. M. 2001. Language and Agency. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:10937.
Alexander, J. C. 1992. Some Remarks on Agency in Recent Sociological Theory. Perspectives 15(1):14.
. 1993. More Notes on the Problem of Agency: A Reply. Schweiz. Z. Soziol/Rev. Suise Sociol
19:50106.
Alwin, D. F., R. L. Cohen, and T. M. Newcomb. 1991. Political Attitudes Over the Life Span: The
Bennington Women After Fifty Years. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Archer, M. S. 2000. Being Human: The Problem of Agency.: Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Atchley, R. C. 1999. Continuity Theory, Self, and Social Structure. in The Self and Society in Aging
Processes, vol. 94121, edited by C. D. Ryff and V. Marshall. New York: Springer.
Bandura, A. 1982. The Self and Mechanisms of Agency. Pp. 340 in Psychological Perspectives on the
Self , edited by J. Suls. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
. 1992. Exercise of Personal Agency Through the Self-Efficacy Mechanism. Pp. 338 in Self-
Efficacy: Thought Control of Action, edited by R. Schwarzer. Washington: Hemisphere Publishing Cor-
poration.
. 1997. Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman.
. 2001. Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. Annual Review of Psychology 52:1
26.
. 2006. Toward a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science 1(2):164
80.
Barresi, J. 2001. Extending Self-Consciousness Into the Future. Pp. 14161 in The Self in Time: Devel-
opmental Perspectives, edited by C. Moore and K. Lemmon. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Baumeister, R. F. 1999. The Nature and Structure of the Self: An Overview. Pp. 120 in The Self in
Social Psychology, edited by R. F. Baumeister. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Baumeister, R. F. and K. D. Vohs. 2003. Self-Regulation and the Executive Function of the Self. Pp.
197217 in Handbook of Self and Identity, edited by M. R. Leary and J. P. Tangney. New York: Guilford
Press.
Berger, B. M. 1991. Structure and Choice in the Sociology of Culture. Theory and Society 20(1):1
19.
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burke, P. J. 2004. Identities and Social Structure. Social Psychology Quarterly 67(1):515.
Burke, P. J. and D. C. Reitzes. 1981. The Link Between Identity and Role Performance. Social Psychology
Quarterly 54:8392.
Cahill, S. E. 1998. Toward a Sociology of the Person. Sociological Theory 16(2):13148.
Callero, P. L. 2003. The Sociology of the Self. Annual Review of Sociology 29:11533.
Camic, C. 1986. The Matter of Habit. American Journal of Sociology 91:103987.
Cast, A. D. 2003. Power and the Ability to Define the Situation. Social Psychology Quarterly 66(3):185
201.
Clausen, J. S. 1991. Adolescent Competence and the Shaping of the Life Course. American Journal of
Sociology 96:80542.
. 1993. American Lives: Looking Back at Children of the Great Depression. New York: Free Press.
Cockerham, W. C. 2005. Health Lifestyle Theory and the Convergence of Agency and Structure. Journal
of Health and Social Behavior 46:5167.
Collins, R. 1989. Toward a Neo-Meadian Sociology of Mind. Symbolic Interaction 12(1):132.
. 1992. The Romanticism of Agency/Structure Versus the Analysis of Micro/Macro. Current
Sociology 40:7797.
. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cook, K. S. and E. Rice. 2003. Social Exchange Theory. Pp. 5376 in Handbook of Social Psychology,
edited by J. Delamater. New York: Kluwer.
Correll, S. J. 2001. Gender and the Career Choice Process: The Role of Biased Self-Assessments. Amer-
ican Journal of Sociology 106(6):16911730.
Cross, S. E. 2000. What Does It Mean to Know Thyself in the United States and Japan? Pp. 15979
in Self and Identity Through the Life Course in Cross-Cultural Perspsective, vol. 5, edited by T. J. Owens.
Stamford, CT: JAI Press.
Deaux, K. 1992. Personalizing Identity and Socializing Self. Pp. 933 in Social Psychology of Identity
and the Self Concept, edited by G. Breakwell. London: Academic Press.
Demo, D. H. 1992. The Self-Concept Over Time: Research Issues and Directions. Annual Review of
Sociology 18:30326.
Dewey, J. 1934. A Common Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Dunn, R. G. 1997. Self, Identity, and Difference: Mead and the Poststructuralists. Sociological Quarterly
38(4):687705.
Ebaugh, H. R. F. 1988. Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Elder, G. H. Jr. 1994. Time, Human Agency, and Social Change: Perspectives on the Life Course. Social
Psychology Quarterly 57(1):415.
. 1998. The Life Course and Human Development. Pp. 93991 in Handbook of Child Psychology,
Volume 1: Theoretical Models of Human Development, edited by R. M. Lerner and W. Damon. New
York: Wiley.
Elder, G. H. Jr., M. K. Johnson, and R. Crosnoe. 2003. The Emergence and Development of Life Course
Theory. Pp. 319 in Handbook of the Life Course, edited by J. T. Mortimer and M. J. Shanahan. New
York: Kluwer.
Elder, G. H. Jr. and A. M. ORand. 1995. Adult Lives in a Changing Society. Pp. 45275 in Sociological
Perspectives on Social Psychology, edited by K. S. Cook, G. A. Fine, and J. S. House. Boston: Allyn
and Bacon.
Emirbayer, M. and J. Goodwin. 1994. Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency. American
Journal of Sociology 99(6):141154.
Emirbayer, M. and A. Mische. 1998. What Is Agency? American Journal of Sociology 103(4):9621023.
Evans, K. 2002. Taking Control of Their Lives? Agency in Young Adult Transitions in England and the
New Germany. Journal of Youth Studies 5(3):24569.
Flaherty, M. G. 1999. A Watched Pot: How We Experience Time. New York: New York University Press.
. 2002. Making Time: Agency and the Construction of Temporal Experience. Symbolic Interaction
25(3):37988.
. 2003. Time Work: Customizing Temporal Experience. Social Psychology Quarterly 66(1):17
33.
Flahterty, M. G. and G. A. Fine. 2001. Present, Past, and Future: Conjugating George Herbert Meads
Perspective on Time. Time and Society 10(2):14761.
Fuchs, S. 2001. Beyond Agency. Sociological Theory 19(1):2440.
Gecas, V. 1986. The Motivational Significance of Self-Concept for Socialization Theory. Pp. 13156 in
Advances in Group Processes, vol. 3, edited by E. J. Lawler. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
. 1991. The Self-Concept as a Basis for a Theory of Motivation. Pp. 17187 in The Self-Society
Dynamic: Cognition, Emotion, and Action, edited by J. A. Howard and P. L. Callero. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press.
. 2003. Self-Agency and the Life Course. in Handbook of the Life Course, edited by J. T. Mortimer
and M. Shanahan. New York: Kluwer.
Gecas, V. and P. Burke. 1995. Self and Identity. Pp. 4167 in Sociological Perspectives on Social Psy-
chology, edited by K. S. Cook, G. A. Fine, and J. S. House. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Gecas, V. and J. T. Mortimer. 1987. Stability and Change in the Self-Concept from Adolescence to
Adulthood. Pp. 26586 in Self and Identity: Perspectives Across the Lifespan, edited by T. Honess and
K. Yardley. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
George, L. K. 1996. Missing Links: The Case for a Social Psychology of the Life Course. Gerontologist
36(2):24855.
Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society Introduction of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press.
. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press.
Goffman, E. 1974. Frame Analysis an Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper & Row.
. 1983. The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential Address.
American Sociological Review 48(1):117.
Gonos, G. 1977. Situation Versus Frame: The Interactionist and the Structuralist Analyses of
Everyday Life. American Sociological Review 42(6):85467.
Graber, J. A. and J. Brooks-Gunn. 1996. Expectations for and Precursors to Leaving Home in Young
Women. New Directions for Child Development 71:2138.
Hayes, S. 1994. Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture. Sociological Theory 12(1):57
72.
Heinz, W. R. 2002. Self-Socialization and Post-Traditional Society. Advances in Life Course Research
7:4164.
Heise, D. R. 1977. Social Action as the Control of Affect. Behavioral Science 22:16377.
Hewitt, J. P. 1989. Dilemmas of the American Self . Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hitlin, S. 2003. Values as the Core of Personal Identity: Drawing Links Between Two Theories of the
Self. Social Psychology Quarterly 66(2):11837.
Hitlin, S. and G. H. Elder, Jr. 2007. Agency: An Empirical Model of an Abstract Concept. Pp. 3367
In Advances in Life Course Research, Vol. 11, edited by R. Macmillan. Netherlands: Elsevier/JAI Press.
Hochschild, A. R. 1983. The Managed Heart Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Holstein, J. A. and J. F. Gubrium. 2000. The Self We Live by Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Honess, T. and K. Yardley. 1987. Self and Identity: Perspectives Across the Lifespan. London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul.
Howard, J. A. 1994. A Social Cognitive Conception of Social Structure. Social Psychology Quarterly
57(3):21027.
Joas, H. 1985. G. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-Examination of His Thought. Cambridge, UK: MIT Press.
. 1993. Pragmatism and Social Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. 1996. The Creativity of Action. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
. 2000. The Genesis of Values. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Kiecolt, J. and B. J. Mabry. 2000. Agency in Young Adulthood: Intentional Self-Change Among College
Students. Advances in Life-Course Research 5:181205.
Kohn, M. L. 1989. Social Structure and Personality: A Quintessentially Sociological Approach to Social
Psychology. Social Forces 68(1):2633.
Kondo, D. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Krause, N. and B. A. Shaw. 2003. Role-Specific Control, Personal Meaning, and Health in Later Life.
Research on Aging 25(6):55986.
Layder, D. 1997. Modern Social Theory: Key Debates and New Directions. London: UCL Press.
Lemmon, K. and C. Moore. 2001. Binding the Self in Time. Pp. 16379 in The Self in Time: Develop-
mental Perspectives, edited by C. Moore and K. Lemmon. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Little, T. D., P. H. Hawley, C. C. Henrich, and K. W. Marsland. 2002. Three Views of the Agentic Self:
A Developmental Synthesis. Handbook of Self-Determination Research, edited by E. L. Deci and R.
M. Ryan. New York: University of Rochester Press.
Loyal, S. and B. Barnes. 2001. Agency as a Red Herring. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 31(4):50724.
Lutfey, K. and J. T. Mortimer. 2003. Development and Socialization Through the Adult Life Course.
Pp. 183202 in Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by J. Lamater. New York: Kluwer.
Manning, P. 2000. Credibility, Agency, and the Interaction Order. Symbolic Interaction 23(3):283
97.
Markus, H. and P. Nurius. 1987. Possible Selves: The Interface Between Motivation and the Self-
Concept. Pp. 15772 in Self and Identity: Psychosocial Perspectives, edited by K. Yardley and T.
Honess. New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Markus, H. and E. Wurf. 1987. The Dynamic Self-Concept. Annual Review of Psychology 38:299337.
Marshall, V. W. 2000. Agency, Structure, and the Life Course in the Era of Reflexive Modernization.
In The Life Course in the 21st Century. Washington, DC.
. 2003. Agency, Events, and Structure at the End of the Life Course. Presented at PaVie 2003
Research Colloquium, Trajectories, Stages, Transitions and Events of the Life Course: Towards an
Interdisciplinary Perspective.
McFarland, D. A. 2004. Resistance as a Social Drama: A Study of Change-Oriented Encounters.
American Journal of Sociology 109(6):12491318.
McMullin, J. A. and V. W. Marshall. 1999. Structure and Agency in the Retirement Process: A Case
Study of Montreal Garment Workers. Pp. 30538 in Self and Society in Aging, edited by C. Ryff and
V. W. Marshall. New York: Springer.
Mead, G. H. 1932. The Philosophy of the Present. Chicago, London: Open Court Publishing.
. 1938. The Philosophy of the Act. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, J. W. and R. L. Jepperson. 2000. The Actors of Modern Society: The Cultural Construction
of Social Agency. Sociological Theory 18(1):10020.
Mirowsky, J. and C. E. Ross. 2003. Education, Social Status, and Health. New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Miyamoto, S. F. 1970. Self, Motivation, and Symbolic Interactionist Theory. In Human Nature and
Collective Behavior: Papers in Honor of Herbert Blumer, edited by Tamotsu Shibutani. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Morris, M. W., T. Menon, and D. R. Ames. 2001. Culturally Conferred Conceptions of Agency: A Key
to Social Perception of Persons, Groups, and Other Actors. Personality and Social Psychology Review
5(2):16982.
Mortmer, J. T. and M. E. Shanahan. 2003. Handbook of the Life Course. New York: Kluwer.
Onorato, R. S. and J. C. Turner. 2004. Fluidity in the Self-Concept: The Shift from Personal to Social
Identity. European Journal of Social Psychology 34:25778.
Owens, T. J. 2003. Self and Identity. Pp. 20532 in Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 5, edited by J.
DeLamater. New York: Kluwer.
Owens, T. J. and S. Goodney. 2000. Self, Identity, and the Moral Emotions Across the Life Course.
Pp. 3353 in Self and Identity Through the Life Course in Cross-Cultural Perspective, vol. 5, edited by
T. J. Owens. Stamford, CT: JAI Press.
Rawls, A. W. 1987. The Interaction Order Sui Generis:Goffmans Contribution to Social Theory. Soci-
ological Theory 5(2):13649.
. 1989. Language, Self, and Social Order: A Reformulation of Goffman and Sacks. Human
Studies 12(12):14772.
Reskin, B. F. 2003. Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality. American Sociological
Review 68:121.
Roberts, R. E. L. and V. L. Bengtson. 1999. The Social Psychology of Values: Effects of Individual
Development, Social Change, and Family Transmission Over the Life Span. Pp. 45382 in The Self
and Society in Aging Processes, edited by C. D. Ryff and V. W. Marshall. New York: Springer.
Rudd, P. and K. Evans. 1998. Structure and Agency in Youth Transitions: Student Experiences of Vo-
cational Further Education. Journal of Youth Studies 1(1):3962.
Scheff, T. J. 2000. Shame and the Social Bond: A Sociological Theory. Sociological Theory 18(1):84
99.
Schieman, S. and J. E. Campbell. 2001. Age Variations in Personal Agency and Self-Esteem: The Context
of Physical Disability. Journal of Aging and Health 13(2):15585.
Schulz, R. and J. Heckhausen. 1999. Aging, Culture and Control: Setting a New Research Agenda.
Journal of Gerontology 54B(3):13945.
Schwalbe, M. L. 1993. Goffman Against Postmodernism: Emotion and the Reality of the Self. Symbolic
Interaction 16(4):33350.
Serpe, R. T. 1987. Stability and Change in Self: A Structural Symbolic Interactionist Explanation. Social
Psychology Quarterly 50(1):4455.
Settersen, R. A. Jr. 2003. Age Structuring and the Rhythm of the Life Course. Pp. 81102 in Handbook
of the Life Course, edited by J. T. S. M. J. Mortimer. New York: Kluwer.
Sewell, W. H. Jr. 1992. A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation. American Journal
of Sociology 98:129.
Shanahan, M. J. 2000. Pathways to Adulthood in Changing Societies: Variability and Mechanisms in
Life Course Perspective. Annual Review of Sociology 26:66792.
Shanahan, M. J. and G. H. Elder Jr. 2002. History, Agency, and the Life Course. Pp. 14586 in Agency,
Motivation, and the Life Course, vol. 48, edited by R. A. Dienstbier and L. J. Crockett. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska.
Shanahan, M. J., G. H. Elder Jr., and R. A. Miech. 1997. History and Agency in Mens Lives: Pathways
to Achievement in Cohort Perspective. Sociology of Education 70(1):5467.
Shanahan, M. J., S. M. Hofer, and R. A. Miech. 2003. Planful Competence, the Life Course, and Aging:
Retrospect and Prospect. Pp. 189-211 in Personal Control in Social and Life Course Contexts, edited
by S. H. Zarit, L. I. Pearlin, and K. W. Schaie. New York: Springer.
Shanahan, M. J. and K. E. Hood. 1998. Adolescents in Changing Social Structures: Bounded Agency
in Life Course Perspective. Pp. 12334 in Negotiating Adolescence in Times of Social Change: Cross-
National Perspectives on Developmental Processes and Social Intervention, edited by R. Silbereisen and
E. Crockett. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Smith-Lovin, L. and D. R. Heise. 1988. Analyzing Social Interaction: Research Advances in Affect Control
Theory. New York: Gordon & Breach.
Snow, D. A. 2001. Extending and Broadening Blumers Conceptualization of Symbolic Interactionism.
Symbolic Interaction 24:36777.
Stryker, S. 1980. Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version. Menlo Park, CA: Ben-
jamin/Cummings.
Stryker, S. and P. J. Burke. 2000. The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory. Social Psychology
Quarterly 63(4):28497.
Stryker, S. and K. D. Vryan. 2003. The Symbolic Interactionist Frame. Pp. 328 in Handbook of Social
Psychology, edited by J. DeLamater. New York: Kluwer.
Swanson, G. E. 1992. Doing Things Together: Some Basic Forms of Agency and Structure in Collective
Action and Some Explanations. Social Psychology Quarterly 55(2):94117.
Thoits, P. A. 2003. Personal Agency and Multiple Role-Identities. Pp. 17994 in Advances in Identity
Theory and Research, edited by P. J. Burke, T. J. Owens, R. T. Serpe, and P. A. Thoits. New York:
Kluwer.
Thoits, P. A. and L. K. Virshup. 1997. Mes and Wes: Forms and Functions of Social Identities. Pp.
10633 in Self and Identity: Fundamental, edited by R. Ashmore and L. Jussim. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Turner, J. H. and J. E. Stets. 2006. Sociological Theories of Human Emotions. Annual Review of
Sociology 32:2552.
Turner, R. H. 1976. The Real Self: From Institution to Impulse. American Journal of Sociology 84:123.
Wiley, N. 1994. The Semiotic Self . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Zerubavel, E. 1997. Social Mindscapes: an Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Time, Self, and The Concept of Agency

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Time, Self, and The Concept of Agency

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency*

You might also like