The limits of Agency

Maja Niewęgłowska

Agency is defined as the capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that affect
their own lives and those of others, implying that individuals have the capacity to create, change
and influence events. However agency is often constrained, meaning that people lose full
control of their own lives, which is instead manipulated by social and cultural factors. The
perfect example of how agency is constrained in a society is presented in Paul Farmer’s
ethnography “On suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below”, which investigates the
community of “water refugees” living in Haiti’s Central Plateau during 1980’s and 1990’s.
The author presents the story of two individuals Acephie and Chouchou, two citizens of
Kay, who lose their lives due to structural violence, a form of violence, where the society’s
structure prevents individuals from meeting their basic needs. He presents the way in which
large-scale social forces cause personal distress. Framer uses these stories of two individuals
to present his finding in the form of qualitative detail (ensuring a deep emotional response from
the reader), but also to compare how different limiting factors affect members of the same
community. He is therefore able to explore the “Multiaxial Model of Suffering”, the idea that in
order to understand suffering, we must take into consideration how various social “axes” interact
with each other. This will explain the differences in Acephie’s and Chouchou’s lives, and why the
first one dies of AIDS, and the other because of torture.
Both Acephie’s and Chouchou’s agencies are constrained by poverty, defined by the
World Health Organisation as the world’s greatest killer. Both individuals are “water refugees”, a
community in Kay displaced due to the flooding of their homes, due to the building of a dam.
Their possibilities are constrained due to limited resources, choices and opportunities. Clean
water, housing, education and quality medical care are simply not available in their region.
Moreover, the individual's have no way of escaping their circumstances due to the social
reproduction of the cycle of poverty. None of them can finish their education, due to their parents
forcing them to work during their childhood years, limiting their perspectives of a better life.
Acephie’s and Chouchou’s life are also manipulated by political violence, which they are
unable to overcome. The individual’s have no way of counterpointing the social structure,
through social process, as any form of rebellion or disagreement would lead to their death.
None of them have a way to stand up to the military regime, leading to soldiers harming both of
them. However, the individual’s experience political violence differently. Chouchou is heard
complaining about the state of the country by a soldier and is punished by being tortured to
death. Acephie’s circumstances are more complicated, due to two social “axes” interacting
leading to her death - “political violence” and “gender”. Due to sexism, Acephie’s agency is
constrained in ways it would be very improbable for Chouchou to experience. Acephie has no
way of refusing sex to the Captain of the local military, which leads to her contracting AIDS. As a
young women from the rural area, she faces no other job opportunities than underpaid house
labour. Finally she dies of a cause, solely affecting women - childbirth. Therefore although
Chouchou and Acephie live in the same community, factors limiting their agencies both overlap
and differ.
 When describing the living conditions in Haiti, it is clear that Farmer bases his thesis
around the structure-centered perspective, which views social action as determined by social
and material context, such as physical environment, access to resources, community
organization, social institution and the state. He clearly states that the individual’s agency is
constrained due to social forces at work, causing structured risk for most forms of extreme
suffering, from hunger to torture and rape. It is not the individual's actions that determine their
future, but the surrounding in which they were born and have no way of escaping, due to limited
choices and opportunities.
Although the structure-centered perspective is certainly closer to the author’s underlying
message, the situation could also be interpreted through different perspectives. The
conflict-centered perspective, focusing on social relations being based on competing interest of
groups and individuals. Acephie and Chouchou live at the bottom rung of the social ladder in an
inegalitarian society. The “water refugees” are a group with conflicting interests to the militia and
also powerless against them. The militia aim to constrain the villagers agencies in order to
achieve power over them. The militants take away the citizens freedoms (such as the freedom
of speech), by threatening them with violence. Acephie and Chouchou suffer due to being
powerless against the peruses of the militia.
The issue with the suffering that is a result of an individual’s agency being limited, is that
it is disregarded due to “exotization” of suffering in the global context. We only tend to care
about the suffering of those close to us or whose lives and struggles recall ours. However we
are less affected by the struggles of those who are distant to us, by geography, gender, “race, or
culture, making us passive towards structural violence. Therefore the victims of structural
violence, whose agency is limited, seldom receive sufficient help to support their fight against
their circumstances. This is explains the ethnography’s title: A view from below. The work gives
voice to those, whose stories are never heard in the globalised society.
As it is evident through the story of Acephie and Chouchou, individual’s agency is
constrained by both comparable and contrast factors due to different social “axes” being in
place. The combination of poverty, military violence and gender lead to the members of the
community experiencing different forms of structural violence. Due to social forces, neither of
the individual’s have the means to exercise their agency, as explained by the structure-centered
perspective.