Title: The Turn to Agency: Neoliberalism, Individuality, and Subjectivity in Late-Twentieth-Century Anglophone Archaeology
Abstract: Abstract The aim of this paper is to consider why the idea of agency—which was elaborated by Roy Bhaskar, Anthony Giddens, and others in the 1970s—was adopted by and became so popular among archaeologists in the 1990s. This involves examining not only the idea of agency itself, but also its connections with an array of closely related notions in everyday and philosophical discourse: the individual, subject, self, and person. It also requires consideration of the sociopolitical and ideological contexts in which agency theory was developed and how changing notions of choice, determination, individuality, and subjectivity are implicated. Keywords: NeoliberalismThe IndividualAgencySubjectivityIdentity Acknowledgments This paper was prepared for the session "Archaeological Theories as Ideologies" organized by Reinhard Bernbeck and Randall McGuire for the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, held 31 March–4 April 2005, in Salt Lake City. I want to thank Wendy Ashmore, Reinhard Bernbeck, Joseph Childers, Stephen Cullenberg, Michael Kearney, and Carlos Vélez Ibáñez for their thought-provoking comments. Notes Other formulations of the relationship between structure and agency are possible. Economists Richard Wolff (Citation1999) and Anwar Shaikh (Citation1999) have noted that Keynesian economic theory rose to prominence in the late 1930s and early 1940s because of the failure of neoclassical economists to explain persistent high unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Since neoclassical economic theory is the foundation of neoliberalism, there is a certain irony in the theoretical shift from the 1970s onward. Pierre Bourdieu's (Citation1986) differentiation of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital in light of particular activities, social relations, and historical context in twentieth-century France is often implicated in discussions of social capital. However, his approach was quite different from those of neoliberal theorists, and he was generally quite critical of their work (cf. Fine 2001, 53–64, 98–105).
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 22
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