flâneur

Individual Agency & Societal Structures

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When I write I tend to focus on individual responsibility and agency over discussions about power structures, privileges, and other things that shape the space of action for individuals. I want to reflect on that choice. Anyone who thinks about this for a bit realizes that both agency and structure are important. And they cocreate: the structures are created by individuals acting, and the actions of individuals are limited by structures, and often we also internalize the structure, such that having, for example, an agentic friend group will make you more agentic. Whether agency or structure is the proper thing to focus on depends on the goal. When thinking about helping an individual, agency is much more important than structure: societal structure is really hard to shift, but individuals are nearly always less agentic than they can be, and if they use more of their agency, it is possible for them to navigate to another part of the structure that better fits (getting other friends, mov

When I write I tend to focus on individual responsibility and agency over discussions about power structures, privileges, and other things that shape the space of action for individuals. I want to reflect on that choice. Anyone who thinks about this for a bit realizes that both agency and structure are important. And they cocreate: the structures are created by individuals acting, and the actions of individuals are limited by structures, and often we also internalize the structure, such that having, for example, an agentic friend group will make you more agentic. Whether agency or structure…

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