Search results for "human agency"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
Constructing Nonagency at the Beginning of Psychotherapy : The 10DT model
2018
This study examined how nine clients discursively constructed non-agency in their first session of individual psychotherapy. With open reading and linguistic analysis of the transcribed first sessions, combined with theory-based considerations, we created a model of discursive means for ascribing agentic and non-agentic positions, the 10 Discursive Tools model (10DT). There was large variability in how the tools functioned to create the impression of problematic agency, and the clients could not be classified according to their tool use patterns. The study shows the potential of the 10DT model for the detailed examination of presentations of “not-being-able” produced by psychotherapy client…
Perspectives on Cluster Evolution: Critical Review and Future Research Issues
2015
The past two decades have witnessed an ever-growing scholarly interest in regional clusters. The focus of research has mainly been on why clusters exist and what characteristics “functioning” clusters hold. Although the interest in more dynamic views on clusters is not new, in recent years, however, more attention has been paid to providing better explanations of how clusters change and develop over time, giving rise to an increasing popularity of different variants of the cluster life cycle approach. This article offers a critical review of various cluster life cycle models. We discuss the key ideas and arguments put forward by their main protagonists and we identify several shortcomings –…
Advancing the treatment of human agency in the analysis of regional economic development: Illustrated with three Norwegian cases
2021
Human agency has become a core topic in economic geography complementing traditional, structural approaches to explain regional development. This paper contributes firstly with a discussion of the theoretical and conceptual relationships between the agency of individuals, organizations, and systems. Secondly, it proposes a novel analytical framework for studying how human agency, combined with external changes affects regional economic development, and how regional structural preconditions and external changes explain the activation of change agency. Thirdly, the relevance of the framework is examined through comparative studies of about 20 years of industrial development in three Norwegian…
Intra-Acting Food Citizenship in Community-Supported Agriculture in Finland
2023
Citizens are called upon to become active participants in creating a more sustainable food system. As food citizens, people participate in defining and constructing their food systems according to their needs and values. In food policies, the concept of food citizenship is often left undefined or with reference only to individual activities. In the food citizenship literature, the role of nonhuman agency in constituting food citizenship needs more examination. Here we investigate food citizenship activities in a citizen-led community-supported agriculture group and explore the role of materiality in constituting food citizenship. We ask (1) what is the role of material-discursive arrangemen…
Race, Environment, and Crisis : Hurricane Camille and the Politics of Southern Segregation
2022
In August 1969 Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi coast. We argue that the disaster caused by the Hurricane was an outcome of the entanglement between human and non-human agents. As a non-human agent, Hurricane Camille thrust the prevailing socio-economic situation in the segregationist South into the spotlight, with all its political and cultural ramifications – much to the annoyance of the local political elite that had long sought to isolate southern politics from civil rights and the desegregation agenda. Consequently, it (re)invigorated and furnished the civil rights movement and the politics defining that era with new arguments and approaches that would have been impossible to dev…
Problem Talk in Management Group Meetings
2019
This naturalistic study focuses on problem talk (PT) in hospital management group meetings. The study aims to understand how PT constitutes the hospital organization through the different uses of PT within the meetings, and, therefore, to understand the organizing role of these meetings. The communication as constitutive of organization (CCO) perspective forms the theoretical background of the research. The results of the qualitative analysis show that PT comprises many intertwined tasks that aim to perform the meetings, enhance problem solving, and maintain the relational level of group life. Thus, PT is much more than merely solving problems. In PT, problems are discussed from the viewpo…