Manchester As a Birth Place of Modern Agency Research: the Manchester School Explained from the Perspective of Evans-Pritchard’S’ Book the Nuer1
Manchester as a birth place of modern agency research: The Manchester School explained from the perspective of Evans-Pritchard’s’ book The Nuer1 Wim van Binsbergen ASC Leiden / EUR Rotterdam © 2006 Wim van Binsbergen INTRODUCTION At least two definitional modalities may be discerned in the approach to agency. The relationship between agency and structure may be conceived as one of neutral but necessary complementarity: structure can only exist to the extent to which its is brought to life in concrete acts by concrete actors. However, according to another, much more attractive definition of agency, agency is not so much the coming to life of social structure through actors’ concrete social behaviour, but the freedom that actors take, in their interaction, to manoeuvre between the stipulations set by structure, and then agency becomes not so much the enactment, but the denial, the compensation, the improvisation beyond structure. In the present paper, emphasis will be on the second approach. My contribution to the study of agency, with the present argument, will mainly be in the field of the history of ideas, more specifically the development of social science theory and method in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on Africanist anthropological 1 This paper is the substantially revised translation of a chapter from Wim van Binsbergen: Van Vorstenhof tot mediaprodukt: Een culturele antropologie van Afrika, vooral Zambia, (1995/2006). An English oral paraphrase was presented in 2003 as: Wim van Binsbergen, ‘Manchester as a birthplace of agency’, paper read at the international conference on ‘Agency in Africa: An old theme, a new issue’, Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) (chair of intercultural philosophy) and Theme Group on Agency in Africa, African Studies Centre (ASC) (convenors Rijk van Dijk, Wouter van Beek and Wim van Binsbergen, 16 June 2003).
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