Surviving (in) a World of Contradictions: Conceptualizing Agency Between Autonomy and Heteronomy

Agency is a concept whose status as a social-theoretical tool in and for the 21st century is a challenging question. Sociological theorists endeavor to identify agency's analytical and systematic usefulness for social research. Social theorists and critical theorists are less concerned with agency as concept and tool but may be more dedicated to assessing and tracking the fate and future of agency as a historically and socially variable phenomenon. While social theorists recognize the importance of socio-historical variations, critical theorists also are concerned with how modern societies are inherently contradictory and problematic, especially when accounts try to balance a society's “official” validity claims with the realities they obscure. Many sociologists study the societal conditions that have a bearing on whether, how, and to what extent individuals are able to engage in self-determined actions and practices. Correlating a person's location in the social structure with the status of agency in human and social life, within the matrix of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, geographic location, education, and similar indicators, is essential to delineating individuals' ability to pursue opportunities for success and to take advantage of life chances. In societies that are reproducing, fraught with, and burdened by myriad contradictions and proliferating corollary dangers and threats, individuals' locations within the social structure effect their chances for and modes of survival. In the end, agency as a function of socio-historical specificity visualizes how individuals are making decisions and choices (agency ∼ autonomy) within contexts that are beyond their control or understanding (determinism ∼ heteronomy).