Agency is better understood as accomplished social action than as individual autonomous intent.

Evidence

Sociocultural linguists are generally not concerned with calibrating the degree of autonomy or intentionality in any given act; rather, agency is more productively viewed as the accomplishment of social action (cf. Ahearn, 2001). This way of thinking about agency is vital to any discipline that wants to consider the full complexity of social subjects alongside the larger power structures that constrain them. But it is especially important to sociocultural linguistics, for the very use of language is itself an act of agency (Duranti, 2004). Under this definition, identity is one kind of social action that agency can accomplish. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction, 114

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reframes ‘agency’ from a property of a rational subject into an accomplishment — central to letting identity stay processual rather than essentialist.
• XREF: Speech-act/performance framing recalls Austin’s How to Do Things with Words in the bibliography; ties to how utterances themselves ‘do’ identity. — connects to: Agency can be habitual, deliberate, or distributed across several co-acting social actors. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 115; Identity is constituted by context and asserted only as a partial account. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 109; Social structure and individual agency are mutually constitutive, not opposed (+6 more)

Related

• Agency is best theorized as accomplished social action, not individual autonomy. (similarity 0.92)
• Agency can be habitual, deliberate, or distributed across several co-acting social actors. (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Social prescriptions can constitute the self rather than constrain it. #corroborates (0.85) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1033
• Social structure and individual agency are mutually constitutive, not opposed #corroborates (0.82)
• Human agency operates through individual, proxy, and collective modes #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 126
• Submission to external authority can constitute rather than constrain the self #corroborates (0.80)
• Virtues that militate against autonomy can still constitute agency #expands (0.78) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1133
• Knowing social relations historically enables individuals to multiply their agency collectively #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1260
• Identity is both a source of agency and increasingly constructed rather than given #expands (0.75)