Agency only has meaning within its own conceptual and institutional grammar

Evidence

How does this intertwining of the ethical and the political impact my critique of regnant notions of agency within liberal..progressive accounts? First of all, as I hope I have made clear, I am not interested in offering a theory of agency, but rather I insist that the meaning of agency . must be explored within the grammar of concepts within which it resides. My argument in brief is that we should keep the meaning of agency open and allow it to emerge from “within semantic and institutional networks that defi and make possible particular ways of relating to people, things, and oneself” (T. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 248

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Agency as emergent from semantic/institutional networks, not a portable universal — resists one-sentence paraphrase.