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15 Self and Agency L et us suppose that the concept of the situation in which an action takes place is radically different from what is required by the standard theory. How might it be characterized and what theoretical issues does it bring to notice? One possibility is derived from an early idea in social psychology: what a person does in her capacity as an agent—as a bearer of intentionality— expresses a subjective state at least partially constituted under circumstances that call for meaningful as well as effective behavior and therefore behavior with reasons that could be reasons for any party and appreciated as such by any competent observer. Since these are reasons “someone” might have, there is a social aspect to the subjective state and, in some sense, a subjective aspect to the situation. In other words, there is far more to a situation than the ordered collection of circumstances presumably found by its parties and knowable as such to an observer. Moreover, from this point of view, a condition of meaningful action is the ability to distinguish between persons with their subjective states and mere things (see Heider 1958). Later, we will see that this is not as clear or robust as it might seem, though for the moment it points to an apparent difference between intending a particular effect and behaving meaningfully and therefore acting inter-subjectively in a way that constantly invokes, is reflexive to, the social aspect of whatever humans do. Inter-subjectivity implies, in this regard, that neither subjective states nor objective circumstances are static or inert. Consequently, neither can be conceptualized as stable or formally complete. Subjectivity is always a multiplicity, so that its instances change in the very course of activity. It is not that subjects redefine their situations as needed so much as the very fact of being an instance of subjectivity entails a constant process of subjectification and therefore a Self and Agency 253 constant transformation of conditions (see Lewin 1936; Schutz 1967). But these are still thought of as conditions of action rather than conditions implicated in activity itself. When our point of view shifts to the latter, the difference between subjectivity and objectivity becomes problematic in ways that it is not under the auspices of the standard theory of action. Since the critique of the latter entails just such a shift, the problem cannot be dismissed and must be worked through regardless of where it leads. What follows is written with this hypothesis in mind. One aspect of the problem has to do with the difficulty of reconciling the self, as designed to supplement the standard theory, with the agency initially posited by that theory. We might, then, say that each person’s past experience, coherently ordered or not—in memory and as accumulated tendencies—mediates and is mediated by a present situation that has its own temporality. But the question remains as to what is meant here by mediation, and this is a theoretical problem and not merely a problem of synthesizing two theories, one of the self and another of situated agency. What is at stake in this chapter is the relative priority of sociality and individuality in our knowledge of what is human about human affairs, given that the languages of individuality and agency are distinct in the sense that neither can be reduced to or explained by the other. Without the presuppositions of individuality and a self that embodies both the past and general orientations and aspirations of the person, this might be stated as follows: agency operates as a feature of its situation regardless of whatever else might account for changes in that situation. Another way of putting this is that agency, situation, and action are what Garfinkel (1967) calls “ongoing accomplishments.” But we are not yet at the point at which this can be clarified ; rather, we are still caught up in an individualistic ontology qualified and modified though it has become. I will, then, continue to speak of two referents of “situation.” One comprises present circumstances and the other represents a history of being in situations. I refer to the former as the immediate situation and the latter as the greater situation. For the moment, the problem has to do with their relationship in regard to the difficulties they pose to a viable conception of the self as key to understanding the form and activity of agency. The greater situation taken over the course of the life of the actor...

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