Summary
Contents
Subject index
In this penetrating and assured book, one of the leading commentators in the field argues that social theory is moving in the wrong direction in its reflections on human freedom and autonomy. It has borrowed notions of 'agency' and 'choice' from everyday discourse, but increasingly it puts a misconceived individualistic gloss upon them. Against this, Barnes unequivocally identifies human beings as social agents in a profound sense, and emphasises the vital importance of their sociability. Notions of 'agency', 'freedom' and 'choice' have to be understood by reference to their role in communicative interaction; they are key components of the discourse through which human beings identify each other, and have effects upon each other, as soci
Materials and Arguments
This part of the book begins with a brief look at the use of voluntaristic concepts, both in the context of everyday life and as elements of social theory. The first chapter is particularly concerned with their role in everyday discourse. Here, actions characterised as voluntary, in contrast to those identified as caused, are often regarded as appropriate foci for praise or blame: their perpetrators are considered to be responsible for them and liable for their consequences. However, notoriously, the basis on which voluntary actions are identified is problematic. They are often related to invisible internal states in the human beings who enact them, but how the presence of these states is inferred remains obscure. Sometimes we impute them in ...
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