ABSTRACT
Within the Humanities, in particular, the use of the term ‘agency’ has become a matter of debate in recent years, and problems of definition and of whether there are different types of agency have dominated what has become an increasingly theoretical agenda. Indeed, within what might be termed the ‘soft’ sciences, ‘agency’ and its elusive and burgeoning definitions seems to have become a multipurpose and consequently hollow term, lacking a core meaning – a little like the term ‘cultural heritage’ – and used, the less kindly-disposed might suggest, by those who find clarity and definition a challenge. In this chapter we want to return to the use of the term in a more Marxist (see Kamenka (ed.) 1983: 155-58; 287) and utilitarian sense, examining the realities of what people do. This chapter is concerned with an analysis of agency within large organisations, specifically the British Government and its various Departments of State, and Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs), such as English Heritage. These bodies control the political, and subsequently financial, environment within which most forms of archaeological activity take place in the UK – whether within university departments, archaeological units, or museum and conservation bodies. We hope that this chapter contributes to the critical debate which has shadowed the use of agency theory in archaeology, and which highlights the position of agency theory, and hence archaeology’s use of it, within modern Western society’s concern with the individual. The activities of agents and the role of agency within this wider framework, as well as their consequent impacts, are far too often ignored within the context of our own professional activities.
