ABSTRACT
Chapter four, “The ontology of subjectivity,” draws from Margaret Archer’s work on the role of the first-person perspective of subjectivity, characterized by what she terms “reflexive deliberation” over sets of concerns, projects, and practices that define people in their everyday life. “Subjectivity,” in this conception, is the “site” or place where what is universal to humankind becomes actualized in specific sociocultural milieus, and further specified by the idiosyncratic experiences of unique individuals. As a causal power, reflexive deliberation is thus ontological and the basis for what I term “human agency.” However, “actually existing agency” is only instantiated through preexisting social forms, with their own forms of causal power. Archer points out two more types of agency, what I call “sociocultural agency” of identity and our place in the world, and “occupational agency” of the roles, positions, and jobs we undertake in life. It is in the interplay of human agency and social forms of agency that the social world is reproduced or transformed in our projects and practices.
