Agency in Social Context

Many political philosophers argue that interference threatens a person’s agency. And they cast political freedom in opposition to interpersonal threats to agency, as non-interference. I argue that this approach relies on an inapt model of agency, crucial aspects of which emerge from our relationships with other people. Such relationships involve complex patterns of vulnerability and subjection, essential to our constitution as particular kinds of agents: as owners of property, as members of families, and as participants in a market for labor. We should construct a conception of freedom that targets the structures of our interpersonal relations, and the kinds of agents these relations make us. Such a conception respects the interpersonal foundations of human agency. It also allows us to draw morally significant connections between diverse species of unfreedom—between, for instance, localized domination and structural oppression

Three Perspectives on Motivation and Multi-Criteria Assessment of Organic Food Systems

The complexity of values related to organic food systems is normally difficult to ascertain, understand and act upon for both producers and consumers, as well as for other agents. In this paper we have suggested MCA as a method that may help in coping with this complexity. Furthermore, we have pointed to the importance of addressing the challenge of motivation when designing such an MCA tool. In doing so, we have applied three very different concepts of motivation – an economic, a psycho-social and a relational concept. While they represent fundamentally different perspectives, by incorporating all three within a multi-perspective approach, we have been able to explore ’a broader array of relevant aspects of motivation when designing a MCA tool to be used by consumers when dealing with organic food issues. From an economic perspective, motivation is closely related to the buying situation and consumers’ need to choose between products. This stresses the importance of gaining a quick overview and of support in assessing the options. From a psycho-social perspective, the key point is to design the tool in a way that makes it possible for the consumer to include his or her experiences and specific lifeworld strategies in the assessment process. This highlights the importance of an MCA tool which enables users to influence and change criteria and values in decision-making and reflexive processes. Finally, from a relational perspective, motivation is a matter of social interaction and the tool should therefore be designed so as to allow dialogue between the agents involved in the value chain of the organic food system. Applying the three perspectives on motivation to the issue has proven the value of a multi-perspective approach and provided input qualifying the development of a prototype MCA tool for agents participating in the organic food system

Toward a relational concept of uncertainty: about knowing too little, knowing too differently, and accepting not to know

Uncertainty of late has become an increasingly important and controversial topic in water resource management, and natural resources management in general. Diverse managing goals, changing environmental conditions, conflicting interests, and lack of predictability are some of the characteristics that decision makers have to face. This has resulted in the application and development of strategies such as adaptive management, which proposes flexibility and capability to adapt to unknown conditions as a way of dealing with uncertainties. However, this shift in ideas about managing has not always been accompanied by a general shift in the way uncertainties are understood and handled. To improve this situation, we believe it is necessary to recontextualize uncertainty in a broader way¿relative to its role, meaning, and relationship with participants in decision making¿because it is from this understanding that problems and solutions emerge. Under this view, solutions do not exclusively consist of eliminating or reducing uncertainty, but of reframing the problems as such so that they convey a different meaning. To this end, we propose a relational approach to uncertainty analysis. Here, we elaborate on this new conceptualization of uncertainty, and indicate some implications of this view for strategies for dealing with uncertainty in water management. We present an example as an illustration of these concepts. Key words: adaptive management; ambiguity; frames; framing; knowledge relationship; multiple knowledge frames; natural resource management; negotiation; participation; social learning; uncertainty; water managemen

Standards and Stories: The Interactional Work of Informed Choice in Ontario Midwifery Care

Abstract This paper uses a discourse-rhetorical approach to analyze how Ontario midwives and their clients interactionally accomplish the healthcare communicative process of informed choice. Working with four excerpts from recorded visits between Ontario midwives and women, the analysis focuses on the discursive rendering during informed choice conversations of two contrasting kinds of evidence – professional standards and story-telling – related to potential interventions during labour. We draw on the concepts of discursive hybridity (Sarangi and Roberts 1999) and recontextualization (Linell 1998; Sarangi 1998) to trace the complex and creative ways in which the conversational participants reconstruct the meanings of these evidentiary sources to address their particular care contexts. This analysis shows how, though very different in their forms, both modes of evidence function as hybrid and flexible discursive resources that perform both instrumental and social-relational healthcare work. This paper examines how ontario midwives and their clients interactionally accomplish informed choice in clinic visits by calling on and negotiating two contrasting kinds of evidence: (a) authoritative guidelines articulated in professional standards and community protocols and (b) social stories told by midwives as they talked with women about healthcare options. How do participants recontextualize the meanings of these different evidentiary sources to address their particular care contexts? Our analysis indicates that participants invoke evidence in ways that combine instrumental and social talk to perform both clinical and relational functions. The interaction thus enacts a hybrid discourse, simultaneously reflecting and reproducing midwifery\u27s relational-feminist goals and the requirements of regulated healthcare. Résumé Cet article emprunte une démarche rhétorique pour analyser la façon dont les sages-femmes et leurs clientes en Ontario accomplissent de façon interactive les processus de communication en santé pour faire des « choix éclairés ». À l\u27aide de quatre extraits enregistrés lors de rencontres entre sages-femmes et femmes en Ontario, l\u27analyse se penche sur le rendu discursif de deux types distincts de données – les normes professionnelles et la narration d\u27anecdotes– au cours de conversations portant sur un choix éclairé au sujet d\u27une possible intervention pendant le travail. Nous employons les concepts de l\u27hybridité discursive (Sarangi et Roberts 1999) et de la recontextualisation (Linell 1998; Sarangi 1998) pour retracer les chemins complexes et créatifs qu\u27empruntent les participantes pour reconstruire la signification des sources de données afin d\u27aborder leur propre cas. Cette analyse montre comment, bien que sous des formes différentes, les deux modes de données fonctionnent comme des ressources discursives hybrides et flexibles qui agissent tant au niveau instrumental que socio-relationnel

Conflicting Visions: A Critique of Ian Macneil’s Relational Theory of Contract

Perhaps the leading contemporary critic of placing consent at the center of contract law has been Ian Macneil. In his book The New Social Contract as well as in a series of complex and richly textured articles spanning nearly two decades, Macneil has eloquently presented and defended his now well-known relational theory of contract. It is a tribute to the important core of previously neglected truth in Macneil\u27s theory that, for all its complexity, the theory can be summarized succinctly. Macneil presents nothing less than a holistic social theory of human exchange--with particular emphasis on the human activity of projecting exchange into the future, which he calls contract. Macneil develops an elaborate set of norms that must be adhered to if contractual exchange is to exist and flourish. Macneil sees contract-in-law --that is, contracts enforceable by a legal system--as an infinitesimally small fraction of the total web of contracts in the modem world, including marriage, bureaucracy, and the State. His project is to use what all contractual exchanges have in common to better understand contracts enforceable by a legal system. By so doing he has shown that such legally enforceable contracts themselves exist on a continuum that ranges from fully specified contracts in which all obligations are unambiguously expressed at the time of formation, which he calls discrete and presentiated contracts, to contracts that govern relationships that exist and evolve over long periods of time, which he terms intertwined contracts

Treating patients as persons : a capabilities approach to support delivery of person-centered care

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Control influence on trust and relational governance in the client-contractor dyad

The construction industry has in recent years witnessed a paradigm shift towards the use of more collaborative contracting relationships and integrated processes in an attempt to improve construction project delivery. Trust is central to the success of these contracting approaches and although efforts are usually aimed at improving trust relations in client-contractor relationships, there has so far been mixed findings on how trust is influenced by formal control mechanisms discharged via formal contracts. In construction contracting, there is therefore the need to investigate how different governance modes and control mechanisms deployed on construction projects are perceived by those being controlled and how this in turn influences trust. Through a critique of the extant literature on trust and control in construction, this study reveals that the trust-control relationship which can be both complimentary and supplementary has far reaching implications on the measurement/assessment of trust in the construction project context. The orientation of governance and control mechanisms selected by clients and the behavioural consequences of these from contractors can thus be used as a measure of the degree of trust that exists in the dyad

Middle class fractions, childcare and the 'relational' and 'normative' aspects of class practices

The emphasis in class research remains on the structural aspects of class, class processes are neglected. This paper focuses upon some relational and normative aspects of class through an examination of social divisions produced and constructed within middle class families' choices of childcare. Working with data from two contrasting settings in London (Battersea and Stoke Newington) three issues are addressed in the paper; the extent to which childcare arrangements both substantively and structurally position children differently within long term educational careers; the ways in which the use of choice in a market system of child care and education, works to produce patterns of social closure that quietly discriminate via the collectivist criterion of class and racial membership; and the ways in which child care choices also point-up and perpetuate subtle distinctions and tensions of values and lifestyle within the middle class, between class factions. Concepts drawn from the work of Bourdieu are deployed throughout

Middle class fractions, childcare and the 'relational' and 'normative' aspects of class practice

The emphasis in class research remains on the structural aspects of class, class processes are neglected. This paper focuses upon some relational and normative aspects of class through an examination of social divisions produced and constructed within middle class families’ choices of childcare. Working with data from two contrasting settings in London (Battersea and Stoke Newington) three issues are addressed in the paper; the extent to which childcare arrangements both substantively and structurally position children differently within long term educational careers; the ways in which the use of choice in a market system of child care and education, works to produce patterns of social closure that quietly discriminate via the collectivist criterion of class and racial membership; and the ways in which child care choices also point-up and perpetuate subtle distinctions and tensions of values and lifestyle within the middle class, between class factions. Concepts drawn from the work of Bourdieu are deployed throughout