Right, ever since I attended a meeting recently, something’s been troubling me about social practice theory. I’ll introduce this and why anyone should care about it in a moment, but the burning issue for me is this:
What happens to the individual in practice-based accounts of social change?
Right, for those who don’t know what I’m on about, practice theory (PT) is an emerging approach to understanding social order and change that attempts to escape from the methodological individualism and overflowing levels of individual agency in more conventional economic and psychological accounts. This is important because if we’re going to make the social and behavioural changes necessary to avoid the worst effects of environmental problems (like climate change) in the time we have available, then we need a decent understanding of how such social change happens and how it might be brought about. Anyway, putting it crudely, conventional accounts assume that an individuals’ behaviour is the relatively straightforward outcome of the choices individuals make, which it suggests are determined by a series of psychological (e.g. an individuals’ attitudes or values) and contextual (e.g. what other people think about recycling or whether or not a kerbside scheme is available) factors. Changing behaviour is thus a pretty straightforward process of getting the psychological factors right (e.g. spreading pro-environmental attitudes and values) and getting the contextual factors right (e.g. providing kerbside recycling schemes and making everyone pro-recycling). So far so simple, and this approach has a really nice common sense appeal making it easy to understand why it’s buried right at the heart of contemporary policy making.
PT, however, challenges this view. It downplays the scope and significance of individual choice saying that attention should turn instead towards how ‘social practices’ are collectively and socially organised and how this differs across space and through time. So, what is a social practice? Well, where conventional accounts assume social life is made up of the sum of individual decisions, PT suggests that social reality is divided into discrete blocks or chunks which have their own internal logics and dynamics. These are practices, such as football, cricket, cooking, writing a blog etc. etc. Basically the things people ‘do’ in the course of everyday life are all part of one social practice or another (or maybe even many). Anyway, there’s a rather stolid theoretical debate about precisely what these chunks of existence called practices are made up of and how to draw boundaries around them, but I rather the like Elizabeth Shove’s (and she’s developed this with others like Mika Pantzar, Alan Warde, Dale Southerton etc etc) view that practices consist in the inter-relationships between three different elements: images/discourses, skills/routines, and stuff/artefacts. So, to draw on cricket as an example, because it’s one of my favourite things and - this being written in the heart of an Ashes series- it seems appropriate, the stuff/artefacts are easily identified as a bat and a ball (stumps, pads etc. are optional extras really), the skills are those of batting, bowling and fielding, and the images/discourses are the laws of the game alongside some localised understanding about how seriously the game should be taken e.g. are you about to hit the winning runs in an Ashes test match or are you playing with your 5-year old child on the beach. The basic point of PT is that if you change any one of these elements, then what you’re left with is just not cricket, or at least it’s a different kind of cricket.
So, this is quite a different approach. Rather than looking at individual decision making processes and the influences thereupon, it turns attention towards images, skills and stuff and how they are collectively organised and negotiated. As such, it poses some pretty taxing questions. Where the conventional approach provides a pretty simple, linear model with obvious implications for how to change things, PT suggests that things have their own internal logics and that these are co-evolutionary and dynamic and nature. To give an example of this, the meeting I attended recently explored people’s bathing practices. Conventional approaches would say that to save water you need to spread pro-environmental values among the populace and to provide technical-fixes such as water saving devices on showerheads etc. In contrast, PT shows that the reasons why we bathe as we do are a lot more complex than this. At the meeting we all introduced ourselves through a picture of our bathrooms, and a one-to-one interview about our bathing practices. What this revealed is that we all had pretty much the same bathroom infrastructures – bath, shower, sink, toilet – despite big differences in our ages, incomes etc, but that we used this same infrastructure in massively different ways which related to things like what stage we were at in our lives (e.g. people tend to share baths with siblings when their little, then as they get older tend to shower a bit more, then shower a lot at university etc etc), what we each perceived as being ‘clean’, what other practices we were doing (e.g. were we about to go to work or had we just finished playing football?) and lots of other things. Crucially, very few of these bathing stories had anything to do with ‘the environment’, and they seemed to have even less to do with individual attitudes, values or choice. To cut to the chase, the conventional model appears to be flawed (at least in this case, but the logic extends to other practices too). Practices evolve and change because of social and historical dynamics that seemingly have nothing to do with individuals.
So, having set up this new approach, I’m now left asking how, if at all, does the individual fit into all of this? And can individuals do anything to change practices and put them on more sustainable tracks, or must we slip into a swamp of fatalism? There’s something of an irony in here, because whilst the conventional approach is extremely optimistic about individual agency, it nevertheless portrays individuals as simplistic creatures, as ignorant passive automatons or dupes who need to have the correct pro-environmental attitudes/values plugged into them from on high. Whereas in contrast, the PT approach argues that individuals are skilled, competent and knowledgeable agents who integrate and coordinate all these elements in the performance of practices, but who nevertheless can do pretty much nothing to bring about changes to those practices. So, this leaves me wanting a more considered approach to where the individual fits in all of this. Is there a middle-way between these two approaches that sees individuals as competent and skilled practitioners who are ALSO able to effect change in the practices they perform? And, if so, is this one way in which the two approaches might be reconciled?
Now, I’m not suggesting for one minute that I’m able to offer this ‘considered approach’, and indeed if I felt I could I don’t think I’d do it here, but I thought it might be worth thinking a bit more about what PT says about individuals when it does think about them. So, in short, and as already mentioned, PT suggests individuals are knowledgeable, skilful and competent practitioners who integrate a wide variety of different elements (images, skills, stuff etc) in their active performances of different practices as they pass through unique ‘careers’ of engaging with particular sets of practices. Indeed, through such performances individuals are seen to keep practices alive and kicking, preventing them from dying out by continually refreshing the relations between elements. So, maybe there’s an argument here that if individuals keep practices alive, then they should be given prior attention? But this doesn’t wash, because individuals are also seen as the ‘carriers’ and ‘crossing points’ of a huge range of different practices that are organised and carried out socially i.e. above and beyond the mere individual. Further, individuals can be ‘captured’ by practices which end up taking over their whole lives. This is particularly evident in the case of addicts who can’t stop themselves from conducting a particular practice e.g. shopaholics who can’t stop buying the shoes they don’t need, or cricket fans who can’t get on with their work because the Ashes is just too compelling. Indeed, some have even suggested that analysis of practices means that the individual simply ‘evaporates’ from view because they are so insignificant in the face of these broader collective dynamics. So, on the basis of what I’ve seen so far, we can suggest that PT provides a somewhat confusing view of the individual as simultaneously all important and insignificant.
Now, another way to think about this might be to look not at what the existing literature says, but to look at specific practices themselves and try and consider what roles individuals play and what level of agency they can exert within them. This obviously demands some decent empirical research, but in the spirit of getting on with it, it might be possible to begin to think through some of these issues and trace the moments at which individuals can exert their individuality within practices. I propose to do this with cricket.
So, I suppose the first appearance of the individual in cricket is in the decision over whether or not to partake in it in the first place. Now, this is tricky. I play cricket. I love doing so, and I would choose to do so more often if I had the chance. So already it’s seen that I don’t have free choice to play cricket. Thinking back too, I never made a conscious decision to ‘choose’ cricket, but was introduced to it by my parents from an early age, and indeed was brought up in a culture where cricket was one of several practices available to me. There are other practices I didn’t do e.g. hockey, rugby, sailing etc, but again I never made a conscious choice not to do them. Now, of course, in adulthood, I could choose to take up these other practices, just as I have chosen to continue playing cricket but have shown less interest in football. But even here, the level of choice I can exert as an individual is small, so whereas I can choose to play hockey, I have to abide by certain rules when playing, I have to use certain equipment, and - if I’m going to do it well – I have to develop certain recognised skills. So, there’s little real choice open to me here. Coming back to cricket, I suppose I have some choice over the amount and quality of the equipment I purchase, but again there is certain equipment that I simply have to use (whether I own it or borrow it), and my ability to buy one bat rather than another is constrained by the amount of money I have which relates to the working practices I perform. So, little real individuality here either. So, so far the individual doesn’t appear to be faring very well at all.
Now, looking at how I play the game, I did choose to become a bowler rather than a batsman, but I’m then constrained by the conventional ways in which bowlers can get batsmen out, just as, when I bat, I’m more or less limited to the conventional array of strokes. But, here there might be a chance for the individual to appear because, when I bat my ability to play conventional strokes is limited, so I play a poor approximation of a cover drive or a late cut. Indeed, I might be said to have a unique and individual ‘style’ of playing cricket, which no doubt results from the amount of time I’ve practiced, the size, shape and athletic capabilities of my body (which is influenced by other practices I do or don’t do – e.g. if I drank less and ran more who knows what might happen – but surely isn’t wholly dictated by these other practices), so in the localised performance of the practice of cricket I, the humble individual, may make a fleeting appearance. Talking of individual ‘styles’ then leads me to think of expert practitioners like Kevin Pietersen or Ricky Ponting, and what influence they are able to exert on the practice. Thinking through a few stories, we know that the laws of the game were changed after the bodyline Ashes tour in 1932-3 to restrict the number of fielders that could be stationed backwards of square on the legside. This development of the practice stemmed solely from Bradman’s batting ability, Jardine’s tactical nous, and Larwood's bowling ability. More recently, Dennis Lillee got aluminium bats banned, Mike Brearley got the laws about equipment on the field amended after placing a helmet at point to try and tempt the batsmen into seeking 5 penalty runs, and Pietersen’s ‘switch hit’ got the laws about a batsman’s stance amended. So, all of these are examples of when expert practitioners have amended the practice. Admittedly, in none of these cases has the game been fundamentally changed (although Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and recent Twenty20 developments might be seen as a fundamental change by some), but in all cases an individual has exerted some small influence over the game which has resulted in changes which, over time, have been embedded into the practice and may in turn lead to more changes. So, in this respect, I think it might just be possible to say that individuals can exert some influence on the practices they perform, although this influence might be limited, its implications may not be felt for some time, and the ultimate outcome may be somewhat unpredictable.
Hmm, so judging by this brief flight of fancy, the individual, even expert individuals, has only a limited part to play. Moving back to practices, this makes me start to think in terms of the available ‘room for manoeuvre’. In this case, experts seem to have greater power to exert influence over practices than amateurs (although it is possible that my individual cricketing style is being emulated on cricket fields all around the world, who knows). This leads to an analysis that seeks to account for an individual’s position within a practice and the extent to which this influences their room for manoeuvre. Etienne Wenger comes close to these sorts of ideas when he talks about ‘knowledge brokers’ and how they can change a community of practices’ practice by introducing new elements from other practices in which they partake. We might also ask if there is more or less room for manoeuvre in other practices e.g. football, playing a musical instrument, or in more mundane practices like bathing or cooking etc. What role is there for individual style and creativity to exhibit itself and exert influence across different practices? It might only be a glimmer of hope for the individual, but it might also be worth following, particularly if fatalism is to be avoided.
So, what’s the significance of this, well if individuals can exert some influence, does this mean that conventional approaches to social change will suffice and all we have to do is revise our expectations of them? Or is it possible to conceive of a new kind of policy arrangement that gets to grips with the more complex dynamics of practice? In fact - thinking about it - what does the practice of policy making look like, and how might that be changed? I didn’t suggest I’d come up with any answers here, but I would suggest, as does Latour, that although PT puts practices first, is shouldn’t stop us from seeking to ‘follow the actors’ who are engaged in practices. Seeking to understand how they understand the practices they perform, what unique styles they bring from their own practice histories and careers and so on and so on. Narrative and diary methods might help in this, who knows. The key point for me, though, is that it seems worth exploring what localised performances of practice are like, how individual practitioners and communities of practice engage in them and, by doing this, hopefully illuminating whatever limited room for manoeuvre individuals may have open to them.
What happens to the individual in practice-based accounts of social change?
Right, for those who don’t know what I’m on about, practice theory (PT) is an emerging approach to understanding social order and change that attempts to escape from the methodological individualism and overflowing levels of individual agency in more conventional economic and psychological accounts. This is important because if we’re going to make the social and behavioural changes necessary to avoid the worst effects of environmental problems (like climate change) in the time we have available, then we need a decent understanding of how such social change happens and how it might be brought about. Anyway, putting it crudely, conventional accounts assume that an individuals’ behaviour is the relatively straightforward outcome of the choices individuals make, which it suggests are determined by a series of psychological (e.g. an individuals’ attitudes or values) and contextual (e.g. what other people think about recycling or whether or not a kerbside scheme is available) factors. Changing behaviour is thus a pretty straightforward process of getting the psychological factors right (e.g. spreading pro-environmental attitudes and values) and getting the contextual factors right (e.g. providing kerbside recycling schemes and making everyone pro-recycling). So far so simple, and this approach has a really nice common sense appeal making it easy to understand why it’s buried right at the heart of contemporary policy making.
PT, however, challenges this view. It downplays the scope and significance of individual choice saying that attention should turn instead towards how ‘social practices’ are collectively and socially organised and how this differs across space and through time. So, what is a social practice? Well, where conventional accounts assume social life is made up of the sum of individual decisions, PT suggests that social reality is divided into discrete blocks or chunks which have their own internal logics and dynamics. These are practices, such as football, cricket, cooking, writing a blog etc. etc. Basically the things people ‘do’ in the course of everyday life are all part of one social practice or another (or maybe even many). Anyway, there’s a rather stolid theoretical debate about precisely what these chunks of existence called practices are made up of and how to draw boundaries around them, but I rather the like Elizabeth Shove’s (and she’s developed this with others like Mika Pantzar, Alan Warde, Dale Southerton etc etc) view that practices consist in the inter-relationships between three different elements: images/discourses, skills/routines, and stuff/artefacts. So, to draw on cricket as an example, because it’s one of my favourite things and - this being written in the heart of an Ashes series- it seems appropriate, the stuff/artefacts are easily identified as a bat and a ball (stumps, pads etc. are optional extras really), the skills are those of batting, bowling and fielding, and the images/discourses are the laws of the game alongside some localised understanding about how seriously the game should be taken e.g. are you about to hit the winning runs in an Ashes test match or are you playing with your 5-year old child on the beach. The basic point of PT is that if you change any one of these elements, then what you’re left with is just not cricket, or at least it’s a different kind of cricket.
So, this is quite a different approach. Rather than looking at individual decision making processes and the influences thereupon, it turns attention towards images, skills and stuff and how they are collectively organised and negotiated. As such, it poses some pretty taxing questions. Where the conventional approach provides a pretty simple, linear model with obvious implications for how to change things, PT suggests that things have their own internal logics and that these are co-evolutionary and dynamic and nature. To give an example of this, the meeting I attended recently explored people’s bathing practices. Conventional approaches would say that to save water you need to spread pro-environmental values among the populace and to provide technical-fixes such as water saving devices on showerheads etc. In contrast, PT shows that the reasons why we bathe as we do are a lot more complex than this. At the meeting we all introduced ourselves through a picture of our bathrooms, and a one-to-one interview about our bathing practices. What this revealed is that we all had pretty much the same bathroom infrastructures – bath, shower, sink, toilet – despite big differences in our ages, incomes etc, but that we used this same infrastructure in massively different ways which related to things like what stage we were at in our lives (e.g. people tend to share baths with siblings when their little, then as they get older tend to shower a bit more, then shower a lot at university etc etc), what we each perceived as being ‘clean’, what other practices we were doing (e.g. were we about to go to work or had we just finished playing football?) and lots of other things. Crucially, very few of these bathing stories had anything to do with ‘the environment’, and they seemed to have even less to do with individual attitudes, values or choice. To cut to the chase, the conventional model appears to be flawed (at least in this case, but the logic extends to other practices too). Practices evolve and change because of social and historical dynamics that seemingly have nothing to do with individuals.
So, having set up this new approach, I’m now left asking how, if at all, does the individual fit into all of this? And can individuals do anything to change practices and put them on more sustainable tracks, or must we slip into a swamp of fatalism? There’s something of an irony in here, because whilst the conventional approach is extremely optimistic about individual agency, it nevertheless portrays individuals as simplistic creatures, as ignorant passive automatons or dupes who need to have the correct pro-environmental attitudes/values plugged into them from on high. Whereas in contrast, the PT approach argues that individuals are skilled, competent and knowledgeable agents who integrate and coordinate all these elements in the performance of practices, but who nevertheless can do pretty much nothing to bring about changes to those practices. So, this leaves me wanting a more considered approach to where the individual fits in all of this. Is there a middle-way between these two approaches that sees individuals as competent and skilled practitioners who are ALSO able to effect change in the practices they perform? And, if so, is this one way in which the two approaches might be reconciled?
Now, I’m not suggesting for one minute that I’m able to offer this ‘considered approach’, and indeed if I felt I could I don’t think I’d do it here, but I thought it might be worth thinking a bit more about what PT says about individuals when it does think about them. So, in short, and as already mentioned, PT suggests individuals are knowledgeable, skilful and competent practitioners who integrate a wide variety of different elements (images, skills, stuff etc) in their active performances of different practices as they pass through unique ‘careers’ of engaging with particular sets of practices. Indeed, through such performances individuals are seen to keep practices alive and kicking, preventing them from dying out by continually refreshing the relations between elements. So, maybe there’s an argument here that if individuals keep practices alive, then they should be given prior attention? But this doesn’t wash, because individuals are also seen as the ‘carriers’ and ‘crossing points’ of a huge range of different practices that are organised and carried out socially i.e. above and beyond the mere individual. Further, individuals can be ‘captured’ by practices which end up taking over their whole lives. This is particularly evident in the case of addicts who can’t stop themselves from conducting a particular practice e.g. shopaholics who can’t stop buying the shoes they don’t need, or cricket fans who can’t get on with their work because the Ashes is just too compelling. Indeed, some have even suggested that analysis of practices means that the individual simply ‘evaporates’ from view because they are so insignificant in the face of these broader collective dynamics. So, on the basis of what I’ve seen so far, we can suggest that PT provides a somewhat confusing view of the individual as simultaneously all important and insignificant.
Now, another way to think about this might be to look not at what the existing literature says, but to look at specific practices themselves and try and consider what roles individuals play and what level of agency they can exert within them. This obviously demands some decent empirical research, but in the spirit of getting on with it, it might be possible to begin to think through some of these issues and trace the moments at which individuals can exert their individuality within practices. I propose to do this with cricket.
So, I suppose the first appearance of the individual in cricket is in the decision over whether or not to partake in it in the first place. Now, this is tricky. I play cricket. I love doing so, and I would choose to do so more often if I had the chance. So already it’s seen that I don’t have free choice to play cricket. Thinking back too, I never made a conscious decision to ‘choose’ cricket, but was introduced to it by my parents from an early age, and indeed was brought up in a culture where cricket was one of several practices available to me. There are other practices I didn’t do e.g. hockey, rugby, sailing etc, but again I never made a conscious choice not to do them. Now, of course, in adulthood, I could choose to take up these other practices, just as I have chosen to continue playing cricket but have shown less interest in football. But even here, the level of choice I can exert as an individual is small, so whereas I can choose to play hockey, I have to abide by certain rules when playing, I have to use certain equipment, and - if I’m going to do it well – I have to develop certain recognised skills. So, there’s little real choice open to me here. Coming back to cricket, I suppose I have some choice over the amount and quality of the equipment I purchase, but again there is certain equipment that I simply have to use (whether I own it or borrow it), and my ability to buy one bat rather than another is constrained by the amount of money I have which relates to the working practices I perform. So, little real individuality here either. So, so far the individual doesn’t appear to be faring very well at all.
Now, looking at how I play the game, I did choose to become a bowler rather than a batsman, but I’m then constrained by the conventional ways in which bowlers can get batsmen out, just as, when I bat, I’m more or less limited to the conventional array of strokes. But, here there might be a chance for the individual to appear because, when I bat my ability to play conventional strokes is limited, so I play a poor approximation of a cover drive or a late cut. Indeed, I might be said to have a unique and individual ‘style’ of playing cricket, which no doubt results from the amount of time I’ve practiced, the size, shape and athletic capabilities of my body (which is influenced by other practices I do or don’t do – e.g. if I drank less and ran more who knows what might happen – but surely isn’t wholly dictated by these other practices), so in the localised performance of the practice of cricket I, the humble individual, may make a fleeting appearance. Talking of individual ‘styles’ then leads me to think of expert practitioners like Kevin Pietersen or Ricky Ponting, and what influence they are able to exert on the practice. Thinking through a few stories, we know that the laws of the game were changed after the bodyline Ashes tour in 1932-3 to restrict the number of fielders that could be stationed backwards of square on the legside. This development of the practice stemmed solely from Bradman’s batting ability, Jardine’s tactical nous, and Larwood's bowling ability. More recently, Dennis Lillee got aluminium bats banned, Mike Brearley got the laws about equipment on the field amended after placing a helmet at point to try and tempt the batsmen into seeking 5 penalty runs, and Pietersen’s ‘switch hit’ got the laws about a batsman’s stance amended. So, all of these are examples of when expert practitioners have amended the practice. Admittedly, in none of these cases has the game been fundamentally changed (although Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and recent Twenty20 developments might be seen as a fundamental change by some), but in all cases an individual has exerted some small influence over the game which has resulted in changes which, over time, have been embedded into the practice and may in turn lead to more changes. So, in this respect, I think it might just be possible to say that individuals can exert some influence on the practices they perform, although this influence might be limited, its implications may not be felt for some time, and the ultimate outcome may be somewhat unpredictable.
Hmm, so judging by this brief flight of fancy, the individual, even expert individuals, has only a limited part to play. Moving back to practices, this makes me start to think in terms of the available ‘room for manoeuvre’. In this case, experts seem to have greater power to exert influence over practices than amateurs (although it is possible that my individual cricketing style is being emulated on cricket fields all around the world, who knows). This leads to an analysis that seeks to account for an individual’s position within a practice and the extent to which this influences their room for manoeuvre. Etienne Wenger comes close to these sorts of ideas when he talks about ‘knowledge brokers’ and how they can change a community of practices’ practice by introducing new elements from other practices in which they partake. We might also ask if there is more or less room for manoeuvre in other practices e.g. football, playing a musical instrument, or in more mundane practices like bathing or cooking etc. What role is there for individual style and creativity to exhibit itself and exert influence across different practices? It might only be a glimmer of hope for the individual, but it might also be worth following, particularly if fatalism is to be avoided.
So, what’s the significance of this, well if individuals can exert some influence, does this mean that conventional approaches to social change will suffice and all we have to do is revise our expectations of them? Or is it possible to conceive of a new kind of policy arrangement that gets to grips with the more complex dynamics of practice? In fact - thinking about it - what does the practice of policy making look like, and how might that be changed? I didn’t suggest I’d come up with any answers here, but I would suggest, as does Latour, that although PT puts practices first, is shouldn’t stop us from seeking to ‘follow the actors’ who are engaged in practices. Seeking to understand how they understand the practices they perform, what unique styles they bring from their own practice histories and careers and so on and so on. Narrative and diary methods might help in this, who knows. The key point for me, though, is that it seems worth exploring what localised performances of practice are like, how individual practitioners and communities of practice engage in them and, by doing this, hopefully illuminating whatever limited room for manoeuvre individuals may have open to them.
wow, a wonderful elucidation of your research interests and its future challenges.
ReplyDeleteYou ask 'where is the agency of the individual?' and your description of cricketing practice makes it plain that there isn't a great deal of room for individual influence on existing practices, but there might be some.
The question this raises for me is: surely individuals can invent new games, rather than trying to tweak the old game of cricket? ... they would be marginal and would not have the trappings of social ties, shared culture etc, but they would be creating new practices. For me, this is the analogy of green niches, marginal to the mainstream economy/culture/socio-technical regime, created by empowered actors in the hope of establishing new sets of practices through new types of stuff/ideas/skills. I haven't worked out how this maps onto your three-fold dimensions of stuff/ideas/skills, but I'm sure there's a link there.
So for me there is agency because these alternative visions are all set up by people with a vision of doing things differently. And some of them achieve it, they do create alternative infrastructures/cultures/competencies and slowly these become the establishment, in some guise or other. So isn;t that one powerful, albeit often fringe, example of individual agency?
Hi Gill,
ReplyDeleteYes I reckon you're right, and this is what I tried to show in my thesis - that in groups it is possible to challenge the inter-relationships between elements of practices, insert a bit of environmental-jam and effectively create new pro-environmental practices. BUT...as I also showed in the thesis it's then incredibly difficult for these collectives to get these new practices accepted - once they are unleashed (as it were) into the world of existing practices they tend to get hybridised, creolised, localised and can tend to lose their critical edge. This is why we need more of a politics of practices I'd have thought.
If I was beinga bit more Foucauldian about this, I guess I might also say that these 'new practices' are in fact 'oppositional practices' and, as such, derive at least in part from the practices they seek to unsettle and replace (a sort of ' resistance is part of power' argument). The interesting thing then becomes looking for the cracks in existing practices, how they form and how they might be widened and filled-in with something new, and this isn't necessarily to do with individual agents, but with changing configurations of power and discourse across society.
So, in short, I think I pretty much agree with what you're saying, but even with these examples of vision-inspired agency we need to be careful to witness their limits.