Before I go further with this article, seeing as you’ve got past the title, I’d better define what I mean by “agency”. There are among other definitions, philosophical definitions of agency and sociological definitions of agency, but they both converge in the way that I would find useful for this conversation. They both imply the ability to take action, whereby the decision to take action and the direction or form in which this action is to take, is decided within the person we are referring to. The competing force is that of “structure”, and the structure within which the person operates acts among other things as a set of constraints or limitations, or even affords opportunities, most usually both.
For example, a school might have a certain level of formality or strictness, compared with another school, and this places limitations on the exercising of free will on the students (and teachers). If there are innate needs to rebel or act demonstratively the more constrained students might yet still exercise those needs, but they may be less practiced at them and therefore do it too well and too much. At a workplace, there might also be a certain level of formality or strictness, compared with other places to work. This, of course, places limitations on the happiness and sanity of the workers, who should not stand for this watered-down form of slavery, and should instead leave and find nicer jobs, leaving behind those out-of-date slave drivers to struggle by themselves. Or you might be employed in a nice place with a nice management, although hardly anyone actually is.
But what about whole countries or nations? They too have quite different structures, and it is interesting to see how the differences in nation state structures manifest in real differences in agency within the populace. Different countries have a different amount of “supplied” assistance or governance or rules that guide or constrain a person’s actions and behaviour. This could be seen to give rise to differences in agency as perceived by the nationals of various countries. Some nations try and place quite defined and delineated restrictions on behaviour and expression, and also on the level of detail of support, help or security. Variously, this could have an influence upon the collectiveness or individuality of the people of that nation.
In some countries, if you don’t have a job or income, you’re broke. In other countries, you might not be, you might have a layer of assistance. To give a tangible example, in some countries, there’s very clear definitions of where the road stops and the pavement begins, in other countries, there isn’t — the road just sort of “becomes” the pavement in a rough and ragged unfinished fashion. Does this mean that road safety is less? Perhaps not really, perhaps the responsibility of provision of safely acting shifts from the country or county into the individual. Some countries have a structure that is provident, which might substitute for action within the individual. Other countries simply don’t, which causes the individual to have to take action. However, the heroic success stories there that we would hear about can tend to mask the hidden failures that, if provided with help or support, could have demonstrated a difference. Is the structure that we find ourselves in more of an inadvertent ingredient in success than we usually consider?
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