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Print Price: $38.50

Format:
Paperback
264 pp.
6.125" x 9.25"

ISBN-13:
9780190457211

Publication date:
February 2017

Imprint: OUP US

Distributed Agency

Edited by N. J. Enfield and Paul Kockelman

Series : Foundations of Human Interaction

Distributed Agency presents an interdisciplinary inroad into the latest thinking about the distributed nature of agency: what it's like, what are its conditions of possibility, and what are its consequences. The book's 25 chapters are written by a wide range of scholars, from anthropology, biology, cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, geography, law, economics, and sociology. While each chapter takes up different materials using different methods, they all chart relations between the key elements of agency: intentionality, causality, flexibility and accountability.

Each chapter seeks to explain how and why such relations are distributed-not just across individuals, but also across bodies and minds, people and things, spaces and times. To do this, the authors work through empirical studies of particular cases, while also offering reviews and syntheses of key ideas from the authors' respective research traditions. Our goals with this collection of essays are to assemble insights from new research on the anatomy of human agency, to address divergent framings of the issues from different disciplines, and to suggest directions for new debates and lines of research. We hope that it will be a resource for researchers working on allied topics, and for students learning about the elements of human-specific modes of shared action, from causality, intentionality, and personhood to ethics, punishment, and accountability.

Readership : Students and scholars in social sciences and cognitive sciences.

i. Contributors
ii. Preface
Part One: Agency as Flexible and Accountable Causality
1. Elements of Agency, N.J. Enfield
2. Distribution of Agency, N.J. Enfield
3. Gnomic Agency, Paul Kockelman
4. Semiotic Agents, Paul Kockelman
Part Two: Agency of Institutions and Infrastructure
5. Agency in State Agencies, Anya Bernstein
6. Upending Infrastructure in Revolutionary Egypt, Julia Elyachar
Part Three: Language and Agency
7. On Brain-to-Brain Interfaces, Distributed Agency and Language, Mark Dingemanse
8. Requesting as a Means for Negotiating Distributed Agency ,Simeon Floyd
9. Social Agency and Grammar, Giovanni Rossi and Jörg Zinken
10. Distributed Agency and Action under the Radar of Accountability, Jack Sidnell
Part Four: Economy and Agency
11. Distributed Agency and Debt in the Durational Ethics of Responsibility, Jane I. Guyer
12. Money as Token and Money as Record in Distributed Accounts, Bill Maurer
Part Five: Distributing Agency within Selves and Species
13. Distribution of Agency across Body and Self, Ruth Parry
14. Distributed Agency in Ants, Patrizia D'ettore
Part Six: Social Bonding through Embodied Agency
15. Group Exercise and Social Bonding, Emma Cohen
16. Social Bonding Through Dance and 'Musiking', Bronwyn Tarr
Part Seven: Agency and Infancy
17. Time Scales for Understanding the Agency of Infants and Caregivers, Joanna Raczaszek-Leonardi
18. Movement Synchrony, Joint Actions and Collective Agency in Infancy, Bahar Tunçgenç
Part Eight: The Agency of Materiality
19. The Agency of the Dead, Zoe Crossland
20. Distributed Agency in Play, Benjamin Smith
21. Contingency and the Semiotic Mediation of Distributed Agency, Eitan Wilf
Part Nine: The Place of Agency
22. Place and Extended Agency, Paul C. Adams
23. How Agency is Distributed through Installations, Saadi Lahlou
Part Ten: From Cooperation to Deception and Disruption
24. Cooperation and Social Obligations, David P. Schweikard
25. Deception as Exploitative Social Agency, Radu Umbres
26. Disrupting Agents, Distributing Agency, Charles H. P. Zuckerman

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

N.J. Enfield is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, Australia. Paul Kockelman teaches linguistic anthropology at Yale University.

Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin
Agency - Dr. Roderick Munday
Agency - Roderick Munday
Agent, Person, Subject, Self - Paul Kockelman
The Utility of Meaning - N. J. Enfield

Special Features

Uses an unusually multi-disciplinary approach to the latest thinking about the distributed nature of agency.
Case studies frequently illustrate theories.
Often demands moral accountability in relation to distributed causality and joint intentionality.
It is the most accessible interdisciplinary examination to date of the notion of distributed agency.