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Agency, Structure, and the Life Course in the Era of Reflexive Modernization

Victor W. Marshall, Ph.D.

Professor, Dept. of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director,

University of North Carolina Institute on Aging

Address: UNC Institute on Aging, C.B.1030. 720 Airport Road, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

27599-1030; e-mail victor_marshall@unc.edu

Presented in a symposium on “The Life Course in the 21st Century”, American Sociological

Association meetings, Washington DC, August 2000. Slightly revised following presentation.

(Filename papers/asa.washington.agency.revised)

More than thirty years ago, as a graduate student, I received an insight into sociological theory

that bears on the issue I will address in this paper. Whether I was told this by a professor or

fellow graduate student, or perhaps read it myself, I cannot remember. If anyone can provide a

citation for it, I would be grateful. The insight is that every social theory, whether implicitly or

explicitly, has to have two main components – a way to deal with energy, and a way to deal with

direction. One metaphor for this is heating a house. You need to have a furnace, to produce heat.

But to understand the heating of a house you also have to account for direction – how and where

that warm air moves from the furnace, through ducts, to the various levels and rooms of the

house. Turning to social theory, the two easiest examples would be psychoanalytic thought and

symbolic interactionism. For Freud and his followers, the id is the furnace. It is the source of

energy. But that energy needs channeling, and the complexities of psychoanalysis provide an

explanation for how this energy is channeled into socially acceptable behavior (or not). In

symbolic interactionism, the “I”, acting in the dialectic of the self process, is conceptually

necessary if the perspective is to move beyond stasis to process. One variety of symbolic

interactionism, the Iowa School, downplays the “I” to focus on the “me” (which is akin to the

duct work in the furnace metaphor in steering behavior). In emphasizing the me, it loses the

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sense of process or dynamism that is such an important contribution of the symbolic

interactionist perspective.

Agency lies somewhere in the area of energy. The term has increasingly popped up in the

sociology of aging and the life course, but rarely is it defined or explored in great detail. Even

more rarely is agency measured. Is agency just a new name for something old, such as the

concept of action or the concept of voluntarism? Perhaps because of its increasingly popular

usage, I find the term agency to be used in conflicting ways. In stating my dissatisfaction, indeed

irritation with the loose and conflicting ways in which the term agency is being employed, I echo

Dannefer and Uhlenberg’s recent statement about the misuse of ‘choice’ in life course research

and theorizing:

In the study of action, choice is a problem to be analyzed, not an accomplishment to be

asserted (Dannefer, 1999). Given the problematic epistemological and ontological status

of “choice” in the wider social science literature .... its remarkably unproblematic

appearance in life course theory cannot be defended. What is almost always measured in

such discussions is behavior, and it is simply presumed that behavior is based on choice.

(Dannefer and Uhlenberg 1999: 312).

This constitutes, in these authors’ view, one of the three major ‘intellectual problems’ in

theorizing about the life course, 1 but it has also been recognized as a major problem for more

general sociological theory. Thus, Meyer and Jepperson (2000: 101) charge that “... there is more

abstract metatheory about ‘actors’ and their ‘agency’ than substantive arguments about the

topic.”

In this paper I want to bring together in one place some of the ways in which agency has been

used in the recent aging and life course literature, identify some of the problems I see with the

different ways it is used, and at least point in the direction of a resolution to these difficulties.

I want to begin by showing how the term agency has been used recently in the sociology of aging

and, more broadly, in sociological and human development versions of the life course

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perspective. I will progressively become more ‘sociological’ in the sense of drawing on

sociology of aging and life course work, and then more general sociological theory. Moving in

this way allows us to address certain questions that, for me at least, continue to niggle at me as I

think about, read, and indeed use, the term agency.

Agency and related concepts in human development and life course theory

Let me begin with a definition of agency from Glen Elder, who has been more specific than

anyone else in the aging and life course domain to define this concept. For Elder, agency is a

“principle”, one of a set of five defining principles of the life course. Here is the principle:

“Individuals construct their own life course through the choices and actions they take within the

opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstances” (Elder and Johnson, in press).

But this principle has a long history in developmental psychology and life course sociology. I

would therefore like to review a bit of that history.

Agency as production of a life

Of many arbitrary starting points,2 I will begin with a largely psychological publication in the

human development area. In the Foreword to Lerner and Busch-Rossnagel’s important edited

volume, Individuals as Producers of their Development: A Life-Span Perspective (1981),

sociologist Orville Brim notes that “The idea that organisms act to create environments to elicit

responses from themselves is not new.” However, Brim argues that the 1981 volume is the first

to treat the idea broadly and in the context of the theory of life-span development. While the

term, ‘agency’, does not seem to be used in the volume, the idea of agency is there. As Brim puts

it (1981: xv-xvi):

“Behind this idea, to be sure, is the view that the organism is dynamic, powered by

curiosity, growth, expansion, and a drive toward mastery over itself and its world; and

also by the development during the first two years of life of a sense of self as a distinctive

being, and the construction of images of future selves that are different from what one is

now. Behind the idea is also the view that organisms are open to change, are much more

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malleable than heretofore thought, and that the consequences of early experience and

biological endowment are transformed by later experience.”

A value of the Lerner and Busch-Rossnagel volume is in laying a broad foundation, from

psychology, evolutionary biology and anthropology, for a view that individuals are not only

produced by, but also produce their world. This work suggests that the capacity for organisms to

produce their own world varies both ontogenetically and phylogenetically. In terms of individual

human lives and ontogenetic development, the capacity to act on the world and to have greater

‘plasticity’ of function increases with human development, and this capacity can be described in

terms of physiological changes in the brain and, more broadly, the entire organism (Lerner and

Busch-Rossnagel, 1981b).3 I will turn to the sociological foundations of this same notion later,

but in the life course perspective, which is explicitly interdisciplinary, this is an important line of

theoretical reasoning related to the concept of agency, and one that continues to the present (e.g.

Diehl, 1999).

Still without using the term agency, in his forward to the volume Brim raises the possibility that

agency might be considered a variable as contrasted with simply an aspect of human nature – the

ability to choose: “Throughout this volume the subject is humanity and the concern is with the

species rather than with individual differences. Certainly there may be individual differences in

degree of mastery of, and re-creation of, the environment because of individually endowed or

acquired differences, but the idea refers to the main thrust of the human animal, not an

occasional remarkable human being” (Brim, 1981: xvi).

Agency as environmental proactivity or adaptation

There has been another line of research in psychology, at times related to the exploration of

Erikson’s developmental framework, but also developed by Lawton (1989), Kahana and Kahana

(1996) in the area of person-environment fit, which either explicitly uses the concept of agency

or uses related terms that are themselves conceptualized in terms of agency, and which considers

agency to be a variable, and measurable, property of individuals. Lawton (1989), whose earlier

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work on person-environment fit and the ‘environmental docility hypothesis’ viewed the

individual as largely reactive to environmental limitations and pressures, subsequently

introduced the hypothesis of ‘environmental proactivity’, to recognize ‘action and agency – the

person’s competence as a determinant of environment’ (Lawton, 1989: 140).

In a recent paper that builds somewhat on Lawton’s conceptualization, Kahana and Kahana

(1996) used the term agency in a paper promoting the concept of ‘proactive adaptation’. Here is

what they say: “Dependency models of aging have emphasized the propensity of older adults to

be passive respondents to environmental influences.... However, there has been a small but

growing group of gerontological researchers who have recognized that older persons can play

significant proactive roles and behave in ways that draw upon and can generate resources in their

environment (Lawton, 1989). This orientation parallels theoretical developments in the broader

field of sociology (Giddens, 1983) that increasingly recognize the role of agency, reflecting

progress, intentionality, and responsibility in the actions of human beings.”

Agency as masculine trait

The term agency has been directly used in a recent article by psychologists investigating the

relationship between agency and Eriksonian ‘generativity’. These psychologists measure agency

as both as a psychological trait, and a characterization of behavior (Ackerman, Zuroff and

Moskowitz, (2000). Although an independent definition of the construct, agency, was not given,

the conceptualization relates it to ‘masculine’ as opposed to ‘feminine’ traits and behavior. The

self-report measure of agency is based on the measurement of psychological traits through Likert

scales to assess ‘self-assertive-instrumental traits’ versus ‘interpersonal-expressive traits’. These

generate ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ scores which are considered to represent agency

(masculine) or communion (feminine). An alternative adjective rating scale contrasts ‘love’ and

‘status’, the latter includes a domain “from dominance to submission and is thought to represent

agency” (Ackerman et al., 2000: 30). Behaviorally, self-described behaviors were coded on four

dimensions: dominance and submission, and agreeableness and quarrelsomeness. Dominance

minus submissiveness is considered to represent agency, while agreeableness minus

quarrelsomeness is considered to represent ‘communion’. Agency, measured in these ways, in

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implicated in predicting generativity (as conceptualized by Erikson), and this relationship, the

authors speculate, is because “creating is a primarily agentic form of generativity”, such that

“highly agentic individuals manifest generative concern focused on creating...” (Ackerman et al.,

2000: 37).4 In this psychological formulation, it is clear that agency is considered to be a variable

trait of the individual.

The issue of measurement of agency, an issue which is boldly addressed in the article by

Ackerman et al., cannot be dismissed. For example George (1999), who is sympathetic to an

‘agentic’ perspective on the self in relation to society, points out that “Researchers typically

assume that behavior observed in natural settings is triggered by self-perceptions and self-related

motives, but that view remains more assumption or interpretation than documented fact” (George,

1999: 47). George is here arguing that the aspect of agency asserted by many, often qualitative,

researchers is nothing but the invocation of an unmeasured, hypothetical construct. The construct

is inferred from the behavior that it is presumed to cause. If Ackerman’s measurement approach is

problematic (as it seems to me), this may be more in its execution than its intent.

Agency as making possible ‘loose coupling” (agency as ‘unexplained variance’)

Let us return to Glen Elder. In 1984, Elder noted that “An agentic concept of individuals in

shaping their own trajectory has been a central principle of the life course framework. Indeed,

Elder has made it so. He notes that notions of human agency have characterized ‘life history’

studies at least since the classic study of the Polish peasant in Europe and America, by Thomas

and Znaniecki (1918-20; Elder, 1997; Elder and Johnson, in press). Elder sees agency as

important in selection processes5: “Within the constraints of their world, competent people are

planful and make choices among alternatives that form and can recast their life course” (Elder,

1997: 964-5). Agency refers to choices among available options, and Elder relates this to his

concept of ‘loose coupling’: “Loose coupling reflects the agency of people even in constrained

situations as well as their accomplishments in rewriting their journeys in the course of aging”

(Elder, 1997: 965). Constraint is accounted for, in Elder’s formulation of the life course

perspective, by “The principle of historical time and place: The life course of individuals is

embedded in and shaped by the historical times and places they experience over their lifetime”

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(Elder and Johnson, in press). Elder’s own work has emphasized the impact of the depression and

WW II as structuring choices. Agency can only manifest itself through choice, and choice is

possible only if there are alternatives. In a current paper (Elder and Johnson, in press), Elder cites

John Hagan’s (in press) account of Vietnam draft avoiders whose lives changed markedly only

because Canada was available as an alternate choice to military service.

In Elder’s usage, agency makes possible ‘loose coupling’, which in turn is a ‘principle’ of life

course theory that makes room for departures from structure. In a way, agency functions in this

theoretical perspective in the same way that ‘unexplained variance’ functions in statistical models:

if behavior is not patterned structurally, then it must reflect resistance to structure. As Elder and

O’Rand put it, “Loose coupling reflects the agency of individuals even in constrained situations as

well as their achievements in rewriting past journeys in the course of aging” (Elder and O’Rand,

1995: 456). The relationship of agency to structure is complex for Elder. Agency is presumably

necessary if individuals are to operate either within or outside the boundaries of social structure.

As Elder and O’Rand put it, “Age grades and loose coupling exemplify two sides of the adult life

course – its social regulation and the actor’s behavior within conventional boundaries, and even

outside of them.

Agency as overcoming resistance

While Elder seems to argue that humans always exercise agency (from which we might infer

agency is a property of human nature), the way in which Elder describes agency sometimes leaves

the implication that it is manifested only at critical turning points of the life course, or in

resistance to the established social order. I will first deal with the latter: agency as overcoming

resistence. Thus, Elder argues that loose coupling reflects the antithesis of age grading, and that

the agency involved in loose coupling exemplifies “the actor’s initiatives and interpretations that

press for individuality and deviations from convention” (Elder, 1997: 965. This would imply that

agency is not exemplified if someone follows convention, complies with social norms or social

control pressures, or leads a life in conformity with social institutions. This is a much narrower

view of agency than Giddens, for example, argues. The same view is found in Heinz (1996: 57),

who notes that while biography is constructed with guidance from “institutional standards and the

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unequal distribution of resources for building continuous life paths”, “Such limitations must not

be seen as fateful constraints, they can be overcome by human agency.”6

In setting agency as against social structure, Elder and others adopt a specific, and questionable

stance, about the link between the individual and social structure. This point has been vigorously

made by Dannefer and Uhlenberg, and can also be pursued through Giddens, Gubrium and others.

Dannefer links agency in a fundamental way to the processes of world construction without which

there would be no social system. As he puts it (1999: 73), “... human behavior is purposeful; it is

not guided by instincts but by intentions (Weber, 1978).” The interaction of intentional actors co-

produces the social system at both micro and macro levels and the self-hood or social (human)

nature of the actors themselves (Dannefer 1999).7

Agency as evidenced in life transitions

Moreover, at times in Elder’s writings, agency is indicated not in the smooth flow or the routines

of everyday life, but in life’s more dramatic moments, moments of transition rather than of

continuity, even if the notion of resistance is not implied. This theme runs through Elder’s work.

Thus, “No idea better illustrates the contemporary link between social context and the agency of

the individual than the concept of life transition, which defines the problem as a change in states –

social and psychological. Adults bring a history of life experiences to each transition, interpret the

new circumstances in terms of this legacy, and work out adaptations that can alter their life

course. When transitions disrupt habitual patterns of behavior, they provide options for new

directions in life, a turning point” (Elder and O’Rand, 1995: 456). This notion that agency is

found only at transition points or, as Giddens (1991: 113) calls, them, “fateful moments”8, or the

related notion that it is found only in resistance to social barriers, is at odds with the notion that

agency is a property of human nature. Three different notions of agency are found, I believe, in

Elder’s work (capacity, resistance, transition), leading to the question of whether different terms

should be used to more clearly indicate these three meanings.

Agency as responsibility

As the last in this long list of usages of agency, let us turn to the notion of ‘being an agent’ for

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someone or something. While this is perhaps the most common-sensical, lay-usage meaning of

agency, it is little found in life course studies. Myers and Jepperson (2000) have recently provided

a detailed theoretical examination of the social construction of agency, in which they argue that

the modern actor is a cultural construction and is “... an authorized agent for various interests

(including those of the self) (Myers and Jepperson, 2000: 101). For them, agency is “legitimated

representation of some legitimated principal, which may be an individual, an actual or potential

organization, a nation-state, or abstract principles.... the concept ‘agency’ draws attention to the

devolution of external authority, and to the external legitimation and chartering of activity”

(Myers and Jepperson, 2000, note 2). So, I can act as an agent for someone else or someone else

can act as my agent. But I can also be constructed as having authority to act for myself, to be my

own agent, to act on behalf of my self. This may be formulated in terms of the I-me distinction

found in G. H. Mead and symbolic interactionism (as the authors acknowledge, p. 111). In life-

course parlance, Elder and O’Rand (1995: 465) note that “... people function as agents of their

own life course and development”.

Moreover, Myers and Jepperson maintain, in the modern world I am more and more called upon

to assume such agency, in large measure because of a decline in the attribution of agency to

spiritual forces: “Some agency is built into modern pictures of the agentic authority and

responsibility of the state and other organizations; much devolves to the modern individual, who

is empowered with more and more godlike authority and vision” (Myers and Jepperson, 2000:

105). This notion of agency therefore extends to ‘being responsible for your self’, in which case it

points to the reflexivity of the self – taking responsibility for the self as object. In my own work

(Marshall 1980) I have used the metaphor of authorship in this way, seeing the aging-and-dying

individual as if he or she is assuming authorship for the life-that-has-been-lived, as the chapters of

the life move inexorably to the last chapter in which death comes.

In summary, I have reviewed many ways in which the concept of agency, either directly so named

or denoted by a closely related term, has enriched life course and aging studies. In a very general

way, agency has been seen as the production of a life. The agent is the producer; human

development, the lived life, the narrative, is produced by agency. In more specific formulations

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along the same lines, agency has been viewed in terms of environmental proactivity or adaptation.

This recognizes that people not only react but act and, in acting, produce their biographical selves.

Agency has also, in one study at least, been seen as a masculine trait– doing rather than being,

taking charge, making things happen. This is clearly not logically consistent with the previously

discussed notions, which can all be grouped as making an assertion about the nature of being

human. Rather, it postulates that agency is a variable property of humans, albeit one much more

often found among men than women.

In the most widely accepted theoretical statements about the life course, by Elder and those who

have adopted his language, agency has been seen as the force making possible ‘loose coupling’,

thereby somehow accounting for the fact that all people do not follow standardized,

institutionalize life courses. But I question whether this adds anything to an explanation. Is it not

the same as depicting ‘unexplained variance’ in multivariate models? One can draw a ‘causal

arrow’ to show where variance is unexplained, but the arrow emanates from something

unexplained. If you push that kind of argument too far you end up with unexplained variance as

the ‘uncaused cause’, which St Thomas Aquinas argued was proof for the existence of God.

While the above usages of agency are quite general, some uses are highly specific, referring to

agency only if the individual is overcoming or resisting social structural barriers, or only if the

behavior of the individual is with respect to a major or important life transition. In such

formulations, people would not be ‘agentic’ most of the time but only at critical points in their

lives.

And finally, I noted the usage which suggests agency refers to culturally legitimated

responsibility to act – on behalf of others, of organizations or ideas, or of one’s own self. This is

quite a general conceptualization of agency but more restricted than the first ones, which would

view the capacity to act as agency, regardless of its cultural or social legitimation. This usage of

the concept of agency also treats it as a variable, and the authors I drew on specifically trace a

historical shift of agency from spiritual forces to institutions and to individuals.

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Making Sense of Agency: Toward Terminological Clarity

To summarize, I have noted that the term agency has many meanings in the sociology of aging

and the life course. I find it generally useful to use specific terms for specific meanings. It may be

necessary to distinguish between four different sorts of things: (1) the human capacity to make a

choice, that is, to be intentional; (2) the resources within the individual or at the command of the

individual that can be brought to bear in intentional or agentic behavior; (3) behavior of

individuals that reflects intention; and (4) the social and physical structuring of choices. As I turn

to elaborate on these, I note that each of these four constructs has a metaphorical place in the

analogy of the furnace that I used to open these reflections.

By the first, I mean that a social theorist may propose that a capacity to exercise choice is a

fundamental aspect of human nature. In terms of the metaphor, this corresponds to the physical

fact of the furnace. Without the furnace there is no capacity to heat the houuse. This is not to deny

that this capacity develops in the human over time. Such a capacity would include awareness and

thus require cognitive capacities to give identity to objects and events in the world. Clausen calls

“planful competence” the ability to make informed, rational decisions and set realistic short- and

long-term goals (1991, in Settersten and Lovegreen, 1998). This can be seen as agency in this first

sense and it can be viewed as a developmental capacity of (virtually) all humans.9 I recommend

using the term agency in this way, to refer to the human capacity (as aspect of what it is to be

human) to act intentionally, planfully and reflexively and in a temporal or biographical mode.

Except in explicitly developmental work, most life course researchers would not need to treat or

measure this as a variable. Rather, it is an assumption about human nature, of the order, “all

human beings have free will”.

By the second construct, the resources that can be brought to bear in agentic behavior, I refer to

both personal capacities of the individual and resources at his or her command. Metaphorically,

this corresponds to the fuel for the furnace. Some furnaces might have more, or better, fuel than

others. Personal capacities might be intelligence or stage of cognitive development, learned skills

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or abilities, knowledge, or physical strength and talent. Resources might be economic (wealth),

social (social capital, networks, contractual or informal social ties and alliances). I do not think it

is helpful to use the term agency to describe this variable property, which is better called

resources or perhaps assets. Resources can be measured, although with care to include those

‘within’ the individual (e.g., education), and external to the individual but at his or her ‘command’

(e.g., social capital).

By the third, the actual behavior that reflects intention, I refer to what has been called ‘action’ or

‘voluntaristic action’ or ‘social action’ by a host of sociologists who rarely used the term,

‘agency’. I think the term, ‘action’ is appropriate here although I have a trained incapacity, as a

sociologist, to conceive of action as other than social (but see Campbell, 1996). This term is itself

manifestly used in various contradictory ways, as Colin Campbell (1996), Derek Layder (1994)

and others have shown, but I think it will be useful if specified in this way. In terms of the furnace

metaphor, this construct would be captured by adjusting or programming the thermostat.

By the fourth, the social and physical structuring of choices I refer to the de facto structure of

opportunities or life chances that is open within the range of action of the actor. Metaphorically,

the construct corresponds to the duct work, the degree of insulation, the leaky windows, and other

structural aspects that pose barriers to effective home heating – regardless of how good the

furnace, the fuel and the thermostat. The concept of ‘life chances’ (Dahrendorf, 1979; Weber,

1978) is useful here, so long as it is recognized that life chances are not static but emanate from

social processes. It is useful to emphasize the co-constitution of self and society, through which

action creates social structure just as social structure constrains, or opens up, possibilities for

choice and, thereby, ‘structures’ action. A large number of life course theorists have enjoined

their colleagues to avoid theorizing ‘agency without structure” or “structure without agency”

(George, 1999; Ryff, Marshall and Clarke, 1999; McMullin and Marshall, 1999; Marshall, 1995,

1996; Settersten , 1999: 223). The broader challenge is to theoretically address the linkages

between agency and structure or self and society (Campbell, 1996; Layder, 1994; Ryff and

Marshall, 1999).10 Moreover, if agency is difficult to define, so too is social structure (Alwin,

1995).11 But that problem is beyond my present concerns.

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Risk and the Era of Reflexive Modernization

Walter Heinz (1996: 56) links agency to the era of reflexive modernization through the concept of

risk and risk management: “The metaphor of trajectory lead us to the idea that the sequential order

of the life course in not really a linear movement, it is rather shaped by the coordinating efforts of

individuals and their activities of self-monitoring and risk management at transitions and turning

points of their biographies.” He introduces the concept of the ‘biographical actor’:

“This concept integrates a person’s life history and life perspective, her perceived options

and situational circumstances. It constitutes a complex and constructive frame for life

course decisions. Biographical action refers to the fact that individuals attempt to link their

experiences to transitional decisions and that they interpret their options not only in

respect to subjective utilities and social norms, but in terms of the legacy of their personal

past. Biographical action is the central contribution of individuals in negotiating status

passages with institutions and social networks, for example at exit and entry processes

between old and new status configurations.” (Heinz, 1996: 56).

For Heinz, this is possible because of agency. Heinz offers little on agency per se but I believe he

sees agency as a capacity without which biographical action could not exist. The Bremen research

center, where Heinz and others have conducted an active program of life course research,

explicitly takes the risk society into account through its title: “Status Passages and Risks in the

Life Course”. Heinz argues that agency will be exercised more with increasing societal

modernization: “The more the control over a status passage shifts to individuals the more they

have the possibility for selecting pathways and for proceeding through transitions with adjusted

speed .... In the process of societal modernization completely scheduled status passages will

decline in importance. They will become conditional and open to negotiations between

biographical actors and institutional gatekeepers” (Heinz, 1996: 60). Levy (1996:97) makes the

same point in this way: “ In the light of the historically growing bureaucratization of a large

number of social services ... it appears that status passages are increasingly disconnected from the

passagees’ immediate social environment and its dynamics, and connected to more abstract,

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‘universalistic’ criteria, such as chronological age”. Levy sees this situation as leading to

‘incoherent’ status passages, which will increasingly be experienced as constraints rather than as

gratifying. Other life course theorists (e.g., Settersten, 1999: 61-4) would encourage institutional

change so as to increase life course flexibility.

The notion of the risk society has gained increasing popularity in social theory (Lupton, 1999). As

Giddens puts it (1991: 109), “To live in the universe of high modernity is to live in an

environment of chance and risk, the inevitable concomitants of a system geared to the domination

of nature and the reflexive making of history.” As Giddens and others (see especially Lupton,

1999, introduction) note, the perception or experience of risk has little to do with actual risks.

With high modernity we have contained many risks that literally ‘plagued’ people in earlier

societies; and even the risk of nuclear annihilation has probably diminished since the peak of the

cold war; yet the experience of risk has to do with the anticipated future (the ‘colonization of the

future’ for Giddens); and here, we also have an increase in social institutions to handle risk

(Giddens notes a tremendous variety of examples such as insurance , the health care system, the

stock market and seat belts , all of which institutionalize or manage risk (Giddens, 1991: 115-

117). Giddens point, he emphasizes, is not that the actors of late modernity experience less de

facto risk than those of earlier eras, but rather that “thinking in terms of risk and risk assessment is

a more or less ever-present exercise” in late modernity; and that “The risk climate of modernity is

thus unsettling for everyone; no one escapes” (Giddens, 1991: 124).

Giddens’ most explicit contribution to understanding the life course is his book, Modernity and

Self-Identity (1991a). In the index, under ‘agent’ it says, “see action”. Drawing in part on Schutz,

Giddens defines “action or agency as the stream of actual or contemplated causal interventions of

corporeal beings in the ongoing process of events-in-the-world” (Giddens, 1993: 81). To my

mind, this definition corresponds to ‘action’ or ‘social action’ as I have noted it above, and not to

agency as a property of human nature. In Giddens’ theorizing, the era of late modernity is one in

which agency makes possible the actions required to fashion together biographies with enough

coherence to support feelings of ontological security for the individual, and to support concerted

social action among individuals.

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Elder, Glen H. Jr., and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson (in press). The life course and aging: Challenges, lessons, and new directions. Elder, Glen H. Jr., and Angela O’Rand (1995). Adult lives in a changing society. Ch. 17, pp. 452-475 in K.S. Cook, G.A. Fine and J.S. House (Eds.), Sociological Perspectives on Social Psychology. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. George, Linda (1999). Social perspectives on the self in later life. Ch. 2, pp. 42-66 in Carol D. Ryff and Victor W. Marshall (eds.), The Self and Society in Aging Processes. New York: Springer. Giddens, Anthony (1991a). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Giddens, Anthony (1991b). New Rules of Sociological Method, 2nd Edition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Giddens, Anthony (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Giddens, Anthony (1983). Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gubrium, Jaber F., James A. Holstein and David R. Buckholdt (1994). Constructing the Life Course. Dix Hills, NY: General Hall. Hagan, John (in press). Northern Passage: The Lives of American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heinz, Walter R. (1996). Status passages as micro-macro linkages in life course research. Pp. 51-65 in Ansgar Weymann and Walter R. Heinz (Eds.), Society and Biography: Interrelationships between Social Structure, Institutions and the Life Course. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag. Kahana, Eva, and Boaz Kahana (1996). Conceptual and empirical advances in understanding aging well through proactive adaptation. Ch. 2, pp. 18-40 in Vern L. Bengtson (Ed.), Adulthood and Aging: Research on Continuities and Discontinuities. New York: Springer. Kastenbaum, Robert (1992). The creative process: A life-span approach” Ch. 12, pp. 285-306, in Thomas R. Cole, David D. Van Tassel, and Robert Kastenbaum (Eds.), Handbook of the Humanities and Aging. New York: Springer. Layder, Derek (1994). Understanding Social Theory. London: Sage. Lawton, M. Powell (1989). Environmental proactivity and affect in older people. In S. Spacapan and S. Askamp (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Aging (pp. 135-163). Newbury Park: Sage.

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Lerner, Richard M., and Busch-Rossnagel, N.A. (Eds.) (1981a). Individuals as Producers of their Development: A Life-Span Perspective. New York: Academic Press. Lerner, Richard M., and Busch-Rossnagel, N.A, (1981b). Individuals as producers of their own development: Conceptual and empirical bases. Ch 1, pp. 1-36, in R.M. Lerner and N.A. Busch-Nagel (Eds.) Individuals as Producers of their Development: A Life-Span Perspective. New York: Academic Press. Levy, René (1996). Toward a theory of life course institutionalization. Pp. 83-108 in Ansgar Weymann and Walter R. Heinz (Eds.), Society and Biography: Interrelationships Between Social Structure, Institutions and the Life Course. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag. Marshall, Victor W. (1996. The state of theory in aging and the social sciences. Pp. 12-30 in Robert H. Binstock and Linda George (Eds.), Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, 4th Edition. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Marshall, Victor W. (1995). The micro-macro link in the sociology of aging. Pp. 337-371 in Cornelia Hummel and Christian Lalive D’Epinay (Eds.), Images of Aging in Western Societies. Geneva: Centre for Interdisciplinary Gerontology, University of Geneva. Marshall, Victor W. (1980). Last Chapters: A Sociology of Aging and Dying. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. McMullin, Julie A., and Victor W. Marshall (1999). Structure and agency in the retirement process: A case study of Montreal garment workers. Ch. 11, pp. 305-338 in Carol D. Ryff and Victor W. Marshall (Eds.), The Self and Society in Aging Processes. New York: Springer. Meyer, John W., and Ronald L. Jepperson (2000). The “actors” of modern society: The cultural construction of social agency. Sociological Theory 18 (1): 100-120. O’Rand, Angela, and Richard T. Campbell (1999). On reestablishing the phenomenon and specifying ignorance: Theory development and research design in aging. Ch. 4, pp. 59-78 in Vern L. Bengtson and K. Warner Schaie (Eds.), Handbook of Theories of Aging. New York: Springer. Riegel, Klaus R. (1975). Toward a dialectical theory of development. Human Development 18: 50-64. Riegel, Klaus R. (1976). The dialectics of human development. American Psychologist 31: 689-700. Ryff, Carol D., and Victor W. Marshall (Eds.), (1999) The Self and Society in Aging Processes. New York: Springer. Ryff, Carol D., Victor W. Marshall and Philippa Clarke (1999). Linking the self and society in social gerontology: Crossing new territory via old questions. Pp. 3-41 in Carol D. Ryff and Victor W. Marshall (Eds.), (1999) The Self and Society in Aging Processes. New York: Springer.

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Endnotes

1.The other two problems are “(1) a tendency to equate the significance of social forces with social change, (2) a neglect of intracohort variability...” (Dannefer and Uhlenberg, 1999: 309).

2. Another beginning point might well be the work of the late Klaus Riegel (e.g., 1975; see Lerner and Busch-Rossnagel 1981b for a brief discussion of his contributions in this area)

3. The work of Piaget is grounded in, and empirically supports, such a notion, with the individual seen as actively seeking novelty so that, through accommodation, schemata will change so as to permit assimilation, enabling increasing mastery of one’s environment.

4. It may be instructive to examine creativity across the life course in light of agency and developmental theory. See Kastenbaum, 1992).

5. On this point he is criticized by Dannefer, 1999.

6. At this point Heinz is in fact drawing on Giddens (1984), but elsewhere in Giddens the notion of agency is much more broadly drawn. I discuss this below.

7.This conceptualization seems to include agency as an aspect of human nature. However, in the same article, Dannefer treats agency as a variable. Elaborating on a case described by Gubrium, Holstein and Buckholdt (1994), of a child labeled as low in ability and placed in the lowest of three ability groups, Dannefer shows how labeling creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps this child in his place. Here is how Dannefer interprets this situation:

“Even when the outcome is positive ... what is being described here is a social system process in which the labelled individual participates in a subordinate manner. Thus, the agentic force of the individuals in question, including the positively labelled individual is, in principle, no more in evidence in the case of positive than negative labelling. This raises the question of whether and how genuine human agency might be augmented – a question that, in any domain, is ultimately political.” (Dannefer, 1999: 78).

8. Giddens contrasts ‘fateful moments’ with daily routines of life. “Fateful moments are those when individuals are called on to take decisions that are particularly consequential for their ambitions or more generally for their future lives. Fateful moments are highly consequential for a person’s destiny”.

9. I limit the statement as this is not the place to consider whether persons born with limited or no cognitive capacity are fully human.

10. This task is related to but quite distinct from the conceptual and methodological challenges of

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linking ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ levels of analysis, which challenges are addressed absent the notion of individual agency. See, for example, Collins, 1992; Heinz, 1996; Marshall, 1995; O’Rand and Campbell, 1999).

11. Alwin (1995: 217) observes of a panel that tried to define it: “There was little theoretical consensus on what structure was and a confusion of meanings, but virtually everyone agreed that the conceptual apparatus conveyed by the concept of social structure was what made that sociological contribution to the study of individual lives a possibility”. The same cannot be said of agency or even of action, as there are sociologists, such as some structuralists, who argue such concepts are not needed.