Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   N. J. Enfield (Professor and Chair of Linguistics, Professor and Chair of Linguistics, University of Sydney, Australia) ,  Paul Kockelman (Professor, Professor, Yale University)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.10cm
Weight:   0.431kg
ISBN:  

9780190457211

ISBN 10:   019045721
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   02 March 2017
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

i. Contributors ii. Preface Part One: Agency as Flexible and Accountable Causality Chapter 1. Elements of Agency N.J. Enfield Chapter 2. Distribution of Agency N.J. Enfield Chapter 3. Gnomic Agency Paul Kockelman Chapter 4. Semiotic Agents Paul Kockelman Part Two: Agency of Institutions and Infrastructure Chapter 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 Chapter 24. Cooperation and Social Obligations David P. Schweikard Chapter 25. Deception as Exploitative Social Agency Radu Umbres Chapter 26. Disrupting Agents, Distributing Agency Charles H. P. Zuckerman

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Author Information

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

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