Skip to main content

Introduction: Privilege, Agency and Affect — Understanding the Production and Effects of Action

  • Chapter
Privilege, Agency and Affect

Abstract

This book emerges from our longstanding interest in understanding and finding ways to promote more equitable practices between people and through institutions. In research projects and other activities, we have examined relationships from the most intimate of levels (in sexuality, gender violence, alcohol and substance use, and in sexual health research) to those relationships which are structured institutionally (relationships between adults and young people, health practices within schools, and the intersections between gender, social class and schooling). In several different studies, we have sought to conceptualise how ‘agency’ functions not only at an individual but also at a more collective level. Much of this work has involved consideration of how agency is shaped by broader structures as well as how agentic practices affect, challenge, or are subsumed by wider discourses, relations of power and the resources people operate with, and within.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Adkins, L. (2003) Reflexivity — freedom or habit of gender? Theory, Culture and Society, 20 (6), 21–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ahearn, L. M. (2001) Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Archer, M. S. (2000) Being Human: The problem of agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ball, S. J., & Vincent, C. (2007) Education, class fractions and the local rules of spatial relations. Urban Studies, 44 (7), 1175–1189.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ball, S. J., Vincent, C., Kemp, S., & Pietikainen, S. (2004) Middle class fractions, childcare and the ‘relational’ and ‘normative’ aspects of class practices. The Sociological Review, 54 (4), 478–502.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, B. (2000) Understanding Agency — Social Theory and Responsible Action. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein, B. (1977) Class, Codes and Control. Volume 3. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackman, L., Cromby, J., Hook, D., Papadopoulos, D., & Walkerdine, V. (2008) Creating subjectivities. Subjectivities, 22 (1), 1–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Block, D. (2012) Unpicking agency in sociolinguistic research with migrants. In M. Martin-Jones & S. Gardner (Eds), Multilingualism, Discourse and Ethnography (pp. 47–61). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braidotti, R. (2003) Becoming woman: Or sexual difference revisited. Theory, Culture and Society, 20 (3), 43–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. (1997) Excitable Speech: A politics of the performative. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, C. (2009) Distinguishing the power of agency from agentic power: A note on Weber and the ‘black box’ of personal agency. Sociological Theory, 27 (4), 407–418.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clegg, S. (2006) The problem of agency in feminism: A critical realist approach. Gender & Education, 18 (3), 309–324.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clegg, S. (2008) Femininities/masculinities and a sense self: Thinking gendered academic identities and the intellectual self. Gender & Education, 20(3), 209–221.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clough, P. T. (2008) The affective turn. Political economy, biomedia and bodies. Theory, Culture & Society, 25 (1), 1–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coole, D. (2005) Rethinking agency: A phenomenological approach to embodiment and agentic capacities. Political Studies, 53 (1), 124–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooley, C. H. (1964) Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Schocken Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davey, G. (2012) Beyond a binary model of students’ educational decision-making. Sociological Research Online, 17 (3).

    Google Scholar 

  • DeLissovoy, N. (2010) Rethinking education and emancipation: Being, teaching, and power. Harvard Educational Review, 80 (2), 203–220.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DeLissovoy, N. (2012) Education and violation: Conceptualizing power, domination, and agency in the hidden curriculum. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15 (4), 463–484.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998) What is agency? The American Journal of Sociology, 103 (4), 962–1023.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraser, N. (1997) Justice Interruptus. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2009) The Best of the Best: Becoming elite at an American boarding school. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillespie, D., Ashbaugh, L., & Defiore, J. (2002) White women teaching white women about white privilege, race cognizance and social action: Toward a pedagogical pragmatics. Race Ethnicity and Education, 5 (3), 237–253.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, L., & Ellingson, L. (2006) In the eyes of the beholder: Student interpretations of sexuality lessons. Sex Education, 6 (3), 251–264.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, T., Holland, J., Lahelma, E., & Thomson, R. (2008) Young female citizens in education: Emotions, resources and agency. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 16 (2), 177–191.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grosz, E. (1994) Volatile Bodies: Towards a corporeal feminism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hatchell, H. (2004) Privilege of whiteness: Adolescent male students’ resistance to racism in an Australian classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 7 (2), 99–114.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hey, V. (2006) The politics of performative resignification: Translating Judith Butler’s theoretical discourse and its potential for a sociology of education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27 (4), 439–458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Honneth, A. (1995) The Struggle for Recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howard, A. (2008) Learning Privilege: Lessons ofpower and identity in affluent schooling. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ivinson, G. (2012) The body and pedagogy: Beyond absent, moving bodies in pedagogic practice. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33 (4), 489–506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, S., & Scott, S. (2010) Rehabilitating Interactionism for a feminist sociology of sexuality. Sociology, 44 (5), 811–826.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keddie, A., & Williams, N. (2012) Mobilising spaces of agency through genealogies of race and gender: Issues of indigeneity, marginality and schooling. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(3), 291–309.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kenway, J., & Youdell, D. (2011) The emotional geographies of education: Beginning a conversation. Emotion, Space and Society, 4(3), 131–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khan, S. R. (2011) Privilege: The making of an adolescent elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maxwell, C., & Aggleton, P. (2010a) Agency in action — young women and their sexual relationships in a private school. Gender & Education, 22(3), 327–343.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maxwell, C., & Aggleton, P. (2010b) The bubble of privilege. Young, privately educated women talk about social class. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(1), 3–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maxwell, C., & Aggleton, P. (2012a) Bodies and agentic practice in young women’s sexual and intimate relationships. Sociology, 46(2), 306–321.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maxwell, C., & Aggleton, P. (2012b, December) Privileging orientations: Young women, families and private education. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education, University of Sydney.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maxwell, C., & Aggleton, P. (2013a) Becoming accomplished: Concerted cultivation among privately educated young women. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 21(1), 75–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maxwell, C., & Aggleton, P. (2013b) Middle class young women: Agentic sexual subjects? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(7), 848–865 McIntosh, P. (1990) White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, Winter.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNay, L. (2000) Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the subject in feminist and social theoty. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNay, L. (2008) Beyond Recognition. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, K. S. (2008) Class formations. Competing forms of black middle-class identity. Ethnicities, 8(4), 492–517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Radley, A. (1995) The elusory body and social constructionist theory. Body and Society, 1(2), 3–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reay, D. (2005) Beyond consciousness? The psychic landscape of social class. Sociology, 39(5), 911–928.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reay, D., Crozier, G., & James, D. (2011) White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Renold, E., & Ringrose, J. (2008) Regulation and rupture: Mapping tween and teenage girls’ resistance to the heterosexual matrix. Feminist Theory, 9(3), 335–360.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ringrose, J. (2007) Rethinking white resistance: Exploring the discursive practices and psychical negotiations of ‘whiteness’ in feminist, anti-racist education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 10(3), 323–344.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ringrose, J., & Renold, E. (2010) Normative cruelties and gender deviants: The performative effects of bully discourses for girls and boys in school. British Educational Research Journal, 36(4), 573–596.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shilling, C. (2004) Physical capital and situated action: A new direction for corporeal sociology. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(4), 473–487.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skeggs, B. (2004a) Class, Self Culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skeggs, B. (2004b) Exchange, value and affect: Bourdieu and ‘the self’. The Sociological Review, 52(2 (supplement)), 75–95.

    Google Scholar 

  • Solomon, P. R., Portelli, J. P., Daniel, B.-J., & Campbell, A. (2005) The discourse of denial: How white teacher candidates construct race, racism and ‘white privilege’. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(2), 147–169.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stefansen, K., & Aarseth, H. (2011) Enriching intimacy: The role of the emotional in the ‘resourcing’ of middle-class children. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(3), 389–405.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevens, M. L. (2009) Creating a Class: College admissions and the education of elites. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tawney, R. H. (1931) Equality. London: Allen and Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, B. S. (2008) The Body and Society: Explorations in social theory (3rd ed.). London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vincent, C., Rollock, N., Ball, S., & Gillborn, D. (2012) Being strategic, being watchful, being determined: Black middle-class parents and schooling. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33(3), 337–354.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walkerdine, V., Lucey, H., & Melody, J. (2001) Growing Up Girl: Psychosocial explorations ofgender and class. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

  • Westhaver, R. (2006) Flaunting and empowerment: Thinking about circuit parties, the body, and power. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(6), 611–644.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, S. J., & Bendelow, G. (1998) The Lived Body: Sociological themes, embodied issues. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Youdell, D. (2006) Subjectivation and performative politics — Butler thinking Althusser and Foucault: Intelligibility, agency and the raced—nationed—religioned subjects of education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(4), 511–528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Youdell, D., & Armstrong, F. (2011) A politics beyond subjects: The affective choreographies and smooth spaces of schooling. Emotion, Space and Society, 4(3), 144–150.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Copyright information

© 2013 Claire Maxwell and Peter Aggleton

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Maxwell, C., Aggleton, P. (2013). Introduction: Privilege, Agency and Affect — Understanding the Production and Effects of Action. In: Privilege, Agency and Affect. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137292636_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics