noun
- An organization, company, or bureau that provides some service for another: a welfare agency.
- A governmental bureau, or an office that represents it.
Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agency (Accessed May 20, 2013).
noun
- Action, power, or operation: the agency of fate.
Collins English Dictionary. Agency. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agency (Accessed May 20, 2013).
noun
- A business or organization providing a particular service on behalf of another business, person, or group.
a. A department or body providing a specific service for a government or other organization.
- Action or intervention producing a particular effect.
a. A thing or person that acts to produce a particular result.
The Oxford Online Dictionaries. (2012). Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/agency?q=agency (Accessed May 20, 2013).
“The term agency is often juxtaposed to structure and is often no more than a synonym for action, emphasizing implicitly the undetermined nature of human action, as opposed to the alleged determinism of structural theories. If it has a wider meaning, it is to draw attention to the psychological and social psychological make-up of the actor, and to imply the capacity for willed (voluntary) action.”
Scott, J. and Marshall, G. (Eds.). (2012). Agency. A Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
“The capacity for autonomous social action. Agency commonly refers to the ability of actors to operate independently of the determining constraints of social structure. The origins of the term lie in the legal and commercial distinction between principal and agent, in which the latter is granted the capacity to act autonomously on behalf of the former. An agent in this sense may sign contracts or manage property autonomously, while still bound to serve the interests of a principal … agency raises questions about the importance of human intentions, the nature and social construction of free will, moral choice, and political capacity. In common usage, agency places the individual at the center of analysis. However, collectivities may also be said to possess greater or lesser capacity to exercise agency or autonomous action. In both cases, agency suggests not merely the ability to act, but to act in ways that demand the recognition and/or response of others. This distinction is sometimes described as that of action from mere behavior.”
Calhoun, C. (Ed.). (2012). Agency. Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
“ […] think instead of the uncountable masses for whom UN agencies have been created. You must think of the refugee-peasants with no prospect of ever returning home, armed only with a ration card and an agency number” (emphasis added, Said, 2000: 175-176).
“By taking an iterative approach to gaining consent, which matches other dimensions of the participatory action research model, these problems can be overcome in a way that realizes the ethics that lies behind the idea, namely that people are exercising human agency in genuinely giving assent to making a contribution to the process.” (emphasis added, Hugman, Bartolomei and Pittaway, 2011; 656).
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Hugman, R., Bartolomei, L. and Pittaway, E. (2011). Human Agency and the Meaning of Informed Consent: Reflections on Research with Refugees. Journal or Refugee Studies, 24(4), 655-671.
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Said, E.W. (2000). Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Stevenson, A. and Sutton, R. (2011). There’s No Place Like a Refugee Camp? Urban Planning and Participation in the Camp Context. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 28(1), 137-148.
Zizek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. New York: Verso.
Hugman, R., Bartolomei, L. and Pittaway, E. (2011). Human Agency and the Meaning of Informed Consent: Reflections on Research with Refugees. Journal or Refugee Studies, 24(4), 655-671.
Said, E.W. (2000). Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.