AN EXILIC MEDITATION: OVID’S ARACHNE AS ARTISTIC REBELLION, POLITICAL ALLEGORY, AND PERSONAL ALLUSION

Automated decision making is becoming the norm across large parts of society, which raises interesting liability challenges when human control over technical systems becomes increasingly limited. This article defines “quasi‐automation” as inclusion of humans as a basic rubber‐stamping mechanism in an otherwise completely automated decision‐making system. Three cases of quasi‐automation are examined, where human agency in decision making is currently debatable: self‐driving cars, border searches based on passenger name records, and content moderation on social media. While there are specific regulatory mechanisms for purely automated decision making, these regulatory mechanisms do not apply if human beings are (rubber‐stamping) automated decisions. More broadly, most regulatory mechanisms follow a pattern of binary liability in attempting to regulate human or machine agency, rather than looking to regulate both. This results in regulatory gray areas where the regulatory mechanisms do not apply, harming human rights by preventing meaningful liability for socio‐technical decision making. The article concludes by proposing criteria to ensure meaningful agency when humans are included in automated decision‐making systems, and relates this to the ongoing debate on enabling human rights in Internet infrastructure.

This paper argues for a fluid approach to the study of agency in relation to algorithms, one that promotes crossing the boundaries of established analytical positions and breaking away from dualistic forms to frame its study. Building on various intellectual traditions, we develop three sensibilities for implementing such an approach: (a) working with tensions as an alternative to thinking about algorithmic power and human agency as an either/or binary; (b) examining mediations to reverse the tendency to treat algorithms as an ahistorical and universal force; and (c) exploring transversalities to navigate the spaces that emerge between various temporalities and levels of analysis. To make our case, we examine a crucial tension in the study of agency and algorithms, namely how scholars have either attributed power to algorithms or agency to users of algorithmic systems. The conclusion situates our argument for fluidity within larger historical debates in the study of technological power and human agency.

This study analyzes how people discursively construct their (non)agency—how they display abilities and capacities to act, or the lack thereof—vis-à-vis climate change. The paper presents the results of a detailed discursive and thematic analysis of 28 interview transcripts: 12 broad agency themes representing different ways of constructing human (non)agency in relation to climate change. The most common agency theme was Collective, followed by Individual, Critical, and Threatened agency. Climate change skepticism was displayed mostly within Critical agency, where the speakers presented themselves as intellectual and critically thinking individuals, drawing from scientific rhetoric while criticizing and misrepresenting climate science. The constructions of Collective agency emerged as a form of agency that displays a sense of meaningfulness related to socially embedded actions. The construction of agency in relation to climate change is very detailed discursive work, as people draw from multiple societal discourses to craft varied discursive positions of experiencing, knowing, and doing in relation to it. The paper suggests ways for climate communications to take into account these multiple themes of agency.

This article brings together ethnographic fieldwork with archival research to show that debates about human agency are central to the contemporary meaning of organic agriculture in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. Through a study of an initiative taken by the Uttarakhand state government to promote certified organic agriculture among the region's smallholder farmers, the article demonstrates that debates about human agency in relation to soil, manure, and compost are bound up with historical as well as ongoing processes of state formation in the Uttarakhand region. After examining how state officials recognize certain forms of agricultural practice as agentive, but not others, the article concludes with an exploration of how farmers navigate newfound agrarian identities.

Multilevel structures and human agency in relation to email consultations: A strong structuration theory analysis of the Danish general practice setting

Climate doomism is an increasing concern for climate change communication. In the United States, this opinion regarding anthropogenic climate change is now more prevalent than climate skepticism, and is the primary reason cited for opposition to climate action. Doomism is the belief that catastrophic warming of the planet is now inevitable, and that effective mitigation is impossible. The behaviors resulting from this view are comparable to the result of climate skepticism: doomism produces paralyzing eco-anxiety and subsequently inaction. Prior work has hypothesized that the rise in climate doomism and eco-anxiety is linked to climate change risk communication. This study investigates the possibility that the metaphoric language used to communicate the severity and urgency of climate change could inadvertently promote doomism. We employ a survey model to test the influence of metaphoric language on perception of urgency, feasibility, and individual agency in relation to the climate crisis. American English-speaking participants (N = 1,542) read a paragraph describing climate change either as a “cliff edge” or “minefield,” with human agency manipulated to be present or absent. Responses were considered to be doomist if they reported a high sense of urgency, paired with a low sense of feasibility and/or agency; this indicates they have a high awareness of the risks associated with the climate crisis, but a low belief that it will be addressed, and/or that their actions can produce meaningful change. Use of either metaphor improved perceived feasibility without a reduction in urgency, indicating that metaphor is an effective climate communication strategy for conveying risk without promoting doomism. However, metaphoric presentation is only effective when paired with human agency, suggesting that agency is a necessary component for successful metaphoric climate communication strategies.

Instead of yearning for absolute freedom as in the Western city, human agency as an idea seems to be generally understood as conditional in the Asian city. This chapter discusses the obscuring of indigenous urban traditions in Asia, the role of human agency in relation to the meanings of property ownership, conceptions of human labor, and the aesthetic experience of contingency, in an attempt to explore alternative ideas and practices of the place of human life in the environment. Human agency in Asian cities contains elements of intellectual and urban insights that have potential for future cities. However, these potentials and insights must be excavated and reformulated in order to gain theoretical and political efficacy in our fast-changing world today.

This article examines the evidence for fragmentation practices on Middle–Late Bronze Age (c. 1600–700bc) settlement sites in Ireland by looking at two kinds of material: human remains, both burnt and non-burnt, and quern stones. It highlights evidence for the manipulation of non-burnt skulls through ‘de-facing’ and the potential retention of cranial and other fragments for ‘burial’ in settlements. It also explores the more difficult task of determining whether incomplete skeletal representation in cremated remains can be interpreted as deliberate fragmentation, and how the context of deposition must be considered. Human agency in relation to the fragmentation patterns of querns is also examined to understand whether the act of breaking these objects was intentional or unintended and if depositing them was symbolic or simply fortuitous. By discussing this evidence, I hope to contribute to the argument that the funerary and settlement spheres in later prehistoric Ireland were becoming increasingly intertwined.

Despite the increasing recognition of the significance of children’s own perceptions of inequality and critical theorisations of, and much research on, the impact of inequality on human agency, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the impact of inequality on children’s agency. This paper contributes to addressing this gap by exploring how children’s perceptions of inequality impinge upon their perceptions of the efficacy of their agency with regard to their occupational choices. It uses questionnaire data from a sample of 862 South Korean school children aged 10–18 from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and follow-up semi-structured interviews with 42 selected children. The findings suggest that, while most of the children held meritocratic beliefs about academic and economic inequalities, some subtle but significant relationships existed between the children’s perceptions of inequality, their socioeconomic status and their perceptions of their agency. The older children were significantly more likely both to be aware of their relative academic and economic positions and to have given up a desired occupation in response to their perceptions of the inefficacy of their agency. Across the sample as a whole, in the processes by which the children adjusted their future occupational ambitions, while their socioeconomic status (especially in terms of the father’s occupation) had a significant impact, the children’s awareness of their relative positions, especially their economic position, showed a more pervasive and significant relationship with their likelihood of having given up a desired occupation due to having perceived the inefficacy of their agency.

Automated technology that produces art presents specific issues for interpretation: where should the artwork be situated — in the objects the machine produces, the machine itself, or the design for the machine? Central to this question is the issue of human agency in the creation of art. This paper examines these issues in relation to the implications of Sol LeWitt's ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’, and frames the question of human agency in relation to the work of contemporary artist Roxy Paine, and the historical artists Mary Hallock-Greenewalt and Richard M. Craig who created autonomous systems for making visual music. These artists’ work involves automated technology that functions without their intervention. These works suggest a framework that recognizes the artist's role as the designer of art, rather than as necessarily the fabricator of those works.

En las playas de La Barra, a orillas del océano Pacífico colombiano, la vida acontece amarrada al movimiento del mar. La inquietud acerca de cómo se perfilan formas de habitar en medio del cambio permanente suscitado por el empuje del agua y cómo tal inestabilidad es asimilada por quienes la experimentan son las preguntas que
 inspiran esta indagación. El artículo rastrea etnográficamente la formación de La Barra al compás de las mutaciones del entorno y explora las explicaciones que los saberes locales otorgan a dicha alteración. Desde una mirada antropológica que dialoga con la historia ambiental, este trabajo piensa la agencia humana en relación con las agitaciones de la naturaleza mediante una trama telúrica que liga la humanidad a las transformaciones de la tierra.

The conceptualization of human agency is one of the oldest and most debated challenges in political theory. This essay defends the continuous relevance of this endeavour against a proliferating theoretical pessimism. Instead of engaging the much rehearsed structure-agency debate, the author conceptualizes agency in relation to discourses. However, such an approach inevitably elicits suspicion. Is discourse not merely a faddish term, destined to wax and wane with fleeting intellectual trends of the postmodern and poststructural kind? Does the concept of discourse, as many fear, suck us into a nihilistic vortex and deprive us of the stable foundations that are necessary to ground our thoughts and actions? Not so, argues this essay, and defends an anti-essentialist stance as the most viable chance for retaining an adequate understanding of how people situate themselves as agents and influence their socio-political environment. The ensuing analysis, which focuses on everyday forms of resistance, demonstrates how the very acceptance of ambiguity, often misrepresented as relativism, is a crucial precondition not only for the conceptualization of human agency, but also for its actual application in practice.

This chapter focuses on the intertextual play that marks out Westworld as a distinctive example of Quality TV. The chapter argues that Westworld can be placed in a wider literary-theoretical framework that includes interactive fiction and hypertext which, in turn offers a different perspective on the key questions of the series concerned with the impact of technology on the human. The chapter specifically considers the motif of the maze or labyrinth as synecdoche of the nexus of formal, theoretical and textual explications of nonlinear and interactive and digital narratives that shed light on Westworld’s depiction of its intradiegetic and extradiegetic players or wreaders. By thinking through the history of hypertext, the narratives of interactive textuality and the way both hypertext and Westworld negotiate ideas of (post)human agency in relation to technology, this chapter unearths an alternate lineage for the themes and dynamics of Westworld.

This paper will examine the role of clothing and its relation to the theme of midah k'neged midah, often translated as a type of measure for measure punishment, as it unfolds in the Joseph story in Genesis. While Joseph’s brothers and father seem to receive proportional punishments for the sins that they commit, due to ambiguities in the story regarding God’s role, it is unclear who or what is driving this “measure for measure punishment” scheme. Is it Joseph, God, or perhaps simply nature’s equilibrium? This paper will investigate each of these three possible mechanisms for the ultimate fulfillment of midah k'neged midah based on textual clues of divine presence and human agency. Based on a close textual reading and analysis, this paper will conclude that while divine intervention appears to play a role in providing Joseph with opportunities, ultimately, Joseph is the one who capitalizes on these opportunities in order to complete his revenge scheme. This narrative also illustrates the concept of maaseh avot siman l’banim (the actions of the forefathers are a sign for the children), representing how the mistakes of earlier generations have a cyclical effect on their descendents. This principle serves as a timeless warning to future generations, cautioning individuals to avoid past mistakes of their ancestors. Although the text contains many ambiguities, it seems clear that humans, like Joseph, certainly play some role in shaping their own destiny, and thus can hopefully break the cycle of sinning that began with the forefathers.

Practical theologies that help us manage change and uncertainty give us the foundation to flourish in a shifting, uncertain world. Here I place open and relational theologies alongside the awareness-based change framework of Theory U. I explore how they embrace change as a constant part of our lived experience, with particular focus on the underpinning concepts of time, human agency, relational freedom and embodied, shared power. I examine what the intersection of these livable, practical theories offers in thinking about transformational change and leadership in community that is formed through responsible, relational agency and hopeful creativity.