Share and erase: agency formation among children and adults with mental disorders

Abstract

The article offers a description and analysis of agency formation practices in the Center for the Development and Socialization of Children and Adults with Disabilities. The research focuses on the interaction between the center’s psychologists and wards, mediated by various artifacts and technical objects. I show that the formation of agency can be subdivided into several aspects: first, assistants create the locality - a spatially and temporally limited interactional environment of heterogeneous actors; second, the life of the center depends on the arrangement of the actions of these heterogeneous actors; third, psychologists erase traces of non-human actors’ work to perform agency; this procedure allows to highlight an action that will later be attributed to the wards. This attribution must be seen as a final stage of the work performed within localities. Thus, within the center, agency manifests itself as an effect that occurs when the actor becomes inscribed in the locality, forced to share the common place with other actors, reduced to its action.