Problem: Discuss how people make their own social systems and history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. Citing the two sources below, discuss the relationship between individual agency and societal structure as it is played out in different kinds of action. What else accounts as agency? Do you find that particular approaches to agency receive more or less support from your examples?
Here are the articles to draw from:
- Kapoor, Ilan (2002). Capitalism, Culture, Agency: Dependency versus Postcolonial Theory. Third World Quarterly, 23(4): 647-664.
- Kardulias, P.N. (2014). Archaeology and the Study of Globalization in the Past. Journal of Globalization Studies, 5(1): 110-121.