{"id":582,"date":"2016-03-28T09:50:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T09:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/?p=582"},"modified":"2016-03-28T09:50:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T09:50:25","slug":"agents-and-defining-agency-plus-a-plea-for-assistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/2016\/03\/28\/agents-and-defining-agency-plus-a-plea-for-assistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Agents and Defining Agency (Plus, A Plea for Assistance)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know we\u2019ve not had our discussion of agents and agency yet, but I had a few quick thoughts I wanted to share. Firstly, I appreciate the basic approach of understanding transnational connections through identification of actors (individuals) and the mapping of those relationships (networks). With regards to my own project, I am leaning towards incorporating a type of actor-network analysis; though not based around an individual (such as a political leader, for example), my understanding of the cultural legacy of the communities built around Regla de Och\u00e1 rests upon the paradigm of organization out from the central hub of a <em>santero(a)<\/em> and the relationships between that leader and the wider group of practitioners. Kind of like the hub and spokes of a wheel, rather than the specificity of a spider with a unique web, if that makes any sense to anyone but me.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, in researching potential dissertation options, I was directed to an article by Walter Johnson called \u2018On Agency\u2019. While not entirely germane to the methodological considerations of this week\u2019s discussion, the article discusses the difficulty in assessing the extent to which certain individuals are capable of shaping human development (that is, of being active actors). This had particular significance to my project this semester, since Regla de Och\u00e1 is the inheritance of trafficked Africans and a byproduct of colonialism; as slaves, West Africans in the Caribbean had extremely limited options when it came to determining their lives and were thus restricted from truly driving the sociocultural, political, etc. development that appears to be the hallmark of agency. For me, then, it is key to understand the point at which the people of the communities I am studying made the transition from players in other actors\u2019 actions to actors in their own right. Johnson\u2019s work is a really interesting read if you are interested in social history or the history of slavery, and it raises intriguing questions about the responsibilities we historians have to our subjects as people.<\/p>\n<p>Also, a totally different question: is anyone else struggling massively with word repetition? I <em>must<\/em> find another word for \u2018communities\u2019 or my project is going to make really unpleasant reading. Also, the term \u2018Regla de Och\u00e1\u2019 is really clunky as I repeat it; \u2018Santer\u00eda\u2019 is much easier to fit into the rhythm of my writing, but given the fact that many practitioners consider this to be a derogatory and dismissive term, I don\u2019t think I should be using it in an objective historical study. Any feedback on any of this would be massively helpful!<\/p>\n<p>Johnson, Walter, \u2018On Agency\u2019, <em>Journal of Social History<\/em> 37, 1 (2003), pp. 113-124.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know we\u2019ve not had our discussion of agents and agency yet, but I had a few quick thoughts I wanted to share. Firstly, I appreciate the basic approach of understanding transnational connections through identification of actors (individuals) and the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,13],"tags":[130,7,128,89,127],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion","category-readings","tag-actors","tag-links","tag-lucumi","tag-project","tag-regla-de-ocha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-9o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}