Agency Without Actors? : New Approaches to Collective Action

The question of agency is a key issue in social theory and research. The discourse of human agency as an effect of social relations is deeply intertwined with the history of sociological thought. However, in most recent discussions the role of non-humans gains a substantial impact concerning agency. Agency without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action asks: Are nonhumans active, do they have agency? And if so: how and in which different ways?

Consequently, Agency without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action

• outlines a wide range of novel accounts that link human and non-human agency
• tries to understand social-technical, political and environmental networks as different forms of agency that produce discrete and identifiable entities
• asks how different types of (often conflicting) agency and agents are distinguished in practice, how they are maintained and how they interfere with each other.

By studying the substantial impact of the role of non-humans in connection with human relations, the book aims to advance the discourse on agency and investigates into the different possible modes of human and nonhuman interplay.

This book is essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, science and technology studies, social anthropology, animal studies, environmental studies and social theory.

Jan-Hendrik Passoth teaches Media Sociology, Science and Technology Studies and Social Theory at Bielefeld University. He is working on problems of social structure and infrastructures, human and non-human agency and discourse and material culture.

Birgit Peuker teaches Macrosociology at the Technical University Dresden. Her research interests lie in the Sociology of Science and Technology and the Sociology of Risk.

Michael Schillmeier teaches Sociology, Science and Technology Studies and Empirical Philosophy at the Department of Sociology at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Germany. He currently holds a Schumpeter Fellowship to research ‘Innovations in Nano-Medicine’.