Pitfalls of agency as a tool for sociologists: Some thoughts from an interactional point of view

• Author: Giolo Fele
• Position: Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy.
• Pages: 23-32

Page 23

1. Introduction

The notion of agency in its more recent version put forward by various strands of contemporary sociological theory (after Parsons) assumes an autonomous and reflexive actor against the regularities and constrictions of the social structure. In face of the conformism imposed by social structures, the notion of agency seemingly enables the introduction of elements of creativity, subjectivity, and choice into everyday action. Social action is thus seen not as routine and predictable, the persistent reproduction of structure, but a factive and conscious contribution by individuals amid the unforeseen contingencies of the everyday social world. For those who analyze social interaction in particular the term "agency‟ seems to retain undeniable theoretical advantages (Emirbayer and Mische 1998). Instead of focusing on social structures (on persistence), the notion of "agency‟ emphasises the local, micro, constructive and individual dimension of social action. It seems to be a term suitable for summarizing the processual and dynamic components of social interaction which a solely structural account fails to grasp.

I believe instead that the notion of "agency‟- inasmuch as it refers to an individualistic perspective from the point of view of a theory of social action, or a voluntaristic perspective from the point of view of a theory of language in action - is not a useful tool for the study of social interaction. The notion of "agency‟Page 24counterposes that of "structure‟; it therefore stipulates and creates a dichotomy which has a long history in the social sciences (King 2004). The notion of agency obliges us to deal with individuals - which is not the solution if interaction processes are being studied. But nor does the solution lie in the alternative to agency, namely structure. The interesting issue seems to consist in finding a way to overcome this alleged dichotomy between agency and structure so that social interactions can be studied from the point of view of their relative autonomy.

In this regard, the work of Goffman with its notion of interaction order, and the work of Garfinkel with its notion of phenomenal field, both represent two formidable theoretical departure points for overcoming the theoretical dichotomy between agency and structure. In regard to the empirical study of social interaction, conversation analysis offers the most suitable analytical approach and the methodological tools with which to supersede the dichotomy.

2. Objectives

In this paper I would like to show how the notion of agency does not help in understanding the processes of social interaction. The basis for my argument will be data collected during research on medical emergency call & dispatch centres (telephone number 118 in Italy). My two main points of reference are the so called "workplace studies" (Heath and Luff 2000), (Heath, Knoblauch et al. 2000), from one side; and the studies by Zimmerman et al. on the social organization of emergency calls (Whalen and Zimmerman 1987), (Whalen and Zimmerman 1990), (Zimmerman 1984), (Zimmerman 1992b), (Zimmerman 1992a), (Whalen and Zimmerman 2005) and on the social organization of the dispatch (Whalen 1995) and (Whalen 1995), from the other side.

In this paper I would like to present that which seems to be a recurrent pattern of behaviour in the interaction among operators who work together in the handling of emergency cases. I shall analyse in particular a common method used to send dispatches by the dispatcher, which consists in repeating out loud on the radio what is being communicated at the moment by the call-taker. This would seem to be a case of zero-agency where a person has minimum control over his/her behaviour and verbal production

If these cases are examined from the point of view of interaction processes, therefore shifting our attention from an individual, single actor to the relation between the parties and to the ecological context in which this relation takes place, matters become more complicated. What seems to be an example of zero-agency is in fact an efficient form of behaviour whereby the actors contribute collaboratively and collectively to the ongoing activity.

I shall conclude by arguing that only by keeping into consideration the system of interaction, and therefore only renouncing an individualist and voluntaristic perspective on social action, can one fully understand the complexity of the forms of social action.

3. Material and Methods

In order to clarify how the analysis of interaction can dispense with an "ingenuous‟ notion of agency, I shall examine a specific work setting and describe one emblematic case. The material analysed consists of video recordings made at an operations centre which handles emergency calls to the 118 telephone number in a region of North-Eastern Italy. Events are handled byPage 25two operators working side by side in a room which takes incoming telephone requests for emergency assistance. The calls are fielded by a "call-taker‟. Once the relevant information has been acquired, a second person, the dispatcher, contacts the emergency vehicle crews in order to organize the operation.

[SEE IMAGE IN ATTACHED PDF]

Fig. 1. Call taker (foreground) and dispatcher (background)

The excerpt I will analyze concerns the phase when the emergency vehicles are dispatched.

3.1. "It's a wasp"

The following extract is taken from the official recording of the dispatch:

030902 "It's a wasp" radio dispatch

01 Attention five three one

02 Yes go ahead

03 Proceed in red

04 to Dante square here in town

05 where the monument is

06 for an anaphylactic reaction

07 Seems seriously ill.

08 look a:h

09 It's a wasp.

The dispatcher is the only one of the two operators who speaks. He performs the dispatch according to the canonical procedure. In our case this is a dispatch of an emergency vehicle to assist a person stung by a wasp.

If the dispatch is considered in terms of the utterance production format described by Goffman (Goffman 1979), the three figures identified by Goffman are involved in the delivery. The dispatcher is not only the sounding box or the talking machine, the person who produces the sound message, he is also the message‟s author; moreover, the dispatcher is also in some way responsible for the message because he is the person at the operations centre who officially contacts the vehicles on the ground.

If we take Duranti‟s definition of agency (Duranti 2001), the dispatcher appears to have a high degree of control over his behaviour (he knows states of the world which he communicates authoritatively to another person); his actions strongly influence other entities in the world (he issues instructions to distant subjects that not only produce cognitive change with respect to the previous knowledge state but are also outright orders to act in a particular way); his actions are subject to assessment, in the sense that they not only generally pertain to the standard procedures for performing a professionalPage 26task but are of direct importance for a specific task at a specific moment in a specific case.

However, if we consider the ecological context of the dispatch more broadly by analysing the organization of the work which enabled delivery of the dispatch, the...