DERECHOS DE LOS PACIENTES

My theoretical lens for examining administrative clerks’ discourses and practices is the concept of 'participatory capital'. Participatory capital is a term that I use to refer to what individuals learn and acquire through involvement and interaction in sociocultural contexts. The conception of participatory capital that I use here is based on combining sociocultural theoretical orientations with poststructuralist approaches for the study of agency and identity (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Moje & Lewis, 2007). In brief, the focus is on practice- based agency emerging out of a sociocultural context combined with a notion that agency is also a reflexive appropriation of discourses. The key idea is that both discourse

communities and the sociocultural contexts provide opportunities for agency and identity self-formation as well as playing a crucial role in shaping the contours of the subject’s agency and identity. Sociocultural perspectives give prominence to the effect of the existing and ongoing practice within a particular social space in fashioning the individual. Poststructuralist theories give prominence to discourses and their effect in shaping the subjectivity of the individual. This article brings together both these perspectives and argues for their integration. Participatory capital refers to the contextual understandings, relationships cultivated and the discourses with their attendant subject positions that are learnt and imbibed when people participate in a sociocultural setting. Participatory capital refers to learnt ways of being, ways of talking, ways of taking up discourses, relationships cultivated, shared perspectives and viewpoints. Participatory capital forms part of the history of the individual and shapes the future of that person.

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Participatory capital can be thought of as resources generated in a particular social setting that can be transferred to another sociocultural space. Social agents' participatory capital is not only derived from their participation within a particular school or organisation, but also includes participatory capital accumulated while being part of social groups outside of their immediate organisation and school (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Vågan, 2011).

Participatory capital refers to the information and relational resources that accrue to, or are accumulated by, individuals by virtue of their social interaction and relationships.

Interaction within the particular sociocultural context of a school enables a participant such as an administrative clerk to learn the discourses that circulate in that school and the subject positions that are made available through these discourses, understand the broader contextual issues facing that school (such as its financial position and student throughput) and cultivate relationships with other participants (such as teachers, the principal and the students). Thus, what this framework emphasises is that the

accumulation of resources, positions and knowledge is crucial to understanding how participatory capital is cultivated. In other words, the focus is on the mediated ways in which the administrative clerk could be said to have accumulated participatory capital within particular sociocultural contexts.

The second element of participatory capital concerns the ways in which the subject uses the accumulated resources and positions; what may be described as the deployment of participatory capital. This deployment of participatory capital occurs when an

administrative clerk, drawing on her accumulated participative resources, exercises her agency to take up an alternate identity position and engage in situated action. A given occupational identity position can be further expanded, negotiated and subjected to change (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Weedon, 1987) by drawing on accumulated participatory capital.

Accumulation and deployment of participatory capital are consequences of interaction, involvement and participation. According to Wenger (1998: 165), “the various forms of participation all contribute in some ways to the production of our identities”. Lave and Wenger (1991) speak about legitimate peripheral participation where newcomers follow and imitate those who are experienced, while those with the experience gradually facilitate newcomers to take on a legitimate identity within the particular sociocultural context. The

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accumulation of participatory capital occurs through everyday participation but can be actively sought by individuals through asking questions and cultivating relationships. For example, if a novice teacher participates in a school, he or she can proactively ask questions of and cultivate relationships with experienced teachers.

Wenger (1998: 72-84) identifies three dimensions that constitute practice-based sociocultural contexts – what he calls 'communities of practices' – through which participatory capital is accumulated. Firstly, members interact with one another,

establishing norms and relationships through mutual engagement. Secondly, members are bound together by an understanding of a sense of joint enterprise. Finally, members

produce, over time, a shared repertoire of communal resources, including language, routines, artefacts and stories. It is along these three dimensions, and especially the shared repertoire of resources, that participatory capital is accumulated3.

Accumulating participatory capital also depends on the attitudes of existing participants within the sociocultural setting. Access to contextual information, an open context for relationship cultivation and transparency of practices shape the newcomers’ trajectory toward legitimate participation and the accumulation of participatory capital. If newcomers are welcomed, they learn the practices and discourses that constitute the sociocultural setting. But if the old-timers resist the entrance of newcomers, then newcomers

experience ‘non-participation marginality’ and will struggle to become full members. If they are not welcomed they withdraw and remain non-participants (Wenger, 1998) and they do not accumulate participatory capital. This shows that sociocultural contexts mediate the accumulation of participatory capital in particular practice-based activities.

I contend that individuals who occupy subordinate occupational identities exercise agency through the deployment of participatory capital. My conception of agency draws on

Kabeer’s (1999) insight that, in order to widen the ambit for people to exercise agency, they need an increase in resources. Participatory capital provides these informational and relational resources for greater agency deployment. Drawing on their participatory capital, administrative clerks are enabled to reposition themselves and to act beyond and outside of their given occupational identity. For example, when a school administrative clerk uses

3 _{An important distinction that I wish to acknowledge is that I use the concept of participatory capital as a} theoretical lens, i.e. a tool for engaging in analysis, and I also use it to refer to the actual communal information and relational resources that individuals accumulate and deploy.

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her contextual understanding that the school's poor student performance is associated with students being hungry to organise a feeding programme with other volunteer teachers, she is exercising agency because organising a feeding programme is not a normative practice associated with school administrative clerks.

She uses the relationships cultivated at school (her accumulated participatory capital) to recruit volunteers from among the staff. She takes up the subject position of care to

motivate for the introduction of the feeding programme. All of these actions and positioning outside of her occupational identity are made possible through her deployment of

participatory capital. Participatory capital makes available information and relational resources that enable an individual to realise that, even though structures and discourses constrain an individual’s action, there is space to manoeuvre within the social world beyond the restrictions that are imposed by structures or discourses.

In this section, I have elaborated upon the theoretical lens of participatory capital, through which school administrative clerks exercise agency to reposition their identities and

engage in novel and productive practices. In the next section of the paper, I discuss how the selected school administrative clerks establish their participatory capital as part of exercising their agency, which allows them to take up various identity positions in their everyday practices.