Impacto de la cuarentena en la situación laboral

Latour develops a model in which agency is not intrinsically inherent to objects or people independently from the specific circumstances of their association. Latour explains that agency can appear to inhere in such associations but this can be determined only for individual cases.

Agency can only emerge when certain associations take place. Indeed, agency may be attributed to the association between human and non-human elements, where pertinent.

The distinction between “intermediaries” and “mediators” is cardinal to Latour’s theory of agency. An intermediary “is what transports meaning or force without transformation”

(2005:39). Whereas, “mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (2005:39). The distinction describes a difference in the behavior of the entities, not in their essence or constitution. For this reason, there is a constant uncertainty over whether a particular entity is behaving as a mediator or as an intermediary in any given situation (2005:39). For example, “objects, by the very nature of their connections

with humans, quickly shift from being mediators to being intermediaries” (2005:79) or vice versa. Therefore, actors become agents when they occupy that particular role in the chain of associations. They are not imbued as agents independently from the associations. On the contrary, they derive agency from the associations occurring in a particular manner.

Hence, the specificity of a mediator “has to be taken into account every time” (2005:39).

For Latour, “an invisible agency that makes no difference, produces no transformation, leaves no trace, and enters no account is not an agency. […] If you mention an agency, you have to provide the account of its action” (2005:53). Therefore, “agencies are part of an account; they are given a figure of some sort; they are opposed to other competing agencies; and, finally, they are accompanied by some explicit theory of action” (2005:52).

In this way, Latour understands that accounts of agency are interpretations. They are accounts that place actors into particular roles. These roles establish the relative activity of the actors in the sequences of interactions. Latour says that human actors “propose their own theories of action to explain how agencies’ effects are carried over” (2005:57). “What is doing the action is always provided in the account with some flesh and features that make them have some form or shape, no matter how vague” (2005:53). Actors “will not only enter into a controversy over which agency is taking over but also the ways in which it is making its influence felt” (2005:57). The major distinction will be to decide whether the agency is treated as an intermediary or as a mediator (2005:57). “Accounts of agency will constantly add new entities while withdrawing others as illegitimate” (2005:56, emphasis removed).

In Latour’s definition, agencies “make actors do things” (2005:55, emphasis original) and

“an actor is what is made to act by many others” (2005:46, emphasis original). His definition excludes intentionality as a characteristic of agency, creating the space for objects and other

non-human entities to participate in agency configurations. Latour says that the main reason why objects had no chance to play in classical definitions of agency used by sociologists is because action was “limited a priori to what ‘intentional’, ‘meaningful’, humans do” (2005:71). In contrast, Latour states that “any thing that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor—or if it has no figuration yet, an actant” (2005:71, emphasis original). Latour states that “if we wish to be a bit more realistic about social ties, […] then we have to accept that the continuity of any course of action will rarely consist of human-to-human connections”

(2005:75), without the participation of objects.

Latour explicitly declares that the concepts of “individuals and calculative agents” are hypostases, no less than the concept of “society” (2005:54). He argues against sociologies that determine a priori which elements compose social relations, often repudiating the models or accounts given by informants. He says that “actors fill the world with agencies while sociologists […] tell them which building blocks their world is ‘really’ made of” (2005:52). He appears to decry this practice as a form of intellectual hubris.

Therefore, Latour asserts that agency attribution is always an interpretation generated by actors. The attribution of agency assigns a role of relative activity or passivity to each component of a sequence of action. That is, each element is assigned the role of “mediator” or

“intermediary”, respectively. Agency, therefore, is attributed to elements that occupy the role of agents in a particular account. Agency is not intrinsic to the elements, since they may occupy different roles, depending on the account. They may vary from being considered “mediators” or

“intermediaries”, depending on the circumstances.

With this, Latour explicitly excludes intentionality as an intrinsic characteristic of agents.

It follows that the attribution of intentionality also must be a part of the account generated by actors and not a predetermined component of the sequence of actions.

2.5 COMPOSITE MODEL: THE REFERENTIAL FUNCTIONS OF AGENCY

I propose to assess in this dissertation a composite model to understand health worker agency.

The composite model that I develop agrees with insights proposed by Parsons, Strathern and Latour. The composite model proposes that attributions of agency are references or indicators of status and role. The composite model distinguishes the status of the actor in a relation and the empirical resources that permit action. That is, intentionality of action and mechanical faculties to act. The composite model contrasts with the residential model because it disentangles these two components of agency, allowing them to be assigned relative to each social interaction context. The residential model blends the two in an actor because it identifies the subjective experience of the individual actor as a sufficient expression of agency.

The model I propose here states that agency attributions or perceptions have a referential function. Agency attributions indicate how actors are positioned relative to one another and how they are positioned relative to resources. The model of agency as a residential property of actors proposes that social and ecological position create agency; whereas, the model of agency as a referential indicator states that agency attributions signal social and ecological position.