Rethinking Agency

This book proposes a new theoretical framework for agency thinking by examining the ethical discursive and practical engagements of a group of women development workers in north-west India with developmentalism and individual rights. Rethinking Agency asks an underexplored question tracks the entry encounter experience and practice of developmentalism and individual rights and examines their normative and political trajectory. Through an ethnography of a moral encounter with developmentalism it raises a critical question: how do we think of agency in oppressive contexts? Further how do issues of risk injury coercion and oppression alter the conceptual mechanics of agency itself? The work will be invaluable to research organisations development practitioners policy makers and political journalists interested in questions of gender political empowerment rights and political participation and to academics and students in the fields of feminist theory development studies sociology politics and gender studies. . Language: English