Agency, or the ability to act and make decisions, has become an important concept in anthropology because it helps make sense of how powerful institutions interact with individuals.
With the theory of agency and structuration, British sociologist Anthony Giddens paved the way for the growth of theories on how humans interact with systems. Systems are the powerful, overarching beliefs through which the world is organized, which influence the ways in which individuals interact with their world. Although they most often go unnoticed and unquestioned, systems influence the decisions humans make. In terms of social inequality, in systems with unequal access to resources, the ability to decide or the options that one can choose between differ depending on diverse variables. The more power people have, the more choices they may be presented with, and the more they can mold and shape the systems in which they live through their decisions.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu attempted to explain how societal structures are upheld and changed by processes generated by individuals. The idea of habitus, or the ingrained habits and dispositions that are socialized into people from birth depending on their status in society, is used to explain how individuals uphold cultural systems such as capitalism, class, racism, or patriarchal values. Habitus is understood both to imbue people with certain skill sets and perspectives according to their life experiences and to make possible social change because it understands systems as generative instead of static. For instance, the modern capitalist system has not always existed as know it is today. Many smaller decisions, practices, and consequences have formed and reformed capitalism, reflecting diverse interests over time.
The content of this course has been taken from the free Anthropology textbook by Openstax