Agencies, Ecologies and Technologies

In an article “Agencies, Ecologies, and the Mundane Artifacts in our Midst”, Stuart Blythe examines the role of individual agency in (en) countering institutional frameworks that constrain teachers and students from adopting certain technologies. Using specific examples, Blythe draws our attention to how institutional structures may hinder or enable an individual from gaining agency. In this article, he proposes a new theory of agency by discussing some possible ways and avenues of gaining agency within an institutional setting. Blythe begins his article by highlighting the “troubled” nature of the term agency; a trouble arising from its dual and paradoxical characteristic. He posits that the term “agency” becomes problematic because of the way people define and interpret it. For example, if we define agency as the capacity of a person or entity to act freely and purposefully in the world, it may imply that an individual can only gain agency if they exercise a sense of individualism. Paradoxically, according to Blythe, agency is not gained when one acts like an autonomous entity but rather, it is realized when an individual acts as part of the larger system—the very system that enables and constrains them at the same time. Blythe proposes a new theory of agency which encourages individuals to search for avenues to exercise agency within organizational structures but advises that the search should not happen through a process of Othering the institutions that seem to constrain them.

One of the metaphors he uses to describe institutions is ecologies. As such, Blythe’s recommendation for people seeking to gain agency is to view themselves as important variables making an important composition and contribution in sustaining the ecosystem. Just the same way writing instructors view writing as emerging from an “interplay of numerous interrelated variables”, in the same way, we should not conceptualize the search for agency as decontextualized or as an individualistic endeavor. Blythe therefore explains that:

Oftentimes, individuals think of institutions as other, as if their work were not part of the maintenance of the organization...what we need is a theory of agency that does not posit heroic individuals fighting against big institutions. Nor do we need to simply to teach students how to become cogs in a machine. What we need is some sense of how agency can be exercised within organizations (173)

Blythe uses another metaphor where he compares institutions to technologies. In defining technologies as artifacts and processes that help users to achieve a certain task, he notes that, just the same way some scholars argue against technological determinism, the same arguments can be made against institutional determinism. According to Blythe, those rejecting technological determinism hypothesize that technological development does not follow a predetermined course with predictable or fixed outcomes. In the same way, we should view institutions as having developmental processes where individuals can identify avenues/points to effectively make small but meaningful changes.

I feel this article is timely and very relevant to us teachers who are thinking about integrating digital technologies in our teaching. The article asks us to be conscious of other visible and invisible technologies in the larger ecology and how they might enable or disable what and how we teach in our classrooms. The technologies we introduce are dependent of other mundane technologies in our midst like (e.g written texts, policies, procedures, infrastructure, etc) which are very powerful. A perfect example of this can be found in the article Infrastructure and Composing: The When of New Media by Danielle Devoss, Ellen Cushman, and Jeffrey Grabill. The sharing of teaching experiences by these scholars is a perfect illustration of how institutional structures and policies such as saving students’ works on university networks or file management (architecture, size and compression) constrained how, what and when of how Ellen taught her Multi-media class. At the same time, the article reveals that it is possible to gain agency within an institutional context and realize changes that can improve teachers and students working and learning conditions. (See Michael’s blog post on this article).

Blythe notes that “it is inevitable for us as teachers of writing to worry about agency when we think about students’ control over their own language and texts, about our roles within the institutions through which we work” (168). The challenge for teachers is to think about how their teaching and pedagogies can empower their students to exercise agency through the texts they compose. Blythe believes that we can teach students to compose texts that rewrite the institutional artifacts and processes that constrain their power and ability to gain and exercise agency.

See article:

Stuart Blythe (2007). Agencies, Ecologies, and the Mundane Artifacts in Our Midst. Labor, Writing Technologies, and the Shaping of Composition in the Academy. 167-186. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.