Children’s multidimensional agency: Insights into the structuration of choice

Introduction

The notion of agency has become a core concept in childhood studies. While the agency–structure debate focuses on agency within structure (Leonard, 2016), a challenging idea, suggested in this article, is that agency itself has an internal structure. It stems from an attempt to better understand the agency of actors situated in a generational order by calling for a more systematic use of structuration theory (Giddens, 1984). Structuration theory underlines the importance of choice and reflexive monitoring:

Agency concerns events of which an individual is the perpetrator, in the sense that the individual could, at any phase in a given sequence of conduct, have acted differently. Whatever happened would not have happened if that individual had not intervened. Action is a continuous process, a flow, in which the reflexive monitoring which the individual maintains is fundamental to the control of the body that actors ordinarily sustain throughout their day-to-day lives. (Giddens, 1984: 9)

One’s capacity to act (agency) is always enabled and constrained by structures. Hence, the double structuration, central in Giddens’ theory, moves:

[…] beyond the structure-agency dichotomy through suggesting that both are inter-related. Hence, rather than asking if structures influence people or people influence structures, Giddens articulates how structures are both constraining and enabling. (Leonard, 2016: 118)

To consider that structures constrain and enable agency implies that, consequently, individual choices and reflexive monitoring must also reflect this social structuration. While Giddens neither elaborated nor applied his theory to children, childhood sociology can make use of this double structuration perspective to enrich its understanding of the agency of children, and consequently, contribute to fine-tuning structuration theory via the lived experiences of children and the lens of the structural characteristics of childhood.

In order to do so, we must enter into the complex links between choice and reflexive monitoring to better understand agency. We claim that agency itself has a structure and that we might therefore seek the structure of agency. In order to sociologically understand what children are saying, we must identify the structuration of agency that lies behind their accounts.

The goal of this article is to highlight the multidimensionality of children’s agency and its structuration. In order to do this, we first highlight major trends in the structure–agency debate relevant to developments in new childhood studies regarding children’s agency. We concentrate on the two components of agency identified by Giddens, choice and reflexive monitoring, and link them with two approaches that operationalise these concepts: the capability approach of Sen (1999) and Nussbaum (2011) and the actor’s system (Stoecklin, 2013). This helps demonstrate the multidimensionality of agency using data drawn from a qualitative study on the significance of agency for children’s well-being. Rather than only asking what are the structural conditons which delimit possibilities for agency, we also examine the related, but less frequently investigated problem of what forms of agency tell us about the characteristics of social structure.

The multidimensionality of agency

A major consequence of the close link between agency and structure is that agency is both affected by and affects structure. People’s choices are not only constrained by macrosocial influences but also shape these influences. This conception runs the risk of creating a false conceptual dichotomy – How much comes down (from structures to people’s agency) and how much goes up (from people’s agency to structures)? – which assumes a common view of structures as surrounding people (as their environment), most notably exemplified in Bronfenbrenner’s model of ecological development. However, structures are not just somewhere outside individuals, but rather objectified through institutions that evolve beyond the wishes, plans and strategies of individuals, and simultaneously are subjectively dealt within each individual’s representations.

The permanence of structural arrangements lies in the permanence of their representations in people’s minds. Social actors need routines in order to be agentive: they lean on expected regularities in daily activities – they count on them. Therefore, we should consider that agency within structure should also be seen the other way: structure within agency. By this, we mean that agency itself has a structure. This is the idea conveyed by the actor’s system (Stoecklin, 2013), which allows reconstruction of how actors make sense of their situation by using common notions, linked together in a systemic way, namely, activities, relations, values, images of self and motivations (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

The actor’s system (Stoecklin, 2013).

According to Stoecklin (2013), the ‘actor’s system’ reflects the evolving outcome of the links among these components of personal experience. Action (praxis) encompasses the whole system and is not reducible to activities. The sensitising concepts (Blumer, 1969) – activities, relations, values, images of self and motivations – are open to be defined by the respondents. They act as lenses through which actors may read and give meaning to reality. Each dimension is at the same time structured by former dimensions and structure following ones in a recursive chain reflecting the cumulative nature of experience (Dewey, 1910): as the actor accumulates experience, new elements reinforce his or her system of action in a systemic way. This way of reconstructing experience rises to the challenge of comprehensive sociology. It starts with the premise that the social world is already interpreted by actors through typifications that preside over their understandings and explanations. Comprehensive sociologists then develop concepts based on schemes of interpretation of experienced social life. This hermeneutics builds constructions of a second degree (Williame, 1973). The concepts used in the study on subjective well-being (that will be presented hereafter) are constructions of a second degree.

A further degree of theoretical abstraction is reached with the systemic logic in the actor’s system. The concepts used – activities, relations, values, images of self and motivations – are large enough to subsume the details of concrete experience. In many instances, these concepts, as they are very close to commonsense, correspond to the typifications made by actors. But, it is the systemic logic, that links the typifications made by the actors together with habilitating and constraining interdependencies, that makes the actor’s system an hermeneutical tool that has explanatory potential. The tool helps visualise the interpretations made by actors. It helps understand how they participate in the ongoing (re)construction of a network of meanings, by the inclusion or exclusion of specific things (objects and resources) into their system of action. As a matrix of interdependent typifications, this model illuminates the notion of ‘structure’ (Giddens, 1979, 1984), that is at the same time habilitating and constraining, and that is non-ontological in nature:

According to the theory of structuration, an understanding of social systems as situated in time-space can be effected by regarding structure as non-temporal and non-spatial, as a virtual order of differences produced and reproduced in social interaction as its medium and outcome. (Giddens, 1979: 3)

The actor’s system exemplifies how this ‘virtual order of differences’ is ‘produced and reproduced’ through daily narratives organised along commonly used discursive categories like activities, relations, values, images of self and motivations. Therefore, we can consider that these discursive categories preside over choice and reflexive monitoring and make up the structure of agency. The categories demonstrate the multidimensionality of agency, as every discursive category has an influence on the whole system. Yet, they play different roles at different periods. Therefore, the importance of cognitive development has to be recognised: children do not choose and do not reflect on their experience in the same ways at any age. The freedom to choose is not only linked to the range of entitlements that are at their disposal but also to the child’s capacity to make sense of possibilities and to give meaning to the resources which they have at hand. Hence, children’s well-being is not simply enhanced, as it is mainly thought, by providing them with resources. As has been shown (Rees and Main, 2015), there is no direct link between affordance and subjective well-being. The freedom to choose is not only linked to the availability of resources but also to the meaning attached to resources. We must therefore understand what are valued resources and why they are seen as valuable.

What, for instance, makes a smartphone valuable to children? It is probably because it allows relations with peers in ways that are not possible without it. So, the relevant question from the actor’s system perspective is what does a specific resource allow individuals to do? And here we can see the link with agency: children do not use the concept, but they are describing the agency that a specific resource gives them. The things the resource, in our example the smartphone, allows actors to do may be symbolic like sharing values, building an image of self, elaborating a motivation, defining an activity or constructing relations. Hence, a resource is linked to a system of action in a double way: one’s own system of action is modified by the resource and modifies the use of the resource. This has important consequences for the qualitative assessment of children’s subjective well-being, as we will see through the presentation of a study on children’s well-being in Australia.

Forms of agency

The research reported here is based on a multi-stage qualitative study of children’s well-being undertaken in New South Wales, Australia (Fattore and Mason, 2016). In total, 126 children aged 8–14 years drawn from 12 districts participated in the study. Using socio-economic classifications of postal districts, schools were approached falling within the top upper-middle, lower-middle and lowest quartiles of socio-economic advantage. Within each school, a class group was selected in consultation with the school principal, and children were invited to participate in the study. Approximately, 40% of the participants came from areas with high levels of socio-economic disadvantage, 40% from areas considered as having medium levels of socio-economic disadvantage and 20% from areas with low levels of socio-economic disadvantage.

In the first stage of research, we sought to explore children’s ideas about what well-being means to them, how well-being is experienced in the course of their everyday practices and what factors contribute to a sense of well-being. The interviews examined whether well-being was a term that meant something to them, how well-being was experienced in different life domains (whether associated with particular people, activities, times or events, places and material objects) and what participants would do to change a ‘not well-being time’ into a ‘well-being time’. The second stage explored in greater detail the main themes discussed by the participants in their first interview. In the third stage, the children completed a project of their own design that explored a well-being theme or themes of interest to them. Combinations of photography, collage, drawing and journal keeping were commonly used for these projects. We then sought children’s interpretations of their own work and how it related to well-being.

From these three stages, we sought to construct from children’s perspectives what they consider important to their well-being, and identified aspects of well-being relevant to understanding the multidimensionality of agency. We hoped this would reflect something of their perspectives on agency while also furthering our understanding of the structure of agency by locating these perspectives within generational structures. Therefore, in exploring the multidimensionality of agency, we do not explicitly explore potential variations in children’s agency relating to factors, such as sibling position, gender, race and class. Accepting that not exploring this diversity is an apt criticism, we nonetheless explore agency foregrounding generational relations. The analysis of other factors is not the focus of this article.

The process of analysing the data involved asking of the data: (1) What does well-being mean for the child? (2) How is well-being experienced in everyday life? (3) What factors can be identified that contribute to a sense of well-being? The elements of agency presented here are those that emerged from this interrogation. We have sought to highlight the plurality of perspectives as pertinent to each element of agency, as identified from our analysis. The quotes selected are therefore indicative of certain dimensions of agency identified from our analysis.

Three key themes emerged from our study of children’s understandings of well-being: agency and autonomy, safety and security, and self and identity. These three themes connected with additional themes that refer to concrete areas of children’s lived experiences: economic well-being, health and leisure. We report on some of the findings which are of relevance to our understanding of children’s agency.

We found that children’s experience of agency is multifaceted, reflecting different expressions of the relationship between resources and systems of action. This is where we can observe how actors include or exclude specific things in their interpretations, and hence, life course. One critical dimension of their experience involves agency as competency, which we can understand as agency as the exercise of abilities in specific social relations. An additional dimension is agency as freedom to be able to make choices or agency as self-determination. An extension of agency as self-determination is agency as children’s ability to influence and organise aspects of their everyday life, what we might describe as agency as concrete practices, which reflect taken-for-granted practices. We discuss each in turn.

Self-determination (being able to make choices)

As we have noted, children’s agency is routinely conflated with their ability ‘to choose to do things’. Some children discussed agency in terms of freedom, autonomy and options for choice. For instance, Prudence (female, 10 years) emphasises the right to autonomy in decision-making:

Yeah, um, I think that because, that kids deserve their rights to make their own decisions and if they don’t want to do that, they don’t have to.

Martha (female, 14 years) also draws attention to the importance of choice in decision-making, arguing that for children this can be difficult but this does not mean that children should not be involved in decision-making:

MARTHA:

It takes time. Like, it just depends on your experiences and your choices and the decisions you make, and even if you made the wrong decision, you can learn by it and what and like learn from your mistakes.

INTERVIEWER:

How do you learn from mistakes?

MARTHA:

Like say you made a wrong decision, you go, ‘I made the wrong decision because I did that’ and then maybe when you make your next decision you don’t do the same thing.

Pippi and Longstocking (both female, 14 years), in response to the interviewer’s suggestion that they can deliberate with their parents, indicate how they assert themselves to negotiate parental agreement to, in this case, attend a party:

INTERVIEWER:

Okay. And do you think maybe it is kind of easier in a sense [accepting parents’ regulation of their activities], because you do have a good relationship with your parents that you can sort of do a bit of negotiating if you like?

PIPPI:

Mmm (indicating agreement) –

LONGSTOCKING:

Yeah, like just say, you want to go somewhere and it finishes, like a party or something, and it finishes at one o’clock in the morning or something and you go to your mum ‘Oh, can I please go’ and they go ‘No’ and they are like ‘I’m not letting you go to a party that finishes at one o’clock’ and you can say ‘I’ll come home at an earlier time, I’ll come home at ten’.

PIPPI:

Then they will let you go.

LONGSTOCKING:

Then they might let you go. Just that sort of negotiating.

These quotes equate agency with ‘voice’ and an ability to contribute to decision-making, the concept of agency most usually associated with what is meant by ‘children’s participation’. While it assumes an ability to assert individual preferences, it is also premised on forums that allow those preferences to be acknowledged (Bifulco, 2013). Furthermore, this notion of agency is premised on capacities to exercise rational decision-making (Biggeri et al., 2010). This has been a central debate in discussions of children’s agency and has led several authors to argue that rationality is not an invariable quality of adults or that children have a capability to exercise rationality but may require, as Biggeri et al. (2010) suggest, the assistance of others and specific social arrangements to enable this capacity. Many tenants of the capability approach, however, approach children as ‘becomings’ (Reynaert and Roose, 2014). This paternalistic premise reads both capabilities and functionings, as choices to be made for children’s good development, notably as ‘future workers’ (Dahmen, 2014), thus reproducing an explicitly developmental frame and hindering full inclusion and recognition of children’s voices. Meanwhile, the inclusion of child voice in the capability approach is on the rise (Stoecklin and Bonvin, 2014).

These discussions are only helpful so far in that agency takes on more diverse expressions than self-determination and that expressions of self-determination are configured through processes of structuration. Expressions of self-determination are constituted within the parameters set by and enabled through social structures, as might be understood through the ‘actor–system’ explicated earlier. This includes the socio-structural context that provides the parameters in which individual choices are enacted, and the immediate interpersonal and organisational context which provides concrete contexts of action and can be analysed in terms of motivation, justification and understandings of action. The model of the capability approach offers insights into this structuration of agency, as shown in Figure 2.

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Figure 2.

From entitlements and commodities to achieved functionings (Stoecklin and Bonvin, 2014: 134).

Figure 2 highlights factors that convert entitlements (‘formal freedom’) into a given ‘capability set’ (‘real freedom’). Entitlements are converted into real freedom by factors that facilitate or alternatively obstruct the transformation of formal rights into a capability set, from which the actor can then choose specific functionings he or she has reasons to value. According to Sen (1999), capabilities can be defined as the real freedoms people have to lead the kind of life they have reason to value.

Stoecklin and Bonvin (2014) have added a feed-back loop to this framework, represented by the backwards arrows, in order to highlight

the recursivity or cyclical aspect of the process, whereby achieved functionings, in later sequences, retroact on the social definition of individual entitlements as well as they become part of the configuration of personal and social factors that convert these entitlements into an ever evolving capability set. (p. 134)

They consequently underline that one’s choices and functioning are not only just an outcome of former definitions of reality but also create new definitions of reality. Hence, this dynamic view of capabilities helps understand that the actor’s functionings are both constrained and enabling, and that not only are structures constraining and enabling but also agency itself has this double-sided feature, which is necessary to make the Giddensian double structuration work.

We see this in the responses of our participants. The ‘entry’ point into the daily experience of the children is their actual functioning (their daily experience), which corresponds to the box on the right-hand side of this figure. But, what we want to understand is the ‘combination of personal and social factors’. While these factors are embedded in children’s experience, children’s accounts (the words they use) do not embrace them all, as, like any social actor, they are not necessarily aware of the social determinants of their actions, which in this case are the structural and concrete contexts in which self-determination can occur. So, when we collect children’s experiences in their ‘own words’ (understand how they reconstruct reality), it is essential not to reify children’s voices (James, 2015). Powerful critiques of this reification have been mounted by Spyrou (2016) who argues that silence is a constitutive feature of ‘voice’ and Komulainen (2007), who demonstrates that the ambiguity of ‘voice’, problematises attempts at representation of ‘authentic’ children’s voices.

At a practice-oriented level, Tisdall (2015) also demonstrates how the participation agenda can marginalise children’s representation because it inadequately accounts for structural contexts. The structural position of children in society, as a dominated category, raises the question of adaptative preferences, a concept originating from feminist theories, whereby the oppressed become accustomed to their circumstances and even come to prefer them. Hence, the following question is important: Do children’s choices really inform us about the range of possibilities that were at hand or only about their adaptive preferences? These two points, regarding reification of children’s voices and adaptive preferences, further underscore the importance of identifying the multidimensionality of agency, as a reduction of agency to self-determination risks both problems.

Conclusion

As Mizen and Ofosu-Kusi (2013) put it, ‘children’s agency is routinely conflated with their ability to choose to do things’ (p. 365). However, children’s ability to choose lies in a reflexive process in what we have described as reflexive monitoring and in concrete possibilities to choose. The choices available to social actors are an important dimension of their agency, but the question of choice is a tricky one because the choices that are objectively available do not often equate to choices that are subjectively perceived by actors. The counterfactual evidence (what would you have done if you had this or that other possibility?) is not present in respondents discourse whose subjective representations of the choices they have are mostly shaped by dominant discourses (the question of adaptive preferences). Similar limitations are acknowledged by James (2015) in problematising the concept of ‘giving voice to children’, as this concept inadequately responds to the complexity of representation, authenticity, diversity and participation. That there is no clear superposition of objective and subjective choices is evident in children’s actions, their trial and error way of acting reflects the difficult learning process of adjusting to the outside world (its norms and values).

The explanatory framework constituted by the systemic logic in the actor’s system uses commonsense language. The concepts used – activities, relations, values, images of self and motivations – do not necessarily have the same level of abstraction as concepts of a second degree that sociologists use (like agency).

An explanation of the structure of agency is therefore necessary to reflect the experience of children in their adaptive career that is otherwise downplayed by an individualistic view of the margins of manoeuvre (‘agency within structure’). Agency then conflates with an iconic image of the child as social constructor of her or his world(s), making things appear as individualistic. It should be asked, however, whether what we call ‘social’ and ‘individual’ are actually phenomena that we are capturing or naming at a specific stage of their formation where they appear as being ‘social’ or on the contrary ‘individual’. What children might tell us as being ‘attached’ to their individuality is already constructed socially (gender, physical attributes, abilities, etc.). Therefore, their accounts about their ‘individual choices’ must be understood as highly social.

Our empirical reconstructions of different forms of agency (structure within agency) have directed us to some broader implications regarding social structure, which have been identified with the aid of the actor–system framework. Our discussion of agency as competence directs our attention to how practical achievements are linked to systems of self-image, competence, relationships and values. Agency as self-determination points to the double structuration of choice and to the twin pitfalls of reification and fetishisation of adaptive preferences, that the participation agenda risks running. Agency as practical action draws attention to social transformations in the intimate sphere, in particular, the family as a system of action.

We have not attempted to build a theory of agency, but to illustrate how agency is constituted intersubjectively, within parameters set by and enabled through structures represented in social space. Children’s agency is thus always constituted through constraints and opportunities, whether they be accepted, negotiated or resisted. We can see the actor’s system as a tool for the observation of reflexive monitoring and the capability approach as a perspective for the observation of choices. We can thus gain some insights into the structuration of agency.