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Agency

University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

Many contemporary arguments about agency rely on implicit psychologies or conceptions of human mental functioning even as they attempt to direct attention away from the idea of a freely acting, completely autonomous individual. This article argues that even when the concept of agency is ‘displaced’ or reinterpreted away from the liberal subject, the concept always draws on such a psychological base whether those debts are hidden or declared. Drawing on literature from feminist theory, anthropology, and sociology on women's decisions to undergo elective cosmetic surgery, the first section of the article explores ways that agency has been conceptualized with regard to beauty culture and disciplinary bodily technologies in a US context. The second section of this article takes up women's religious practice in Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety (2005).

Key Words: agency • cosmetic surgery • cultural anthropology • feminism • psychological anthropology • religious submission

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 6, No. 3, 281-302 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499606066889


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