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Structural Load

Structural Load Let’s get to claiming! Agency involves capacity for self-determined choice. It has structural and systemic factors constraining agency. It exists on a spectrum rather than binary categories. It requires a level of autonomy and reason. It has collective and relational dimensions.

Tension between self-determined choice and systemic constraint cause a spectrum view to come into play and contrast binary classification. Constraints shape the possibilities for choice but don’t eliminate agency entirely. This is because reason and autonomy relate closely to notion of self-directed action. Individual and collective agency are interdependent rather than independent, causing contextual factors to either expand or limit agency. Yhese show the reader questions of competency and capacity are relevant to agency.

To get more navel-gazey about it, agency occupies an ambiguous space between freedom and determination. It hinges on notions of competence and reasoning that require further probing. Agency carries unstated premises about human behavior that should definitely be questioned. Preferably with fire, and zines, preferably exclusively both. Individual and systemic perspectives cannot be squared, as defined terms, but may be cubed and — vocalized in this space —diffused into convivial compliance. See that blog post at making lights in corners nice in video games for more.

Domainly speaking — people have ”free will to make choices about their lives and destinies!” as Philosophy would put it. Citizens have the agency to participate in governance through voting, as Political science sees things. Strict liability laws hold agents morally responsible for harms they cause regardless of intention is white people logic, that dragon, Legal theory, speaking. Oppressive systems undermine personal agency and autonomy, so Sociology would have us believe.

Advertising can manipulate consumer choices and agency, as Psychology sticks it. Artificial intelligence systems act with apparent agency but no consciousness where Philosophy of mind is currently dying in a fire from it. Children develop a stronger sense of agency and independence as they grow older in Developmental psychology terms. Belief in one’s self-efficacy and agency is crucial for motivation on Social cognition’s part.

Outside academia, agency today is often invoked in contexts of moral responsibility. Political and social structures are seen as either promoting or limiting agency. Agency is associated with autonomy, independence, and self-direction, and reasoned deliberate choice is considered integral to agency. Agency is sometimes contrasted with external manipulation or coercion, while at the same door the possibility of non-human agency challenges intuitions linking it to human-determed recursions and human-dimensions like consciousness and free will.

On Tumblr, the common notion of agency as individual free will has limitations in accounting for structural constraints, power dynamics, and collective contexts. However, completely rejecting agency risks falling into fatalism and failing to recognize the possibility of self-determination under oppression. For RPG systems, as often as non-binary understandings of agency that foreground relationships over lone heroes will be more suitable is it often just: forgone.

For me, rather than self-contained agentic individuals, reframe agency as interdependent but unique perspectives cooperating in collective worldbuilding. And conceptualize player agency in RPGs less as acting out will via an avatar, and more as expressing creativity and authorship within a participatory story’s surface. Rather than challenges to overcome, focus agency on existing in dilemmas, tensions, and complex dynamics, stabilizing identity within the collectively built fiction. Build mechanics around plotting and illuminating relationships between phenomena, entities, and policy. Set out of reach or do away with alltogether or — better: taboo all unilateral agentic action.