Kari Mikko Vesala, Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki,

Larry Saha Seminar Room 2175, Level 2, Haydon-Allen Building, The Australian National University,

According to sociologists Meyer and Jepperson (2000), the cultural system constructs the modern actor as an authorized agent for various interests, including those of the self but also of other actors. Semantically the word agent has two different meanings, one referring to something or somebody who causes things, the other to something or somebody who acts on behalf of something or somebody. The agency-structure debate in social sciences, as well as the psychological study of self and self-regulation, is built around the former meaning (agency as causative or ‘executive agency’).  Notably, Meyer and Jepperson make a connection between the two meanings of agency.  They highlight the agent-principal –relation (agency for principal), whilst addressing the issue of causative agency in human action.

This paper contributes to the discussion of the relevance of the agent-principal –viewpoint for the agency-structure theorizing by outlining how the idea of principal figures in social psychological theories of agency. I analyze how the notion of agency for a principal figures in theoretical traditions and how one can, or could, read it into them. As a meta-theoretical framework I use Emirbayer’s (1997) distinction between substantialist and relational/transactional viewpoints. I will start with the social cognitive approach which is largely committed to the view that the agent acts as her own principal. Then I will point out how the ability to take and reject principals can been interpreted as an important form of personal agency in the Meadian perspective, and proceed to dramaturgical approach which includes the idea that serving principals is used as a communicative means in the framing and self-presentation strategies within social interaction.  Finally I argue that the social construction approach to agency with a view on humans as discourse users can be interpreted as complementing the dramaturgical approach but also highlighting the nature and role of the abstract cultural principals stressed by Meyer and Jepperson.