Ashenden, Samantha (2013) Reproblematising relations of agency and coercion: surrogacy. In: Madhok, S. and Phillips, A. and Wilson, K. (eds.) Gender, Agency, and Coercion. Thinking Gender in Transnational Times. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 195-218. ISBN 9780230300323.
Abstract
Book synopsis: This collection aims to think critically about agency and explore the relationship between agency and coercion in greater depth. In academic, activist, and policy circles alike, feminist work has re-focused attention onto women as agents rather than as passive victims of overwhelming structures of male institutional power, or less capable of exercising agency by virtue of their class, race, gender or culture. These broadly positive moves are not without risks. Most notably, they can encourage a triumphalist disregard for constraints through an exclusive emphasis on 'discovering' agency even in the least favourable situations, thereby obscuring domination, inequality, and subordination. So how does bringing agency and coercion into closer interplay impact our understanding of the two? How might the stories of feminist agency change if we locate agency and coercion on the same intellectual frame? What would it mean to disrupt the existing constellation of ideas accompanying agency so as to include coercion, subordination and oppression alongside ideas of freedom, autonomy, and independence? How do we theoretically negotiate agency and coercion in conditions of deep inequality? This collection thinks through these questions in a range of regional, intellectual, ethical and political contexts.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Moving Image, Birkbeck Institute for the (BIMI) |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 28 May 2013 11:03 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:04 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/7039 |
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