{"product_id":"identity-and-agency-in-cultural-worlds-9780674005624","title":"Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis landmark book addresses the central problem in anthropological theory today: the paradox that humans are products of social discipline yet producers of remarkable improvisation. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSynthesizing theoretical contributions by Vygotsky, Bakhtin and Bourdieu, Holland and her co-authors examine the processes by which people are constituted as agents as well as subjects of culturally constructed, socially imposed worlds. They develop a theory of self-formation in which identities become the pivot between discipline and agency: turning from experiencing one's scripted social positions to making one's way into cultural worlds as a knowledgeable and committed participant. They emphasize throughout that \"identities\" are not static and coherent, but variable, multivocal and interactive. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEthnographic illumination of this complex theoretical construction comes from vividly described fieldwork in vastly different microcultures: American college women \"caught\" in romance; persons in U.S. institutions of mental health care; members of Alcoholics Anonymous groups; and girls and women in the patriarchal order of Hindu villages in central Nepal. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eUltimately, \u003ci\u003eIdentity and Agency in Cultural Worlds \u003c\/i\u003eoffers a liberating yet tempered understanding of agency, for it shows how people, across the limits of cultural traditions and social forces of power and domination, improvise and find spaces to re-describe themselves, creating their cultural worlds anew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHolland, Dorothy:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Dorothy Holland is Boshamer Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50412773048594,"sku":"9780674005624","price":57.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_648517dd-4fa3-4e15-8cbc-c69021ee1591.jpg?v=1729327138","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/identity-and-agency-in-cultural-worlds-9780674005624","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}