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Against object agency 2. Continuing the discussion with Sørensen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2019

Artur Ribeiro
Artur Ribeiro*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Human Development in Landscapes, University of Kiel, Germany
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper expands upon some of the arguments and issues surrounding object agency that have been discussed in this journal (Lindstrøm 2015; 2017; Ribeiro 2016a; 2016b; Sørensen 2016; 2018). More specifically, it challenges Sørensen’s support of object agency in his latest discussion on the topic (2018). The paper is divided into three parts: first, it questions the relevance of replacing the conventional usage of ‘agency’, generally attached to sociological studies and reserved to describe human action, with one supported by the New Materialists; second, it identifies a series of contradictions in how agency is defined according to the New Materialisms, namely how it can be very labile and scalable yet simultaneously universal and applicable across all cultures and time periods; and lastly, it questions the quality of the philosophical ideas supporting the New Materialist conception of agency, and its disadvantages in light of the current re-emergence and repopularization of processual archaeology.

Keywords

Agencynew materialismresponsibilitysymmetricalmaterialismobjects
Type
Reactions
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , June 2019 , pp. 39 - 44
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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