Moral habilitation is the intentional and directed shaping of a new subjectivity in accordance with a culturally sanctioned, pro-social standard of daily ethical conduct. Treatment programs for sexual offenders are enterprises in moral habilitation that involve instilling participants with new values, beliefs, and practices. This research represents a person-centred ethnography that combined concepts of morality, stigma, selfhood, and agency with the treatment and community (re)integration of sexual offenders to learn how some of these men narrated their transformations from dysfunction to a state of self-regulation and greater wellbeing. To this end, 18 men of Euro-Canadian or Aboriginal ancestry living in western Canada were interviewed about their experiences in sexual offender treatment programs, their transitions from prison to community life, and their changing self-concepts. In this transition, participants described their motivations to change as derived from their experiences of (a) a stigmatized, unfulfilling life, (b) the desire for a better or “normal” life, (c) social supports, and (d) a determined and willful mindset. They adopted multiple narrative strategies to protect their self-concepts while the progression of time and ethical self-reformation facilitated a transition from shame and self-doubt to self-acceptance. Through this research, I propose a model of Ethical Self-Reformation (ESR) that combines the institutional morality of treatment programs with stigmatizing public moral discourses to individuals’ enactments of agency, will, and motivation to sustain what is in effect amoral enterprise. Moral habilitation is conceptualized as the internalized, automatic responses of an embodied morality as practiced through the ESR model. This research concludes that sexual offender treatment programs can effectively lead to moral habilitation if the offender is willing to submit to the process; but it also advises that programs need to be more individualized if treatment responsivity is to be enhanced.

The central theme of the study is whether deliberate actions to realise aspirations can and would be likely to increase capabilities amongst the poor, and whether such attempts might reduce poverty. Capabilities are seen here as real opportunity sets which people can use to achieve what they want to be or do (Sen, 1990:43-44). In addition Amartya Sen also emphasises the important role of agency in the achievement of capabilities (Sen, 1985). The relationship between aspirations, agency and capabilities is therefore explored, with emphasis on whether people can escape a potential poverty trap by deliberate and focused use of agency. I also ask what role structural opportunities and constraints play in this process. The study has been largely inspired by the idea of Arjun Appadurai (2004) that the poor might be constrained in their efforts to escape poverty because they lack the capacity to aspire, as they might have been socialised to accept that their aspirations would not be realisable. This idea was tested in a five year action research programme in Site C, Khayelitsha, near Cape Town. The dissertation offers an analysis of the programme in which a group of women was assisted in voicing their aspirations and subsequently worked on the realisation of these aspirations with a limited amount of support and facilitation by the researcher. Although many papers have been written on the social and economic implications of Appadurai’s idea, both within and external to the human development approach, the practical implementation of the idea in a project seems to be novel. The analysis of aspirations and capabilities is contextualised in the dissertation. The history and migration of the participating women show how their lives have been shaped by colonialism, apartheid, and their own cultural practices. This is followed by a discussion of the literature which informs the research and the analysis. The capability approach is discussed with particular reference to its conceptual tools, and the differences in the approaches of Sen and Nussbaum are briefly described. I review the ways in which capabilities are generally measured, and discuss the perspectives of different authors on individualism in the approach. Adaptation and agency as seen from the perspective of the capability approach provide important conceptual material for the analysis in a later chapter. A number of studies which assessed capabilities by qualitative means are then briefly reviewed, and these again provide background information for the analysis of the Khayelitsha study. The study on the use of agency in the capability approach reveals that there are lacunae, which could possibly be addressed by amplification from other disciplines. With this in mind agency is further explored in different disciplines – economics, psychology and social theory. Particular attention is given to three classical theorists of agency, Giddens, Bourdieu and Habermas, but the work of Archer, Latour, Long and Joas is also reviewed. I then recommend that the capability approach would benefit from a hermeneutical analysis of agency, and indicate specific elements which I think can be brought forward into such an extension. The literature review also includes a section on aspirations, which takes account of the conceptual relationship between aspirations, agency and capabilities. The empirical material is introduced under the umbrella of an action research programme which spanned a five year period. As part of this programme there was a household survey to obtain benchmark data. This was followed by the presentation of a life skills course based on Participatory Action Research or PRA methods. Between late 2006 and 2010 the women implemented their decisions, and their actions were observed. The main research process during this phase was an ethno-methodological study of the participating women. During this phase a number of life histories were recorded and I also conducted a set of individual interviews which focussed on individual agency. In 2010 I assessed the women’s increase in functionings and capabilities by taking note of actions taken towards achieving their aspirations, and in 2012 I recorded seven interviews on the rural-urban dynamics in their lives. The main findings of the household survey are given in a separate chapter on research findings. The different recordings of the aspirations the women articulated, and how these changed, are also recorded in the chapter on findings. The analysis of the respondents’ increase in functionings and capabilities is done with reference to an adaptation of a diagram published by Robeyns (2005:98), which visualises the essential conceptual parts of the capability approach. I adapt the diagram for a specific social context, for aspiration formulation, for agency assessment, and for the assessment of increased capabilities. In a second analysis chapter I do a hermeneutic agency analysis of six of the participating women in the context of the capability approach, asking whether the pursuit of their aspirations had been agency-unlocking. This is followed by a concluding chapter. / Philosophiae Doctor - PhD

Infrastructure development is a topic that has occupied a noble niche within development thinking since the middle of the twentieth century. However, despite over half a century of research concerning infrastructure development processes, structurally-oriented development theories continue to dominate infrastructure development research and praxis. Critically informed approaches to development, which acknowledge the integral role of place, power, and agency to infrastructure research, have yet to make a noticeable mark within infrastructure development policymaking. A review of the multidisciplinary infrastructure and development literature reveals a clear emphasis on structurally-oriented processes of infrastructure provision, and an insufficient understanding of agency-oriented, place-specific processes of infrastructure access, particularly within the context of inequitable societies. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to critically examine infrastructure development processes based on the lived experiences of marginalized populations and to integrate such experiences into the construction of infrastructure knowledge. This dissertation is a compilation of three manuscripts and three additional chapters (the introduction, methodology, and conclusion). The first of these manuscripts, entitled The Science and Politics of Infrastructure Research, is a conceptual paper that critically explores the intersection of infrastructure and development literature. Herein I describe three perspectives, the technocratic, interventionist, and critical perspectives, that articulate the different ways that infrastructure is valued among multiple actors involved in the production of infrastructure knowledge. Among these perspectives, I contend that technocratic and interventionist perspectives have occupied a dominant position with respect to informing infrastructure development policy and praxis throughout the twentieth century. I question whether such dominance is the product of superior scientific rigor or the politicized process of knowledge production. Towards the goal of giving greater prominence to the critical perspective, and in effort to offer a systematic way forward from this post-development critique, I propose the Critical Acquisition Framework. The framework is designed to facilitate an agency-oriented understanding of infrastructure development processes from the perspectives of marginalized groups. Inspired by critical-social theory and capability analyses, the Critical Acquisition Framework helps to understand how marginalized groups deploy their existing capability sets to access infrastructure via multiple overlapping institutions. In addition, the framework helps to envision alternative agency-oriented scenarios of infrastructure access. In essence, the framework demonstrates how the acquisition process influences the capability sets and therefore agency and power of marginalized groups. The framework can be used to assess whether infrastructure ???develops??? according to emic perspectives, or whether infrastructure reifies inequitable power relations. The research is informed by a critical methodological approach and mixed-methods research design. To investigate infrastructure access through the experiences of marginalized groups, the empirical aspect of this research is based on two instrumental case studies located in the northern highlands of Peru. The first case study and second manuscript is entitled: Women???s Acquisition of Domestic Water Services in the District of Cajamarca, Peru. Three impoverished women???s groups, representing rural, peri-urban, and urban locales are analysed, based on the women???s experiences of accessing water through their respective institutions of domestic water provision. Overall, the findings illustrate how marginalized groups exercise agency, as well as the limits to their agency in accessing domestic water services. Considerable variations are found in the quality of domestic water institutions that play a deciding role in women???s experiences of access. The findings also suggest that inefficient institutions may be perpetuated as such in order to maintain the powerful positions of dominant groups involved in domestic water provision. The second case study and third manuscript, is entitled Access for Whom and to What? A Critical Acquisition Framework for Understanding Rural Experiences of Multiple Accessibilities. This paper examines the iterative process through which vendors working within an informal market district repeatedly deploy their multiple capability sets to navigate multiple overlapping institutions that regulate comprehensive access to rural transportation and other privatized infrastructures. Three sub-processes of rural accessibility are investigated: transportation access, market access, and infrastructure access. The findings reveal the complexity of rural accessibility, and suggest that failures of infrastructure access may be attributed to inequitable institutions that regulate the acquisition process. The instrumental case studies have been used to help inform, test, and refine the Critical Acquisition Framework. In doing so, this research has achieved its aim to integrate the experiences of marginalized populations in the construction of infrastructure development knowledge. This research offers a new way of understanding an old problem of infrastructure development. Positioning the notions of agency, power, and place as central tenets of infrastructure development analyses, not only complements the existing body of infrastructure knowledge, but can also lend to a more equitable process of infrastructure development within inequitable societies.

Thesis (M.A. (Social Work))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Cyberfeminist scholars have identified the Internet as a site where feminist issues are substantiated. This exploratory study investigates young women’s lived experiences of agency within online social networking, also looking at the ways in which their assertion of agency is constrained. Analysis identified four biographically consistent identity narratives within which participants experienced online agency, each with a unique operationalization of agency, constraints upon agency, and role of a heteronormative boyfriend. Identity narratives tended to invoke socially- and media-entrenched representations of how to ‘properly’ perform ‘girl’ online, including stereotypes of girls vigilantly managing online risk or portraying themselves as professional, ethically sensible, family-oriented, or popular and celebrity-oriented. However, these representations were also inherently conflictual, presenting incompatible expectations that were difficult to simultaneously negotiate. In conclusion, this study recommends that future research and policy abandon patriarchal, neoliberal underpinnings in favour of deconstructing problematic stereotyped representations of femininity within online spaces.

Thesis (M.A. (Social Work))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

By paying attention to the habitual register of politics this dissertation has sought to contribute to the theoretical literature on democratic citizenship. More precisely, I offer a more complex account the moral psychology of political agency presumed by the turn to ethics within democratic theory. The central question of this dissertation is how do citizens come to feel empowered to act on their convictions in politics? Political theorists often celebrate civic action as spontaneity and willfulness, and at the same time lament the agency-foreclosing complexity and fragmentation of late-modern politics. Drawing out this tension in Michel Foucault’s analysis of docility and transgression I argue that a middle path between disembodied autonomy and docile passivity is articulated in the moral psychology found in William James’s account of habit. The study makes this case by looking at three episodes of the foreclosure and recovery of action in James’s thinking: his engagement with Darwinian science and his nervous breakdown in the 1870’s and 80’s; his critique of democratic docility and debate on strenuousness with Theodore Roosevelt during the Spanish-American war; and the cynical adaptation of James’s psychology by the democratic realism of Walter Lippmann in the 1920’s. In each case I argue that James’s lively account of habit as a force of unruly spontaneity functions as a therapy of action against feelings of powerlessness, docility, and incompetence constrain democratic conviction. The result is at once a novel continuation of the American tradition of democratic individualism and a contribution to the contemporary debates on the democratic ethics of self-making.

This dissertation is an investigation of visitor experiences in the Screen Gallery at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), in Melbourne. This thesis argues that visitors’ interaction with moving image art can yield expressions of agency which not only enrich the experience of visiting a new museum, but also find application beyond an institutionalised environment as a praxis for negotiating the conditions of everyday life. I term the articulation of this praxis a politics of movement. (For complete abstract open document).

Zugl.: Magdeburg, Univ., Diss., 2005

Zugl.: Eichstätt, Ingolstadt, Universiẗat, Diss., 2007.