Agency Fields in the Sphere of Art: Actors, Environments of Manifestation, and Formation Factors

Abstract

Insufficient understanding of the driving forces and mechanisms of proactive human influence on the social environment has recently been discussed as one of the key problems for fundamental science and practical politics. One of the key concepts in scientific discussions is agency. The field of art, as both a medium of manifestation and a factor in the formation of agency, receives limited attention, despite the fact that historically it occupies an important place in the developments on the problems of structural dynamics (for example, in the works of P. Bourdieu, B. Latour). Based on theoretical analysis, a review of discussions in the field of contemporary art, as well as on the basis of five interviews with contemporary artists, this article puts forward and substantiates the hypothesis about the existence of “fields of agency” as a special type of social formations, resulting not so much from change or development through individual action of existing structures, but from the direct creation of new practices of action and communities, which in turn change the wider environment. This hypothesis is considered as a development of the concept of strategic action fields by N. Fligsteen and D. McAdam, as well as a clarification of the neostructuration concept (de-structuration) previously put forward by one of the authors of this article. The authors conclude that the formation of fields of agency may be an important mechanism through which individual action can transform the social world and which has not been sufficiently studied in contemporary social theory.