Description
This book focuses on the understanding of factors and mechanisms involved in the development of agency mainly in three related contexts --- participatory development, extension work, and service transactions. The research has its starting point in the recognition of the critical role played by “agency” (commonly understood as want/will for and practice of self-determination and self-management) on the part of intended beneficiaries of services and projects for effective implementation and sustainability. It is designed to address this subject matter with its principal focus on inner capacities and orientations of human beings, posing questions as to how such capacities and orientations could be enhanced and activated in practice by external actors in the field of public policies for socioeconomic and international development. The project is organized transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries --- combining anthropological, psychological, and economic approaches and perspectives.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction: What Moves Researchers to Take Initiatives to This Interdisciplinary Research Project.- Part I Understanding Agency and Its Development.- 2 Beyond Aloof Cynicism: A Critical Overview of Anthropological Perspectives on Agency and Its Development.- 3 A Psychological Perspective on Agency in the Context of Behavior Change.- 4 Agency as Base for “Bounded Rationality”, Core of “Human Capital”, and Key to “Human Capabilities”.- Part II Enhancing Agency: Its Plausible Mechanisms and Influential Factors.- 5 What Is Done for Facilitating Agency Development in Practice?: Documenting and Crystallizing an Unsung Practical Knowledge of a Third-Country Expert.- 6 Breaking the Poverty Trap: A Psychological Framework for Sustainably Facilitating Agency and Behavior Change in Development Aid Beneficiaries.- 7 User-Centered Approaches to Service Transactions and Agency of Service Users.- Part III Visualizing and Measuring Agency.- 8 Writing, Telling, Expressing Self in Association with Others: Revisiting and Examining Life Record Movement as an Origin of Story-Based Methods in Japan.- 9 The Psychological Measurement of Agency: Recent Developments and Challenges of Psychometrics in Poverty Contexts.- 10 Visualization of the Stages of Agency Development.- 11 Conclusion.
