{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02333931777378815, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00718132854578097, 'mean_word_length': 5.264044943820225, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Agency as a Process of Translation

Dominant conceptions of agency, grounded in Western philosophy, focus on the primacy of the agent, obscuring any vision of their interlocutor. Agency refers to the human ability to act (Taylor, 1985), and this human action is instrumental, that is, guided by motives to accomplish objectives (Burke, 1969). Agency is therefore usually considered to be something exercised by the person who acts, with little recognition of the agency that is exercised by the person who is acted on—or objects to such action. In this essay, we argue that these “acted on others” are agents as well and propose a postcolonial approach to explore “other” forms of agency. We start by tracing the Western conceptual origins of agency and offer an alternative perspective grounded in the postcolonial notion of translation. We then discuss how this alternative perspective can be explored methodologically by using postcolonial ethnographic practices. We conclude the essay with challenges and questions for organizational communication scholars aiming to examine agency through a postcolonial lens.