Abstract
While the vital contribution of feminist scholarship is acknowledged, it has been criticized for overly relying on the influence of society upon women’s lives. In this paper, I demonstrate the usefulness of also considering the influence of agency upon women’s lives, specifically agential reflexivity. Using the work and life histories of a group of Sri Lankan women, I use Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic approach to show how investigating reflexivity can provide greater insights into the subtleties associated with women’s agency in relation to how they consciously (but fallibly) organize their life journeys and react to oppression, demonstrate resistance and effect emancipation. My research reveals latent aspects of women’s agency within a postcolonial Third World social context, where an enduring patriarchal social system intersects with modernity and subjects women to complex social and occupational circumstances. This paper contributes to the field of women’s studies by showing how the morphogenetic approach can address the problem of conflationary theorizing within feminist scholarship.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 383-401 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Journal of Critical Realism |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 10 Jul 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 8 Aug 2017 |
Keywords
- emergent powers
- morphogenetic approach
- reflexivity
- Sri Lanka
- women
- Women’s agency
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Philosophy
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Lakshman Wimalasena
- School of Social Sciences, Edinburgh Business School - Assistant Professor
- School of Social Sciences - Assistant Professor
Person: Academic (Research & Teaching)