Mediating Agency and Structure in Sociology: What Role for Conversion Factors?

Hvinden, Bjørn; Halvorsen, Rune

doi:10.1177/0896920516684541

Cited by 52 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(28 reference statements)

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“…functional literacy; see , as well as their financial ability to access these resources. Similar to the component of local relationships, effectively incorporating local policies and services into a communitybased capabilities approach requires conceptualization of community as a potential resource as well as a conversion factor, dependent on the context (Hoogenboom et al, 2015;Hvinden & Halvorsen, 2017;Kurowska, 2018a;. However, local policies can also be a barrier to individuals' ability to make full use of policy resources provided at the national level.…”

Section: Community As a Conversion Factormentioning

confidence: 99%

Where’s the community in community, work and family? A community-based capabilities approach

Yerkes

Hoogenboom

Javornik

2020

Community, Work & Family

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Community is a key dimension in the work-family interface as highlighted by the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Yet it is critically understudied by much work-family scholarship. We highlight and address crucial barriers preventing the integration of the community concept, developing an interdisciplinary communitybased capabilities approach. This approach conceptualizes three components of community: local relationships, local policies and locality (place, space and scale). Local relationships include formal and informal relationships, networks, and a sense of belonging. Dependent on the broader socioeconomic context, local policies and services can provide important resources for managing these relationships and work-life situations more generally. These relationships and policies are embedded in specific geographical localities, shaping and being shaped by social action. This interdisciplinary conceptualization of community allows relational, spatial, structural and temporal aspects of community to be integrated into a more broadly applicable conceptual approach. We base this approach on the capability approach, which allows for a pluralistic work-life framework of what individuals value and do. We further argue for a conceptualization of family as community, moving towards a work-community interface. The resulting conceptual approach is useful for explaining work-life processes for individuals with and without care responsibilities, and offers a new framework for studying the social trends intensely and rapidly highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Section: Community As a Conversion Factormentioning

confidence: 99%

Where’s the community in community, work and family? A community-based capabilities approach

Yerkes

Hoogenboom

Javornik

2020

Community, Work & Family

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“…These can be constraints as Sen (1999) has argued. But recently their role as enablements for agency and the enjoyment of capabilities or the achievement of functionings has also been persuasively been pointed out (Hvinden and Halvorsen, 2018). To a certain extent, this may also entail the heuristic apprehension of perceptions and subjectivities since different conversion factors may mean different things to different people.…”

Section: Under-theorizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanizing development: taking stock of Amartya Sen’s capability approach

Velástegui

2020

RPD

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Amartya Sen’s capability approach redefined development in terms of people and their quality of life. Since development suggests the idea of positive change, it highlights what is worth changing, the desirable outcome and the desirable way to achieve it. This influential framework has succeeded in engaging different disciplines in constructive debate. There is a growing, and dispersed, literature adding and critiquing it. Hence, providing a current conceptual account of the approach, on its own terms, to assess its contribution to the project it undertakes, address its alleged shortcomings, and point to avenues to further the debate seems warranted. This is particularly timely given its 30 years of influence over public policy, as evidenced by the United Nations’ Human Development Reports

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“…Different authors propose different classifications of conversion factors (Crocker and Robeyns, 2009;Robeyns, 2005;Sen, 1999: 70-71). Here we classify the relevant conversion factors according to the level at which they operate: micro, meso or macro (see Hvinden and Halvorsen, 2017;Hvinden et al, Chapter 1 this volume). In taking conversion factors into account, the capability approach enables consideration not only of the role of individual-level characteristics in the evaluation of inequalities, but also of how interactions between the individual, intermediate and institutional levels affect these inequalities.…”

Section: Agency and Conversion Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Un)realized agency in a situation of early job insecurity: patterns of young people’s agency regarding employment

Boyadjieva¹,

Ilieva-Trichkova²

2019

Youth Unemployment and Job Insecurity in Europe

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Researchers have been giving greater attention recently to the different factors underlying the problems and challenges young people face in integrating into the labour market (e.g., Chung and Van Oorschot, 2010;Eurofound, 2014). Several studies have explored the institutional determin ants of early job insecurity in European countries (Hora et al., 2016) and the risk factors for young people's careers in Europe during the economic crisis (Karamessini et al., 2016). However, existing research has less to say about how young people use their scope for agency within the institutional constraints they experience. This chapter focuses on the ways in which young people convert available resources into desired ways of living and flourishing ('functionings') in key social areas, such as education, employment, family formation, civic participation and cultural activities. Amongst these areas, the sphere of employment is particularly important for individuals' well-being. We address the following research questions:1. What are the patterns of active agency regarding employment of young people experiencing early job insecurity? 2. Which factors have hindered the agency regarding employment of young people experiencing early job insecurity? 3. Do the patterns of active agency of young people differ by national context and/or employment regimes?The chapter proceeds as follows. First, we outline the theoretical considerations behind the framework of the analysis. Next, we present the data and our main findings. We then proceed with a discussion of the identified Pepka Boyadjieva and Petya Ilieva-Trichkova -9781788118897

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Mediating Agency and Structure in Sociology: What Role for Conversion Factors?

Cited by 52 publications

References 36 publications

Where’s the community in community, work and family? A community-based capabilities approach

Where’s the community in community, work and family? A community-based capabilities approach

Humanizing development: taking stock of Amartya Sen’s capability approach

(Un)realized agency in a situation of early job insecurity: patterns of young people’s agency regarding employment

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