Theorizing agency in post-girlpower times

Abstract

Post-structuralist youth studies theorists have argued for nuanced perspectives on agency that are not reliant on an assumption of subjects as rational and internally coherent individuals, and understand subjectivity and social structure as produced in concert. These are important theoretical developments that have shaped recent scholarship on girls' identities and cultures. In this paper, we seek to give them some further sociological grounding by thinking through their resonance for the specific debate about young women and what feminist agency consists of, or looks like today. What we wish to further flesh out is how more familiar, modernist ideas about girls' agency have started to reach their limits not merely because of the post-structuralist turn, but because of the socio-cultural conditions of neoliberalism, post-feminism and post-girlpower. We unpack some recent shifts and complexities around three concepts: choice, empowerment and voice. These are the terms by which the possibility of girls' and young women's agency has traditionally been understood in feminist scholarship and much work in girls' studies. However, when we interrogate these concepts within the specific neoliberal, post-feminist, post-girlpower context, their usefulness for either understanding or enabling feminist agency is thrown into question.

Malignant trauma and the invisibility of ritual abuse

“…Alford (1997) adds that a major contributor to evil is also the hollowing out of cultural resources to represent and symbolize the basis of dread: that is, the inevitability of tragedy, loss and suffering. There is now an extensive body of cultural theory and research documenting the pervasive idealization of individual autonomy, choice and agency in consumer culture, disallowing personal recognition of the unchosen realities of interpersonal harm and suffering (Burkett & Hamilton, 2012;Harris, 2015;McRobbie, 2008). In a compulsively optimistic and consumerist culture, the stigmatization of passivity, failure and victimhood provides the cultural architecture of evil: "Better to be the evildoer than the victim if one has to choose, as so many feel they must" (Alford, 1997 p 17).…”

Rethinking sexual agency: proposing a multicomponent model based on young people’s life stories

“…The concept of choice is itself problematic. Although young people may mobilise narratives of choice and personal autonomy to articulate and make sense of their actions after the event (Harris and Dobson 2015), and may even argue that each individual is solely responsible for his or her own wellbeing (Lamb and Randazzo 2016), this does not mean that they are entirely responsible for what happens in their lives, or that they all have the required power, possibilities and positions to make 'free' choices. The challenge for sexuality educators is to move beyond the restrictive paradigms offered by individual responsibility to acknowledge young peoples' ongoing negotiations of social expectations, boundaries and bondedness.…”

The Peril of Pink Bricks: Gender Ideology and LEGO Friends

“…Within this research area, Marxist feminist debates about the girl and on girlhood as a site of capitalist exploitation and commodification (McRobbie, 2008) as well as sexualized spectacle (Gill, 2009) alternate with poststructuralist debates about fluid identities, suffering actors (Harris & Dobson, 2015) and critical discussions of sexualization as a middle-class anxiety that denounces non-white, non-middle-class behaviors (Driscoll, 2013;Egan, 2013aEgan, , 2013bRenold & Ringrose, 2013). A similar anxiety concerning the impact of gendered toys on girls in particular can also be found in mainstream media and to a lesser degree in academic research.…”