AgencyAndMeaning

Agency And The Location Of Meaning

Agency is intricately involved in communication and development, and by locating agency in a particular project, cultural differences, individual differences, and changes over time are revealed that speak to the ethnic and class differences observed by Worth and Adair (1977) and Chalfen (1992) (as previously discussed). An analysis of agency in student video projects demonstrates how the creation of meaning happens sometimes in the camera and sometimes in front of the camera, and it shows how its location is associated with the video genre and context as much as with cultures or individuals, revealing instances of how agency can be asserted at both the collective and individual levels.

Agency is “defined as an activity, a way of being in concrete situations” (Stetsenko and Arievitch, 1997), and it is viewed as being “frequently a property of dyads and other small groups rather than individuals” (Wertsch et al., 1993, p. 337). Moreover, “the agent is viewed as being an irreducible aggregate of individual (or intermental functions) together with mediational means” (Wertsch et al., p. 341). My use of the term is drawn particularly from the view Vygotsky and Luria put forth in their discussion of tool use in the “formation of intention and previously planned purposeful action” (1994, p. 134) with a stress on intention because planning and purpose tend to be under the level of awareness as studied in this project. Agency is—for the present purposes—about the effort to influence the progression of events,²⁰ and as such, agency is associated particularly with the initiation of events. Based on this perspective, the video camera is a tool that affords unique opportunities for camera operators and production teams to distinguish intentions from those inscribed in the context: Cameras have a unique potential to create new events directly and indirectly.

The focus on agency began with the observation during the pilot study that some students some of the time exploited the power of video cameras to shape events in real time—in essence to create a message that is one's own rather than one already available in the context. Agency surfaced as an issue because students were using the camera sometimes to record events as they happened and sometimes were creating events in how they used the camera. This tendency to shape events in video production is viewed as an advance upon the tendency to allow the recorded activity to create events because the camera has become a tool for relating to the activity, possibly overcoming some of its constraints to pursue an agenda other than those already in the activity.

The initial manner of considering agentic videography, however, looked only at agency in operating the camera, focusing on the degree to which events were shaped by the camera operator's activity. Most projects, it turned out, involved activities created for the camera, such as in fictional pieces, in which the director calls “Action” and the events unfold for a scripted camera as well as actors. The camera operator in such cases has very few opportunities to demonstrate personal agency. Agency was exercised in the planning phase, and when done well, agency is quite high. The emphasis on planning—particularly with scripts or storyboards—created a complication for locating agency in uses of the camera, but it was not the only one.

A related complication concerns the group nature of most video production. The focal project from Urban High was not thoroughly planned, but it was produced by a group of students who thoroughly shared and coordinated the work. This was particularly evident in analyzing their agency during their interviews. The camera started and the interviewer asked a question: It was in their coordinated efforts that events were initiated and shaped. Therefore, agency was not located behind the behind the camera but distributed between the person behind the camera and the one in front of it holding a microphone. This group presented the best examples of distributed agency.

But then is the “location” of agency important? The question first raised by Worth and Adair (1972) about where their students preferred to be—in front of the camera or behind the camera—is potentially another problem. If a group of students puts all their attention into the action in front of the camera, it is not immediately clear that their agency is low, but the purpose of the analysis is to seek some evidence of developmental processes in video production—not to investigate the level of agency practiced by students. Therefore, some consideration of how actual production proceeds is essential.

An example from a previous discussion clarifies this position. The project by Tiffany and Rachel (see Illustration 5) was supposed to be a PSA. Not only was it worthless as a PSA, being too long and ineffective, but it demonstrated the degree to which the two girls simply had not discovered the value of video. It demonstrates extremely low agency in camera use because they did not operate the camera themselves and even more because they gave no attention to how the camera might be used to create a video presentation rather than a classroom presentation. The camera had no impact on how the activity proceeded. It did not truly initiate events; it simply was turned on so that events could proceed. Thus in considering whether events are initiated by the camera or not, attention to the relationship between the activity and the camera is necessary. Just because all the activity is “for” the camera, does not mean that the camera was instrumental in shaping activity.

Some of the strongest examples of agency in camera use were in the focal project from Boarding High (Project 15). Wicket and Jerome created nearly every event through the interaction of the camera with the environment. This happened when they displayed and commented upon different murals and displays, and it happened when they created new events in a basketball game by zooming in on first one player and then another, following a bystander who walked around the game for a moment. The quality of the video would have been marred by such action if the game had been the focus, but it was not. It demonstrated a high level of agency because events were created through a selection of activities. When someone is following the action of a game with a camera, there is little opportunity for this type of agency.

Another questionable use of agency arose in “The Good, The Bad, And The Techies.” Luke demonstrated agency most in his choice of projects, but he intentionally chose to take a “fly-on-the-wall” approach to the project, making an effort to avoid affecting activity. This was in part a sign of his lack of development: He did not understand the work that goes into “capturing reality.” The problem was most dramatically illustrated when he interviewed the two producers of the program. They sat on chairs in front of Luke, but Luke was reluctant to do more than turn the camera on. One of the producers asked finally, “So are you going to interview us?” beginning an awkward moment in which they decided between themselves what to talk about. Luke was unwilling to insert himself into the activity enough to ask a question, and his lack of agency showed in the final project. It may have been a style he was trying to adopt, but it reflected his usual role in the classroom as well as his lack of development in videography.

Agency is an essential part of development, and its uses and absences reflect developmental levels. This relationship between agency and other aspects of development were particularly evident in Holland et al.'s (1998) study of romantic expertise. They equated expertise with the use of agency. They wrote of the women they studied in relation to their agency in romance:

[The participants of the study] differed both in how much they relied upon the directions and motivations of others and in how they formulated and responded to problematic situations. Those who appeared to be less knowledgeable or less expert closely copied and took direction from others, attended to relatively circumscribed aspects of relationships, and had difficulty generating possible responses to romantic situations. (p. 111)

The exercise of agency is thus dependent on having an internalized sense of what motives to act upon. Luke's lack of agency in production was in part a symptom of his novice status, particularly with producing documentaries, and his usual passive role in social relations—as if he did not have sufficient expertise in these situations to act independently. On the other hand, this inexpertise with recording is moderated by the agency he displayed in choosing to pursue a production process with exploration that so countered the practices promoted by the program.

Each of the programs promoted different “cultures” of agency. Practices were constrained and promoted such that there were different affordances for agentic activity and different preferred ways of being agentic. At Suburban High, students were encouraged to use a wide array of equipment and to plan production activity in detail. Thus most recording was done in relatively controlled settings where good lighting and audio could be guaranteed—particularly among advanced students. At Boarding High, the opposite was true: Planning became ignored, and students had few affordances for controlling the contexts of their recording. Ironically, the lack of control afforded opportunities for one form agency not possible in controlled settings; Boarding High students could initiate events in their use of the camera without requiring other people's cooperation or awareness. This in turn led to a more individualistic approach to recording.

Most important to this analysis in all these “locations” of agency is how it expresses itself differently during different phases of the work. These require separate analyses. The first is the agency exercised in the recording phase with attention to the role of planning and the second is the agency in the editing phase. Agency could also be expressed in the planning phase, but this is not addressed.

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²⁰ The word “influence” is used rather than “control,” which is used in many discussions of “efficacy,” because to control or to seek to control events is an extreme use of power, suggesting that other’s actions are constrained and as such is only one way to influence events.

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