Meaning

The capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power..

Definitions by Sense

1. The capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.
2. (sociology, philosophy, psychology) The capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.
3. A medium through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.
4. The office or function of an agent; also, the relationship between a principal and that person's agent.
5. An establishment engaged in doing business for another; also, the place of business or the district of such an agency.
6. A department or other administrative unit of a government; also, the office or headquarters of, or the district administered by, such unit of government.

Example Sentences

A few advances there are in the following papers tending to assert the superintendence and agency of Providence in the natural world.

Because structure in this argument means institutions— pregiven norms, values, beliefs, and practices— it is open-textured, incomplete, cannot guarantee its own applications, therefore, all behavior is action, has agency (Garfinkel 1964; Strauss et al. 1963).

moral agency

individual agency

Formally, capitalism performs its fundamental gesture—reappropriation without transformation. This bears on the question of subjective agency because this “reappropriation without transformation” is exactly what agency seeks to avoid; such a process indicates, in fact, that one's agency has failed, that one really had no agency in the first place.

Strictly speaking, at the level of personal agency one could say that power is a condition where one is “enabled.” I would contend that this is a condition of personal agency.

The feeling of being in control of one's body should involve the sense of body-ownership, plus an additional sense of agency.

SCP-3125 incarnated the following winter. Its first act upon its arrival — or, depending on the degree of intelligent agency you ascribed to it, the first side-effect of its arrival — was the neutralisation of the Foundation.

Word Forms

• agencies

Synonyms for agency

Antonyms for agency

Related Words

When Should You Use Agency?

Use agency when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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