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Agency without Actors New Approaches to Collective
Action 1st Edition Jan-Hendrik Passoth Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Jan-Hendrik Passoth, Birgit Peuker, Michael Schillmeier (eds.)
ISBN(s): 9780415603423, 0415603420
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 2.45 MB
Year: 2012
Language: english
Agency without Actors?

Agency without Actors? New approaches to collective action is rethinking a key

issue in social theory and research: the question of agency. The history of socio-
logical thought is deeply intertwined with the discourse of human agency as an
effect of social relations. In most recent discussions though the role of non-­
humans gains a substantial impact. Consequently the book asks: Are non-­
humans active? Do they have agency? And if so, how and in what different
ways?
The volume offers a critical state-­of-the-­art debate of internationally and
nationally leading scholars within Sociology, Social Anthropology and STS on
agency. It fosters the productive exchange of empirical settings and theoretical
views by outlining a wide range of novel accounts that link human and non-­
human agency. It tries to understand social-­technical, political and environmental
networks as different forms of agency that produce discrete and identifiable enti-
ties like humans, animals and technical artefacts. It also asks how different types
of (often conflicting) agency and actors are distinguished in practice, how they
are maintained and how they interfere with each other.

Jan-­Hendrik Passoth is a Post-­Doc at the Department of Sociology, Science,

Technology and Media Working Group, University of Bielefeld, Germany.

Birgit Peuker is a Scientific Assistant at the Institute of Sociology, Technical

University Dresden, Germany.

Michael Schillmeier is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Schumpeter Fellow

at the Ludwig-­Maximilians University, Munich, Germany.
Routledge advances in sociology

1 Virtual Globalization 7 Immigrant Life in the U.S.

Virtual spaces/tourist spaces Multi-­disciplinary perspectives
Edited by David Holmes Edited by Donna R. Gabaccia and
Colin Wayne Leach
2 The Criminal Spectre in Law,
Literature and Aesthetics 8 Rave Culture and Religion
Peter Hutchings Edited by Graham St. John

9 Creation and Returns of Social

3 Immigrants and National
Capital
Identity in Europe
A new research program
Anna Triandafyllidou
Edited by Henk Flap and
Beate Völker
4 Constructing Risk and Safety in
Technological Practice 10 Self-­Care
Edited by Jane Summerton and Embodiment, personal autonomy
Boel Berner and the shaping of health
consciousness
5 Europeanisation, National Christopher Ziguras
Identities and Migration
Changes in boundary 11 Mechanisms of Cooperation
constructions between Western Werner Raub and Jeroen Weesie
and Eastern Europe
Willfried Spohn and 12 After the Bell
Anna Triandafyllidou Educational success, public policy
and family background
6 Language, Identity and Edited by Dalton Conley and
Conflict Karen Albright
A comparative study of language
in ethnic conflict in Europe and 13 Youth Crime and Youth Culture
Eurasia in the Inner City
Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost Bill Sanders
14 Emotions and Social Movements 23 Media Bias in Reporting Social
Edited by Helena Flam and Research?
Debra King The case of reviewing ethnic
inequalities in education
15 Globalization, Uncertainty and Martyn Hammersley
Youth in Society
Edited by Hans-­Peter Blossfeld, 24 A General Theory of Emotions
Erik Klijzing, Melinda Mills and and Social Life
Karin Kurz Warren D. TenHouten

16 Love, Heterosexuality and 25 Sociology, Religion and Grace

Society Arpad Szakolczai
Paul Johnson
26 Youth Cultures
17 Agricultural Governance Scenes, subcultures and tribes
Globalization and the new politics Edited by Paul Hodkinson and
of regulation Wolfgang Deicke
Edited by Vaughan Higgins and
27 The Obituary as Collective
Geoffrey Lawrence
Memory
Bridget Fowler
18 Challenging Hegemonic
Masculinity
28 Tocqueville’s Virus
Richard Howson
Utopia and dystopia in Western
social and political thought
19 Social Isolation in Modern
Mark Featherstone
Society
Roelof Hortulanus, 29 Jewish Eating and Identity
Anja Machielse and Through the Ages
Ludwien Meeuwesen David Kraemer

20 Weber and the Persistence of 30 The Institutionalization of Social

Religion Welfare
Social theory, capitalism and the A study of medicalizing
sublime management
Joseph W. H. Lough Mikael Holmqvist

21 Globalization, Uncertainty and 31 The Role of Religion in Modern

Late Careers in Society Societies
Edited by Hans-­Peter Blossfeld, Edited by Detlef Pollack and
Sandra Buchholz and Daniel V. A. Olson
Dirk Hofäcker
32 Sex Research and Sex Therapy
22 Bourdieu’s Politics A sociological analysis of Masters
Problems and possibilities and Johnson
Jeremy F. Lane Ross Morrow
33 A Crisis of Waste? 43 Contexts of Social Capital
Understanding the rubbish society Social networks in communities,
Martin O’Brien markets and organizations
Edited by Ray-­May Hsung,
34 Globalization and Nan Lin, and Ronald Breiger
Transformations of Local
Socioeconomic Practices 44 Feminism, Domesticity and
Edited by Ulrike Schuerkens Popular Culture
Edited by Stacy Gillis and Joanne
35 The Culture of Welfare Hollows
Markets
The international recasting of 45 Changing Relationships
pension and care systems Edited by Malcolm Brynin and
Ingo Bode John Ermisch

36 Cohabitation, Family and 46 Formal and Informal Work

Society The hidden work regime in Europe
Tiziana Nazio Edited by Birgit Pfau-­Effinger,
Lluis Flaquer and Per H. Jensen
37 Latin America and
47 Interpreting Human Rights
Contemporary Modernity
Social science perspectives
A sociological interpretation
Edited by Rhiannon Morgan and
José Maurízio Domingues
Bryan S. Turner
38 Exploring the Networked
48 Club Cultures
Worlds of Popular Music
Boundaries, identities and
Milieu cultures
otherness
Peter Webb
Silvia Rief
39 The Cultural Significance of the 49 Eastern European Immigrant
Child Star Families
Jane O’Connor Mihaela Robila

40 European Integration as an Elite 50 People and Societies

Process Rom Harré and designing the
The failure of a dream? social sciences
Max Haller Luk van Langenhove

41 Queer Political Performance 51 Social Theory in Contemporary

and Protest Asia
Benjamin Shepard Ann Brooks

42 Cosmopolitan Spaces 52 Foundations of Critical Media

Europe, globalization, theory and Information Studies
Chris Rumford Christian Fuchs
53 A Companion to Life Course 57 Contested Citizenship in East
Studies Asia
The social and historical context Developmental politics, national
of the British birth cohort studies unity, and globalization
Michael Wadsworth and Kyung-­Sup Chang and
John Bynner Bryan S. Turner

54 Understanding Russianness 58 Agency without Actors?

Risto Alapuro, Arto Mustajoki and New approaches to collective
Pekka Pesonen action
Edited by Jan-­Hendrik Passoth,
55 Understanding Religious Ritual Birgit Peuker and
Theoretical approaches and Michael Schillmeier
innovations
John Hoffmann

56 Online Gaming in Context

The social and cultural
significance of online games
Garry Crawford,
Victoria K. Gosling and Ben Light
Agency without Actors?
New approaches to collective action

Edited by Jan-­Hendrik Passoth,

Birgit Peuker and Michael Schillmeier
First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Selection and editorial matter, Jan-­Hendrik Passoth, Birgit Peuker
and Michael Schillmeier; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Jan-­Hendrik Passoth, Birgit Peuker and Michael Schillmeier
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Agency without actors?: New approaches to collective action/ edited by
Jan-Hendrik Passoth, Birgit Peuker, Michael Schillmeier.
p. cm. – (Routledge advances in sociology)
1. Agent (Philosophy) 2. Act (Philosophy) 3. Events (Philosophy)
I. Passoth, Jan-Hendrik. II. Peuker, Birgit Maria. III. Schillmeier,
Michael W. J.
B105.A35A455 2012
128'.4–dc23 2011030147

ISBN: 978-0-415-60342-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-83469-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Times
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents

Notes on contributors xi
Acknowledgements xv

1 Introduction 1
J an - ­H endri k P assoth , B irgit P eu k er and
M ichael  S chillmeier

PART I
Events, suggestions, accounts 13

2 Suggestion and satisfaction. On the actual occasion of

agency 15
P aul S tronge and M i k e M ichael

3 Science, cosmopolitics and the question of agency. Kant’s

critique and Stengers’ event 31
M ichael S chillmeier

4 Questioning the human/non-­human distinction 54

F lorence R udolf

5 Agency and “worlds” of accounts. Erasing the trace or

rephrasing the action? 67
R olland M unro
x   Contents
PART II
Contribution, distribution, failures 87

6 Distributed agency and advanced technology. Or: how to

analyze constellations of collective inter-­agency 89
W erner R ammert

7 Distributed sleeping and breathing. On the agency of means

in medical work 113
C ornelius S chubert

8 Agencies’ democracy. “Contribution” as a paradigm to

(re)thinking the common in a world of conflict 130
J ac q ues R oux

9 Reality failures 146

J ohn L aw

PART III
Interaction, partnership, organization 161

10 “What’s the story?” Organizing as a mode of existence 163

B runo L atour

11 Researching water quality with non-­humans. An ANT

account 178
C hristelle G ramaglia and
D elaine S ampaio D a S ilva

12 Horses – significant others, people’s companions, and subtle

actors 196
M arion M angelsdorf

Index 212
Contributors

Christelle Gramaglia is a sociologist studying environmental risks. She is

currently working on knowledge about pollution and health issues in old
industrial basins and areas of intensive agriculture. She gained a Ph.D. on
the role litigation plays in the enforcement of environmental legislation, in
relation to river pollution (and the role of fishermen as lay experts in it) at
the Centre de sociologie de l’innovation (CSI – Ecole des Mines of Paris)
where she was trained as a sociologist of science. She was also a post-­
doctoral scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in
Berlin. She teaches an introductory course to the study of scientific and
technical controversies at Science-­Po Paris and organises workshops on sci-
ence in society at the Institut des hautes études pour la science et la technol-
ogie (IHEST Paris).
Bruno Latour is Professor at Sciences Po Paris; all references and most papers
may be found on www.bruno-­latour.fr. Recent publications include (with
Adam Lowe) “The Migration of the Aura – or How to Explore the Original
Through Its Facsimiles” (pp. 275–297) in T. Bartscherer (ed.) Switching
Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts
(University of Chicago Press, 2011), “An Attempt at Writing a Composition-
ist Manifesto”, New Literary History, 41 (2010): 471–490, and Cogitamus.
Six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques (La découverte, 2010).
John Law is Professor of Sociology at the Open University, and Director of the
ESRC’s interdisciplinary Centre for Sociocultural Change (CRESC) where he
co-­directs its “Social Life of Method” theme. His books include After Method
(Routledge, 2004), Aircraft Stories (Duke, 2002) and Organizing Modernity
(Blackwell, 1994).
Marion Mangelsdorf is a sociologist and, since 1998, Coordinator and Lecturer
at the Centre of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Albert-­Ludwigs-
University Freiburg i. Br. (www.zag.uni-­freiburg.de/gender%20studies/). Her
research focuses on science and technology studies, human-­animal studies,
and interaction and kinesthetic empathy between human and non-­human enti-
ties. Recent publications include Wolfsprojektionen: Wer säugt wen? Von der
xii   Contributors
Ankunft der Wölfe in der Technoscience (transcript, 2007) and “Grenzauslo-
tung einer anthrozoologischen Enthnographie der Mensch-­Pferd-Beziehung”,
Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie, 19 (2011): 273–291.
Mike Michael is Professor of Sociology of Science and Technology at Gold-
smiths, University of London. His interests include the relation of everyday
life to technoscience, and biotechnological and biomedical innovation and
culture. Current research projects include examination of the ethical aspects
of HIV pre-­exposure prophylaxis (with Marsha Rosengarten), and the inter-
disciplinary exploration of energy demand reduction through sociological and
speculative design techniques. His recent publications include Technoscience
and Everyday Life (Open University Press, 2006) and (with Lynda Birke and
Arnie Arluke) The Sacrifice: How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals
and People (Purdue University Press, 2007).
Rolland Munro is Managing Editor of The Sociological Review and Emeritus
Professor at Keele University, and is best known for his ethnographic work
on consumption, identity and power. He has published articles across a wide
range of topics – including accountability, affect, bodies, class, ethics, know-
ledge, landscape, language, money, polyphony, reason, technology and time.
These provide a bridge between humanist and anti-­humanist perspectives, and
elaborate upon an emerging vocabulary of motility, disposal, engrossment
and punctualising.
Jan-­Hendrik Passoth is a Post-­Doc in Sociology at Bielefeld University. He
connects sociological theory and science and technology studies by working
on problems of social structure and infrastructures, human and non-­human
agency, and discourse and material culture. He recently published (with
Nicholas J. Rowland) “Actor-­Network State. Integrating Actor-­Network-
Theory and State Theory”, International Sociology, 25 (6) (2010): 818–841,
and Technik und Gesellschaft, a book on theories of society and technology
(VS Verlag, 2007).
Birgit Peuker works in the field of environmental sociology and sociology of
science and technology. Her research centers especially on agriculture and
social movements. Her Ph.D.-thesis Controversy about the Use of Genetically
Modified Organism in Agriculture was published in German (transcript,
2010). She has published several articles in books, journals and newspapers,
dealing with issues of society and environment.
Werner Rammert is Professor of Sociology and Technology Studies at the
Technical University of Berlin. He has been editor-­in-chief of the yearbooks
Technik und Gesellschaft, co-­founded the research programme on “Socion-
ics”, and launched the Graduate School on “The Innovation Society Today:
The Reflexive Creation of Novelty”. Recent publications include: “Two
Styles of Knowing and Knowledge Regimes” (pp. 256–284), in J. Hage and
M. Meeus (eds) Innovation, Science, and Institutional Change. A Research
 Contributors   xiii
Handbook (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Technik – Handeln – Wissen.
Zu einer pragmatistischen Technik- und Sozialheorie (VS Verlag, 2007).
More information may be found at: www.soz.tu-­berlin.de.
Jacques Roux is a research engineer at CNRS France. He develops his work in
the fields of collective risk, crisis situations and forms of profane citizenship.
He coordinated and published Etre vigilant. L’opérativité discrète de la
société du risque (Publications de l’Université de Saint-­Etienne, 2006) and
“Paroles profanes exposées en public. Une voie originale de politisation des
affects”, Politique et Société, 26 (2–3) (2007): 105–124.
Florence Rudolf was educated in comprehensive sociology at Strasbourg Uni-
versity. She also studied at Bielefeld with Otthein Rammstedt to write her
Ph.D. She was involved in Niklas Luhmann’s seminars and wrote her disser-
tation on “Nature in Social Theories”. She obtained a position at the Univer-
sity of Marne la Vallée, and then moved to Strasbourg University where she
now occupies a professorship in the Department of Architecture at INSA of
Strasbourg (a network of polytechnics in France). She chairs the Research
Committee in Sociology of the Environment and Risk in the French Associ-
ation for Sociology (AFS). Recent publications include: Tous des experts!
Généralisation de la figure de l’expert à l’époque de la ‚modernité avancée.
Quels enseignements en déduire pour l’action et la décision? (Cahiers du
Centre Georges Canguilhem, 2011); “De l’intelligence des situations”, Entro-
pia, Revue d’étude théorique et politique de la décroissance, 8 (2010):
203–216, and Le climat change . . . et la société? (La ville brûle, 2009).
Delaine Sampaio da Silva has a Ph.D. in environmental sciences (UQAM,
Canada). She works on mercury contamination in the Brazilian Amazon. In
France, she has participated in ANR-­RE SYST led by environmental toxicol-
ogists at the University of Bordeaux 1. With her colleague Christelle
Gramaglia she developed a sociological component to understand the prod-
ucts and moving expert or lay knowledge on pollution in a industrial French
basin. She is the author of “Knowledge in everyday life: perceptions and
knowledges of riparian Amazonian populations on their fishery resources”
(Confins, 2011, in press), “Influence of ecological factors and of land use on
mercury levels in fish in the Tapajos River Basin, Amazon”, Environmental
Research, 109 (2009): 432–446, and (with C.-J. Passos) “Daily mercury
intake in fish-­eating populations in the Brazilian Amazon”, Journal of Expo-
sure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, 18 (2008): 76–97.
Michael Schillmeier teaches sociology, science and technology studies (STS)
and empirical philosophy at the Department of Sociology at Ludwig-­
Maximilians-University/Germany. He received his Ph.D. from Lancaster Uni-
versity, UK. Currently, he holds a Schumpeter Fellowship to research
“Innovations in Nano-­Medicine”. The main focus of this project is to analyse
and engage with the fabrication of novel nano-­medical knowledge and tech-
nologies. He has written widely on the material dynamics of societal ordering
xiv   Contributors
and change, outlining the societal relevance of objects and the heterogeneity
of the social. Topics include the relationship between bodies, senses and
things, health care and public health, disability, dementia, and viral infections.
With Juliane Sarnes he has translated Gabriel Tarde’s Monadology and Soci-
ology into German. Publications include Un/knowing Bodies (with Joanna
Latimer) (Wiley-­Blackwell, 2009), New Technologies and Emerging Spaces
of Care (with Miquel Domènech) (Ashgate, 2010), Disability in German
Literature, Film, and Theater (with Eleoma Joshua) (Camden House, 2010)
and Rethinking Disability: Bodies, Senses and Things (Routledge, 2010).
Cornelius Schubert works at the Institute of Sociology at the University of
Technology in Berlin. He is a postdoctoral researcher in the sociology of
technology. For his Ph.D. thesis, he conducted ethnographic observations in
surgical operating rooms and analysed the balance between routine and
improvisation as well as the distribution of activities in high-­tech work set-
tings. He later joined a research project on the organisation of innovating
novel production technologies in the semiconductor industry, looking at the
interrelation of technological paths and organisational fields. He continues his
research in the fields of medicine and semiconductors with an interest in tech-
nology, organisation and innovation.
Paul Stronge recently completed a Ph.D. at Goldsmiths, University of London,
within which he attempted to integrate an ethnographic study of community-­
based mental health professionals with a theoretical approach inspired in part
by the process philosophy of A.N. Whitehead and utilising the notion of sug-
gestion. He currently holds the position of Research Associate based at the
Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, where he is
engaged in empirical research around screening for type 2 diabetes within the
context of a large-­scale population-­based health measurement study. Paul’s
longer term interests revolve around further exploration of the links between
contemporary articulations – lay and expert – of the values, ideals and experi-
ences clustered around “health” (physical and/or mental) and broader theoret-
ical themes including time, possibility and invention.
Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Franco-­German University (FGU), which supported

our ideas and financed an “Atelier de recherché” as well as this book. We also
thank Bielefeld University and the VolkswagenStiftung. Don MacDonald was
most helpful in polishing our German and French English. Last but not least we
also thank André Armbruster, Melanie Langer and Julien Schneider for assisting
in the copyediting process.
1 Introduction
Jan-­Hendrik Passoth, Birgit Peuker and
Michael Schillmeier

Faire, c’est faire faire.

(Bruno Latour)

Agency without actors?

Is the question concerning “agency without actors” not doomed to fail from the
very beginning? For many the answer would be straightforwardly “yes it is”.
Interestingly though, the reasons for such a reluctance are related to diametri-
cally opposed perspectives. The concept of agency plays a demarcating role in
social sciences: beloved by humanists as a safeguard against structural and/or
natural necessities and erased by post-­humanists for pleading guilty to centering
the human subject as the prime world builder and mover. Anthropocentric con-
cepts such as human independency, contingency, reflexivity, volition, free will,
imagination, self-­consciousness, personhood, have placed the notion of agency
at the very center of humanist social theory. Subsequently, actors are humans,
and agency without humans is meaningless. System, discourse, network, struc-
ture and language, on the other hand, serve post-­humanist and post-­structuralist
accounts to abstract from agency as a human property in order to decenter the
human subject and to interrogate the modernist subject/object dualism instead.
Thus, the troubling question concerning agency affects either its delimitation to
humans or its erasure as a valid concept.
Although the concept of agency is thought to be “slippery” (Hitlin and Elder
2007: 170), for (modern, Western) humanist accounts it appears to be highly
taken for granted. Agency is treated as a residual category naming a natural
inborn capacity of human responsible beings that enables them to resist the stub-
born natural relations and the demands of structural forces. Thus, rather than ill-­
defined or vague, the concept of agency is over-­determined as a given, natural
capacity of humans. This capacity concept of agency is definitely the most
common in sociological theory, developed and applied mainly as an alternative
approach to tackling classical problems of political and moral philosophy.
Agency reappears not only in the guise of Thomas Hobbes´ problem of order
(Parsons 1951), but also by assuming that “a capacity for agency – for desiring,
2   J.-H. Passoth et al.
for forming intentions, and for acting creatively – is inherent in all humans [. . .]
[T]hat humans are born with only a highly generalized capacity for agency, anal-
ogous to their capacity to use language” (Sewell 1992: 20). For Talcott Parsons,
William H. Sewell and numerous others, agency serves as sociology´s pidgin
translation of philosophy’s problem of free will. Most conspicuously we meet
the capacity concept of agency in theories of rational choice (Becker 1976;
Coleman 1990; Kahneman and Twersky 1990) where agency denotes the general
capacity of individuals to evaluation and decision making. Second, the concept
of agency addresses the problem that marks out the difference of but also the
interdependency between micro-­processes and macro-­structures. It names the
interdependency concept of agency and refers to the effects of social action
through which humans gain power to resist constraining and coercive structures,
obstinate rules, or given norms, values, standards, traditions and cultural pat-
terns. Following Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische´s famous formulation,
agency articulates “the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different
structural environments – the temporal-­relational contexts of action – which,
through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and
transforms those structures in interactive responses to the problems posed by
changing historical situations” (Emirbayer and Mische 1998: 970). Like Emir-
bayer and Mische, Anthony Giddens tries to avoid the classical structure-­agency
problem that confines “the individual” and “society” as two separate and ontolo-
gized realities (cf. also Meyer and Jepperson 2000). To bypass this problem,
Giddens conceives human agency as the effect of recursive, namely reflexive
acts by which actors express themselves and perform the conditions of possible
(inter-)action. At the same time, the continuity of action is a prerequisite for
reflexivity (Giddens 1984). Thus reflexivity is not just self-­consciousness as phi-
losophers of the mind would have it and not the sole effect of an oppressing con-
science collective of abstract structures but part and parcel of recursive human
social acts. Moreover, pragmatist accounts like John Dewey´s critique of the
reflex arc concept of action in psychology (Dewey 1896) or Georg Herbert
Mead’s concept of the triad of I, me and self (Mead 1934) outline well-­acclaimed
attempts to resist a naturalized concept of agency (cf. also Blumer 1986). Third,
authors like Dewey argued that agency should be understood as a circular
process of occurring and adapted activities or events. Similarly, Mead used the
idea of a circular process of occurring and adapting for outlining his concept of
interactive encounters. These accounts socialize (i.e. culturalize) agency and
outline an alternative to the former either-­or situation between humanist and
post-­humanist perspectives. Human agency is caused by and names the capacity
to change structural or institutionalized relations, which comprise human and
non-­human entities (texts, materials, technologies, etc.). The proposed altern-
ative of compromising between structure and agency is sociologically seductive,
since agency – although nothing but human-­made – turns into a social force of
humans and non-­humans. Still, to treat non-­humans as actors remains disturbing,
precisely because it suggests agency but without proper actors. The innocuous
question: “Are non-­humans active, do they have agency?” must shake humanist
 Introduction   3
sociology at its foundations as if the religious order of polytheism waggles
because mountaineers finally went to Mount Olympus and found it inhabited.
For post-­structuralist, social and cultural models alike, the idea that non-­humans
have agency is problematic, since it falls prey to the lure of a dangerous meta-
physics of objects. And indeed, agency without actors is a risky claim, but not in
the sense of substituting the metaphysics of subjects or realms of the social and
cultural for a metaphysics of objects. Rather, agencies come into view that ques-
tion given strategies of delimiting agency to human properties or social-­cultural
effects of human acts. To talk about agency without actors suggests that non-­
human entities do something unique which is not reducible to what human actors
do with them. They change the way in which our social world is organized and
they seem to play an important part in realizing it. The dissemination and circu-
lation of technoscientific objects (e.g. computers, digital networks, medical
drugs), but also phenomena such as El Niño, melting glaciers and polar bears
(Passoth 2010), floods, viral epidemics, genetically modified materials, nano-­
particles, etc. enact our world for the better or the worse. Hence, the social world
remains inadequately understood if we conceive agency as the sole power of
human action or unintended consequences of rational human choices that govern
it. Moreover, proposing agency without actors does not engage in a revival of
technical or physical determinism of social phenomena. Rather it aligns itself
with attempts of conceptual rigor that try to rethink the question concerning
agency beyond mere materialism – be it humanist, post-­humanist or sociologized
versions of it (cf. Braun and Whatmore 2010; Coole and Frost 2010; Cooren
2010; Haraway 1992; Harman 2002; Hetherington and Munro 1997; Hicks and
Beaudry 2010; Latimer 2004; Lee and Munro 2001; Malafouris and Knappett
2008; Scott 2002; Strathern 1991). Agency without Actors multiplies agency and
complicates related emerging worlds.
A quick glimpse into the daily worldwide news which is globally broadcast in
real time should provide enough evidence that the question concerning “agency
without actors” is not only an ivory tower question of redefining terms; it also
draws upon global empirical concerns whereby heterogeneous actors (human and
non-­human alike) are involved. Typically, it is the effect of events that questions,
disrupts, alters or even obliterates common modes of social orderings and exist-
ence that bring to the fore questions of how social orders are generated and main-
tained (Garfinkel 1967; Moerman 1972; Schillmeier 2008). Such events visualize
and gather a multiplicity of actors that remained black-­boxed by the normalcy of
social orders. The most recent Japanese events enacted by the forces of an earth-
quake and a related tsunami, for example, had and will have dramatic effects
upon Japanese life and beyond (Schillmeier 2011). It ended many lives, annihi-
lated whole families, and destroyed infrastructures and technologies; so much so
that for hundreds of thousands, the taken-­for-granted personal and social life has
been utterly disturbed and has even come to a halt. The earthquake and tsunami
also caused the breakdown of a high-­risk technological system: the Fukushima
nuclear power plant. This meant the serious damage to automated technical pro­
cesses that endangers human and non-­human life, although it was designed to
4   J.-H. Passoth et al.
stabilize and endure social life in the first place. Fearing global radioactive con-
tamination, many people all over the world are scared, have protested against
nuclear energy and have bought Geiger-­Müller counters and iodine tablets just in
case the radioactive clouds reach their homes. Moreover, established but also new
and spontaneous public organizations are forming against nuclear energy; non-­
governmental organizations are demonstrating against national state politics that
favor nuclear energy. In trying to trace the Japanese events we meet a highly
diverse set of actors and agencies – social and political, human and non-­human,
natural and cultural. Most intriguing, though, for classical humanist sociological
discourse is that most of the action involved is evoked by entities or systems
which do not fit with the idea of proper actors, because they are neither human
nor social. Natural forces like earthquakes, tsunamis, weather conditions or failing
technologies and chemical particles are considered neither social nor political
actors. Still, they are capable of doing things and of making others do or not do
things. We are confronted with agency but without actors; agency that appears
highly indifferent to but adversely interfering with present and future human life
and social interaction, political power systems, juridical regulations, or economic
interests. Hence, the Fukushima events dramatically show that the (re-)construc-
tion of social acts is not the sole privilege of human beings.
Agency without Actors, then, is meant to redirect our focus away from given
actors and their natural realms to “what is active” (agissant in French) in a given
situation (Cooren 2010: 4). Agency is not a basic human capacity, not a precon-
dition of the social; it is a relational, ever-­changing outcome of its enactment.
Following on from that, this book attempts to unhinge the notion of agency from
its anthropocentric entanglement and any a priori metaphysics in order to multi-
ply and complicate a central and most valid concept to understand the emer-
gence, settlement and change in social relations. Indeed, “struggles over agency
and its attribution are an important feature of social life” (Law 1991: 173). This
volume brings together empirical and conceptual debates, and diverse and poly-
contextual discussions that are rethinking collective action and the (emerging)
agencies involved. Consequently, Agency without Actors advocates a thorough
revision and reconsideration of our traditional understanding of agency and its
activities, which generate, maintain but also question and alter social (i.e., col-
lective) being. Thus, Agency without Actors does not erase “the human” and puts
“the non-­human” instead. Rather, we propose to address the empirically open
question of what becomes an actor in the different ways of how the relevant
entity is active. Consequently, we will see that behind our backs and often not
very consistent with our intentions and attributions to them, non-­human actors
contribute to the shaping, maintenance, disruption, change as well as the break-
down of social order.

Reconfiguring agency
Agency without Actors advocates a revision of our understanding of agency and
of the ongoing exciting and thought-­provoking attempts to reconsider traditional
 Introduction   5
concepts of the social sciences. It made early suggestions in the field of science
and technology studies (STS) that opposed the utilitarian or instrumental per-
spective on agency and the way in which non-­human entities play an active part
in the mundane practice of science. The so-­called laboratory studies argued
intriguingly that instruments, devices, particles and bacteria are more than just
the results of what human actors do with them. Rather, these non-­human entities
contribute significantly to the ongoing achievements of scientific work (cf.
Knorr-­Cetina 1981; Latour and Woolgar 1979). The conclusion which actor-­
network theory was drawing from studying science was radical: any actor –
human or non-­human – is the outcome of a complex process of the
punctualization of heterogeneous networks of activities (cf. Callon 1986; Callon
and Latour 1981; Law 1986). Such a movement conveys the impression that
what is at stake in the stories that STS approaches of this kind have told is a nar-
rative strategy replacing human actors with non-­humans. It was this kind of
reframing of stories that allowed Willhelm Halffmann in his review essay of
“Inside the Politics of Technology” (Barbers 2005) provocatively – and in many
respects correctly – to ask: “If agency is the answer, kindly repeat the question!”
(Halffmann 2006).
This book takes on Halffmann’s request and considers agency as an open
empirical question and not as an answer given by theoretical decisions. In this
respect it is in line with more current readings of ANT that extend the “hows” of
becoming active by focusing on more heterogeneous and “fluid” settings than
those suggested by the network metaphor (Law 2002; Mol 2005; Mol and Law
1994). Hence, the plot that brackets the multi-­faceted contributions to this book
is based on that twist not to begin with a definitive answer concerning what
agency is, but to look at diverse situations from where different forms of agency
emerge.
Part I, “Events, suggestions, accounts”, draws heavily on advancing the fol-
lowing argument: What may count as a form of agency may be different from
who or what counts as an actor. An event is carved out by anecdotes, stories and
circulating accounts that suggest and shape the actors involved. This insight is of
course not entirely new. Such different scholars as Michel Foucault, Harold Gar-
finkel or Martin Heidegger have each advanced their version of it long ago, but
up until now it has not been embraced to rephrase the question of agency. Con-
sequently, the contributions of Part I address different aspects of the question of
agency by focusing on the intermingling of suggestions, events and accounts.
Drawing on Alfred North Whitehead’s notion of “actual occasions” and
Giorgio Agamben´s analysis of “potentiality”, Paul Stronge and Mike Michael
investigate how agency – as an occurring event – is constantly intertwined with
accounting for agency. Accounting for agency helps to freeze agency temporar-
ily. It is the narrative and material structure of these accounts that positions
agency in a tension between suggestion and satisfaction (or potential and telos).
In every event we encounter a rich assemblage of entities and any of these may
be singled out to become privileged as an actor in a potential account. Any
accounting for agency – for example, in anecdotes, stories or the like – tends to
6   J.-H. Passoth et al.
“satisfy” the suggestion that this assemblage offers, but only as one telos of the
occurred potential. A hasty reading would find a pluralist version of a classic
story: things happen in the world and they become meaningful as actions only
through our stories and accounts. But it is far more tricky: the occurrence of an
event itself is eventually the telos of another set of suggestions and the effect of
the historicity of “typical” stories.
Michael Schillmeier continues this line of thought. He shows in his reading of
Immanuel Kant’s understanding of science that the question of agency cannot be
disentangled from the specific way in which science is understood. By contrast-
ing Kant’s with Isabelle Stengers’ understanding of experimental sciences,
Schillmeier exemplifies that the question of agency is not predecided as a mere
human affair. Discussing Stengers’ “re-­invention of science” brings to the fore
that non-­human (experimental) objects play a central agentic part within sci-
ences. Subsequently, agency is not merely a human but a situated capacity of
humans and non-­humans alike to create something that is provided with the
ability to object to it. Such a reading differs radically from the normative,
humanist Kantian understanding of science that resists a naturalized concept of
agency.
By connecting to the works of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, Florence
Rudolf argues that the distinction between human and non-­human contributions
to the formation of agency remains humanist after all. She stresses that by lev-
eling the difference between human and non-­human actors and claiming symme-
try instead, early actor-­network theory restored a distinction between types of
actors that was supposed to be overcome. Rudolf suggests distinguishing
between those kinds of non-­humans that play a role in production, circulation
and interconnection of discourse and those that do not. In many cases these
special kinds of non-­humans play a crucial role in enrolling and mobilizing all
kinds of actors. Studying the constellations that form, enable and obstruct mobil-
ization work can be a way to expose their specific role.
Rolland Munro finally breaks the relation of story and event, framing and
occurrence down to processes on a micro-­level, rethinking agency in terms of
our dwelling in worlds of accounts. Against common assumptions about the
human as an individual making decisions within an action framing, Munro pro-
poses that circulations of accounts help us conduct our communal and interpre-
tive handling of occlusion wherein we can neither register precisely what is
going on in the moral of the moment, nor predict the outcome of any action that
is taking place. What interests Munro in the fallacy of individuating agency
within the framing of action is the way in which concepts of cause form an
erasure of the trace that brackets out material orderings in order to disclose or
even hide our humanity.
Part II, “Contribution, distribution, failures”, takes the idea of a deep inter-
twining of human and non-­human contributions to the formation of agency as a
starting point. How do the interplay, distribution and failure of these contribu-
tions lead to the emergence of entities that count as actors and to phenomena
that count as events? How can we think of the mixture of entities that shape
 Introduction   7
our common words? For all authors, the stability and cohesion of human and
non-­human collectives is at stake. Struggling in times of crisis and catastrophe
they might fail to avoid new arrangements and reconfigurations. How does
that affect related knowledge – and how does such knowledge affect their
enactment?
For Werner Rammert, the idea of human action and technology as two auton-
omous spheres can be traced back to modern Western philosophy. Still, human
action quite often appears highly mechanical and technologies are neither harm-
less routines nor do they always produce predictable outcomes. Thus, the idea of
bifurcating human rationality from machinic processes names primarily a prag-
matic fiction to identify distinct forms of agency and the possibility to assign dif-
ferent kinds of entities to them. Based on a pragmatist understanding of agency,
Rammert introduces the concept of “distributed agency” that analyzes and evalu-
ates the constitution and impact of forms of agency on gradual levels: intention-
ality, contingency and causality. As he demonstrates with a case study on
intelligent air traffic systems, the use of such an analytical heuristic may prove to
be most fruitful for studying contemporary forms of advanced technologies. He
shows that the distribution of agency can even change over time. The gradual
heuristic helps in indicating these changes.
Going back to Dewey and Heidegger, Cornelius Schubert votes for a rela-
tional character of tools and instruments which enables a complex and non-­
instrumental concept of the agency of means. Especially in the case of advanced
technologies, he argues with reference to Rammert, such a relational character is
most evident: Arrangements of various human and non-­human contributions to
agency have to be constantly rearranged to fit the ever-­changing context.
Drawing on fieldwork in the operating theatre, Schubert shows that in the case of
anesthesia the body of a human patient becomes passive, while doctors and com-
puters play an ongoing active role. Technology, knowledge and embodied prac-
tices are, he consequently argues, situated properties, and quite often human and
non-­human entities do play different roles in technological arrangements to
equilibrate and shape collective action.
In contrast to the socio-­technical arrangements analyzed by Schubert, Jacques
Roux examines an environmental catastrophe in France. Roux looks at the case
of a contaminated gold-­mine and media coverage of the floodings of the river
Aude. He is interested in the spatial dimension of agency and the way it is
defined in relation to changing contexts. A community (a “city”, referring to
Boltanski´s and Thévenot´s notion of “cité”) is constructed, claims Roux,
through processes of contributing to an “in-­common”. Articulating their modes
of existence, entities (humans and non-­humans) are able to contribute rather than
participate. In effect, entities may leave or transcend the local setting to be part
of a larger setting.
John Law extends the perspective on failures, catastrophes and breakdowns
and concludes the second part by reconnecting to the overall topic of the first
part: the heterogeneous contributions to the formation of agency are also inter-
mingled with knowledge and the ways of accounting for it – as Munro, Michael
8   J.-H. Passoth et al.
and Stronge stressed. Intriguingly, Law points out how the ongoing enactment of
(social) reality and its actors is profoundly interrelated with attempts of knowing:
consequently, knowledge and realities fail. By examining the outbreak of foot-­
and-mouth disease, Law examines the reciprocity of enacting and knowing mul-
tiple realities and their failures.
Contributions to Part III, “Interaction, Partnership, Organization”, concentrate
on the evolving dynamics of human and non-­human contributions to forms of
agency along the attempt to consistently live and work together. It seems like a
truism of classical sociology that social life is ordered, although it is based on
chaotic and unstable activities. But how are the interdependency of hetero-
geneous contributions to the formation of agency and the amalgamation of anec-
dotes, stories and accounts channeled into formats and scripts that enable
organization, professional work and mutual understanding?
Bruno Latour tackles one of the most prominent cases of collective action in
sociological theory. Engaging with the case of organizations, he explores some
of the difficulties in tracing the specific path of organizing (taken as a gerund).
An organization’s mode of existence is articulated through the process of con-
stant (re-)configuration and accomplishment of how things are done. On the
other hand, to abide by its agency once it is enacted also means subjecting to it.
Using some fresh experience of the author in administration, the chapter focuses
on the specificity of the organizing script and attempts to isolate this specificity
from what sociologists and political scientists have made of it. It shows that,
once the sociological fallacy of a macro-­actor has been put aside, it becomes
possible to detect the “flip-­flopping” that is so peculiar to the circulating scripts
that generate organizations in their wake.
Christelle Gramaglia and Delaine Sampaio da Silva focus on patterns of unre-
mitting interaction of a certain type of molluscs (Corbicula) and scientists that
enable the measurement of water quality in a polluted river. In order to empower
Corbicula to “contribute” (to put it in Roux’s words) to the common research
process, they have to be considered as partners and not as something subdued to
human will – at least for a certain time. To be able to ask the molluscs for pre-
liminary results from time to time and to enable research together, they have to
be treated well and they have to be respected as partners – at least for a time.
While scientists and molluscs work together, they both contribute to the same
practice, although for their final and definitive measurement of pollution they
have to be killed in the end.
Marion Mangelsdorf rounds up the book by exploring the importance of
cross-­species interaction in leisure riding. Connecting to the works of Donna
Haraway, she contrasts different relationships between horses and horse keepers,
trainers and riders and how they are enacted by training and riding practices.
Riding techniques which treat horses as passive and disciplined objects seem to
be less successful and also injurious to the relationship between horse and rider.
Conversely, if the common practices of equestrian sports are organized around
the trope of horses as partners, something like a third language between horse
und humans evolves.
 Introduction   9
Summing up: The chapters presented in this volume share the idea that
there is no general human or non-­human agency and no a priori human or non-­
human actor. Rather, it seems that differences among such various entities
as technological artifacts, animals, floods and organizations are as evident as
the differences in accounting for the agency of humans and non-­humans.
To maintain the assumption that they have their special characteristics in and
of themselves would iterate the tedious riddles of essentialism. Moreover, it
would overlook important differences as well. Properties and differences
are achievements of specific relations where human and non-­human entities
participate and collaborate. These accomplishments articulate different scales
of activeness and related agentic effects. Humans and non-­humans are only
temporarily enacted actors in the accounts and anecdotes that try to unify,
set still and stabilize them in a “grand narrative” – or in a multiverse of
tinier, coincidental stories. Agency without Actors contributes to resisting the
tendency to reunify collective action, and safeguards the “pluriverse” of differ-
ent stories, arrangements and voices instead – no matter what kinds of entities
are involved.

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Part I
Events, suggestions,
accounts
2 Suggestion and satisfaction
On the actual occasion of agency
Paul Stronge and Mike Michael

Introduction
We commence with an anecdote (Paul Stronge’s)1:
I (PS) was cycling to work through the narrow and ancient streets of Cam-
bridge city centre during the morning rush hour. Suddenly, just ahead of
me, a car in the slow-­moving queue with which I had been more or less
keeping pace turned sharply into my immediate pathway. Too late, I tried to
swerve and snatched at my brake, simultaneously unleashing an expletive of
protest. I recall thinking, “it can’t do that, it’s not allowed!” My front wheel
hit the car’s chassis and the bike seemed to fall away from under me. I
landed on my backside at the roadside, still cursing. I was winded but other-
wise unhurt.
The car came to an immediate halt at a diagonal. The driver, a young
woman who looked only 18 or 19, remained rooted to the driver’s seat. She
looked ashen.
Meanwhile a small knot of passers-­by gathered around. A young cyclist
pulled up, dismounted and leaned over me to ask if I was OK. Reassured I
was, he leant my bike against a wall and began inspecting it in a
professional-­seeming manner. Two or three pedestrians paused to ask if I
was alright. But the greatest impression on me, both at the time and in ret-
rospect, was made by a rather severe-­looking middle-­aged lady. In the few
moments I had taken to regain my breath and stand up she had whipped out
a pen and notebook and had began to question the driver through the car
window.
As I got to my feet she ripped a page from the notebook and thrust it
towards me. “I have her ‘reg’, I have her number . . . here, look!” The first
guy, the cyclist, had meanwhile finished his once-­over of the bike. “Looks
alright. Your chain’s slipped, but otherwise fine.” He too presented me with
a slip of paper on which he’d scribbled a few words. “My e-­mail address
and my mobile number, just in case. I could see everything. You were going
straight!”
I was both moved and embarrassed by all this activity on my behalf.
Despite my initial anger and my feeling that I wasn’t at fault (though I
16   P. Stronge and M. Michael
couldn’t be sure – in truth I hadn’t been concentrating very hard . . .), I
found myself feeling sorry for the driver. She kept apologising profusely,
and even offered to pay for any damage to the bike. In turn I apologised for
my language. Eventually we all went off on our way.

In this chapter we reflect upon agency as a phenomenon that cannot be separated

from a story-telling that is both narrative and material. The problem of agency,
we will contend, manifests a fundamentally doubled nature. There are questions
related to how agency works in the world, yet any attempt to address these ques-
tions implies others around the agency involved in that very endeavour. More-
over, while to some extent it may be possible to distinguish these dimensions in
principle, in practice they are enfolded.
The anecdotal form itself, we would suggest, brings out this problematic well.
The example presented above concerns being pushed off a bicycle. It deals (as
we will see, quite complicatedly) with the ascription of meaning to a – relatively
trivial – event that took place in the world; it involves a combination or assem-
blage of different entities – humans, inanimate objects, natural and mechanical
forces as well as affects – all or any of which might potentially be regarded as
putative agents. The resultant account is of course highly partial – in the dual
sense of being on the one hand incomplete and selective, and on the other
frankly weighted with old-­fashioned subjective bias. Anecdotes after all are eve-
ryday performances that may simultaneously fulfil a variety of social roles – for
example, as lay proofs, self-­justifications, bolsters to arguments or simply con-
versation starters or entertainments.
The above anecdote happened to come up at an early stage of discussions
related to our writing of this chapter. In fact, it prompted an exchange of anec-
dotes associated with the general theme of cycling accidents: Mike Michael’s
tale of coming off his bike is appended to the chapter as a note.1 We agreed at
once on finding this anecdotal form and content “suggestive” in the context of
contributing to a collection exploring the ascription of agency. That is, we both
felt that attention to the mundane “telling” of accident anecdotes prompted the
adoption of a novel if unlikely approach route to a reflection on the more theo-
retical relationship between agency, events and accounts. Our procedure in
accomplishing the writing of this chapter, moreover, will endeavour to remain
faithful to the significance of this particular process of suggestion. In other
words, we wish to retain the reader’s attention on the ways our argument around
agency is exemplified within the writing process.
Our rethinking of agency in a theoretical sense owes much to the thought of
A.N. Whitehead and in particular to the latter’s perspective on the emergence of
“actual occasions” – processes he privileged over substances as the ultimate
building blocks of reality (Whitehead 1978: 7). Within this approach our inten-
tion is to place particular emphasis on the contraries of potential and telos – the
indeterminate and the purposeful. Here our aim is in part to contribute further to
an emerging amodern vocabulary that has itself attempted to get beyond such
modernist dichotomies as human/non-­human (hybrid, cyborg, quasi-­object) and
 On the actual occasion of agency   17
constructed/real (proposition, phenomenon), material/semiotic (northwest
passage, material hermeneutics), singular/relational (black hole, hybrid collec-
tif ). We would contend, however, that this vocabulary does not solve or tran-
scend anything – it is a heterogeneously engineered shift in the way we deal
with, and are dealt by, the world. But such shifts are not occasioned through per-
suasion or logic (because it is agency and logic that are at stake), and they do not
prompt a decisive reorientation (because agency and decision are what are prob-
lematised). Rather such a vocabulary, its telling and circulation in actual occa-
sions, cumulatively affects – seeps through to shape – a different sensibility.
The previous paragraph of course abounds with modernist terminology: “we
reflect upon”; “our aim is to”, “we would contend”. “We” agentially go about
doing our usual authorial business – not only as authors, but in relation to an
agential audience, even as we problematise both of these by mentioning black
holes, etc. and speaking of a different sensibility. And we’ve done it/are doing it
again . . .
. . . which neatly exemplifies our concern with telos/potential. “We” seem to
be at once teleologically locked into a particular form of storytelling while
always opening up the potential for its other (whatever that might be) precisely
through the teleologically locked telling. This same problematic might indeed be
approached on a topological dimension. We are, as it were, “glued” to the
surface of a Moebius strip which suddenly carries the potential to become its
own reverse – the “account” metamorphosing into a resource for its own decon-
struction. The “new” account consequentially then locks us into a certain way of
seeing things.
Thus, we attempt to suggest a different way of grasping this flow through the
notion of suggestion, by looking at how the subject of the chapter suggested
itself to us through the least likely of actual occasions: a bicycle accident. In
brief, and rather too gnomically, our suggestion may be put in the following
way: this accident became a potential of the writing of this chapter, even as the
chapter has become its telos.
In what follows, then, we briefly set out a version of the issue of agency and
amodern attempts to address this. From this, the dimension of telos/potential is
developed in relation to the analysis of agency. Whitehead’s work is a major
resource here, not least his concerns with the (essentially teleological) notion of
“satisfaction” (Whitehead 1978: 26). We go on to consider how this in turn might
be illuminated by the discourse of suggestion – touching meanwhile on the work
of Gabriel Tarde, which to some extent anticipates aspects of Whitehead’s
thought. But we also have recourse to a thinker of quite different hue, namely
Giorgio Agamben. The latter’s work (e.g. Agamben 1998, 1999) has consistently
focused on the negative capacities brought into play by the very notion of potenti-
ality. This supplements our account by drawing attention to the latent “altern-
atives” bound up with any suggestive process – those aspects the adoption of a
given suggestion inevitably “takes away”. Finally, we return to the idea of the
anecdote as a powerful way of encapsulating the interplay between telos and
potential in relation both to agency and writing about/accounting for agency.
18   P. Stronge and M. Michael
Some initial thoughts on agency
Agency has proved a resilient if notoriously slippery concept for sociology as a
discipline. Within a convoluted and complex history, two predominant themes
may be teased out. First, the term’s use has tended to demarcate an exclusively
human capacity and hence has played a huge part in shaping sociology’s concep-
tion of its own boundaries. Second, yet often with less clarity and confidence,
agency has often traditionally been invoked to suggest freedom, contingency,
discretion and indeterminism. In this latter sense it opposes itself to classical
notions of causation.
Despite their constant tendency to intertwine within modernist thought, the
separation of these two themes reveals nagging aporia. In, for instance, Max
Weber’s essay “The Nature of Social Action” (1991), first published posthu-
mously in 1922, agency demarcates the site where subjectivity, whether on an
individual or a collective level, emerges as fundamentally the ascription of
meaning to a given action. This effectively brackets questions related to the
extent to which agency ought or ought not to be regarded as ultimately just
another node in a causal chain. Similarly, the routine classical distinction
between agency and structure leaves untouched more primordial questions
related to order and change.
Over recent years, the topic of agency has been revivified on each of these
dimensions. First, its role in the production of social relations has been extended
to accommodate a proliferating range of “others” to which agency is variously
now ascribed including both non-­human animals and things, whether “natural”
objects or technological artefacts. A hallmark of these latter approaches is the
inclusion of a rich and liberal redistribution of agential qualities that radically
subverts and transcends traditional boundaries between Nature and culture (cf.
e.g. Latour 1988; Haraway 1991; Barad 2007).
Second, there has been a profound shift in the role accorded to indeterminacy
across a wide range of knowledges and practices. Through chaos and complexity
theory, understanding of the role played by non-­linearity and chance in the
natural sciences and cosmology (Prigogine and Stengers 1985) has been
enhanced; similar insights have been applied to everything from economic
markets to the spread of diseases. Indeterminacy and even “vitality” (Bennett
2010) are nowadays seen to abound in the world. Meanwhile, reconnections
have been forged with earlier thought traditions wherein the nature of this
foundational contingency may be seen to have been grasped all along (Serres
2000).
From this perspective, agency opens itself up to being reconfigured conceptu-
ally as that which saves reason (and also in a way, ironically enough, structure)
from excessive or absolute indeterminacy, as a site of responsibility and
decision. The amodern mobilisation of the concept, as exemplified, for instance,
by Actor–Network Theory (Latour 2005), reaffirms the ability of participants
and observers to temporarily freeze the free flow of materials, affects and powers
in tracing an event as a figure standing out against a ground. To situate agency
 On the actual occasion of agency   19
remains first and foremost a matter of accountability, in the dual sense of (1)
making up an account, and of (2) rendering something or someone (politically)
accountable (cf. Schedler 1999: 15; Munro 2001).
Even where denuded of any exclusive connotation with a peculiarly limited
human subjectivity, however, to speak of agency continues to convey a complex
cluster of ideas over and above that of accountability. Attention to everyday dis-
course is instructive here. It renders apparent that what is at stake in agency also
encompasses ancillary notions including delegation, mediation, identification
and (not least) purpose.
Estate agents, for example, are appointed (by buyers or sellers) to manage the
buying and selling of homes. A secret agent works on behalf of the state to
obtain otherwise unobtainable information. In chemistry or cuisine, meanwhile,
a reducing agent is one which achieves reduction within a particular arrangement
of elements or ingredients. In each case, notions of a wider associative web and
of the agent as mediator are present. Thus, strictly, it is home owners who trans-
act property deals but conventionally they interact with one another indirectly.
The agent operates as an in-­between.
Any assignment of agency is thus also tied to an act of identification that may
be separated out from what the agent does or achieves. A mirroring or doubling
effect is thereby forefronted. The naming or accounting for of agency itself is an
agential act, one that intervenes, makes responsible, delegates and purposes.
All this also brings into relief another perhaps even more fundamental con-
ceptual dimension, one we will approach below via Agamben’s gloss on Aris-
totle. This is its fundamental dependence on the notion of a transition from
possibility to actuality. An agent is not solely definable in terms of actually being
an agent; it must also be considered in its capacity to be or indeed not to be so.
To return to our illustrations: iron will be the reducing agent in this experiment
(it is not so now, as it lies in the test tube ready to be added); a spy on holiday is
just another tourist.
This last aspect of agency goes right to the heart of a set of philosophical
questions, of hoary vintage although often overlooked. Roughly put, these
concern the nature of the relation between potentiality and telos, and share both
ontological and epistemological dimensions. That is, what does it mean for
something to possess a propensity-­to-be and how do we come to know about this
capacity? In turn, attention to such foundational issues underscores the impor-
tance of approaching agency – or more specifically the accounting of agency –
on the order of event.
In other words, how to conceive of the transition whereby any identification
of an agent – a process that, as we have seen, is always and inevitably selective
– is a negotiation with the “openness” of the world, one integrally contingent on
being otherwise. At stake here is fundamentally our grasp of change at an expe-
riential level. In terms of temporal order, typically we are first aware that “some-
thing has happened” – within our anecdotal illustration, for instance, a man has
come off a bicycle. Next we cast around for explanations. The process happens
very fast. It is as if there is only so much “pure” possibility we can handle.
20   P. Stronge and M. Michael
From this perspective, our notions of agency seem to form a sort of bridge
from the virtual to the actual, but this line of thought needs to be explored rather
more deeply if it is to be more than an intriguing slogan. Moreover, to begin to
develop any such orientation analytically, an underlying theory of process is
required.

Whitehead and agency

The thought of Alfred North Whitehead offers just such a general account. In
Process and Reality (first published in 1929) Whitehead expounds a rigorous
and intricate philosophy of process which takes, as its starting point, indeed
“sole justification”, “the elucidation of immediate experience” (Whitehead 1978:
4). For Whitehead, events are the “final real things of which the world is made
up”. These events, moreover, are “drops of experience, complex and interde-
pendent” (Whitehead 1978: 18).
To pursue further the significance of Whitehead’s thought for our discussion,
a very brief elaboration of aspects of his technical vocabulary is required. First,
within his system, the limit case of the event – its most basic analysable com-
ponent – is something Whitehead names the “actual occasion”. It is the nature of
an actual occasion to be both momentary and, as the citation in the preceding
paragraph makes clear, “experienced” or “felt” in some sense, if rarely
consciously.
Second, in analysing the interaction of actual occasions, Whitehead initiates
and employs the coinage of “prehension”. This term, in its most basic sense,
involves “taking account of ”; but Whitehead also makes explicit that prehen-
sions take both positive and negative forms (Whitehead 1978: 23). Positive pre-
hensions are further characterised by the more familiar word, “feeling”, thus at
once evoking attention to aesthetic, emotional and sensational elements (White-
head 1978: 43). At the highest possible level of generality, prehension marks the
extent whereby the “participation of other things” (Whitehead 1978: 42) defines
any given “slice” of actuality. Thus its operation discloses equally the succession
of events and their profound interdependence (Whitehead 1978: 19).
Thus, as Whitehead makes clear, each new occasion not only encompasses
and involves more traditional concepts of subject and object but also the “how”
or “subjective form” of their interaction (Whitehead 1978: 23). In a certain sense
the occasion prehends, either in positive or negative mode, the entirety of the
world. Whitehead suggests elsewhere (Whitehead 1967: 179) that this notion
might be alternatively framed in terms of the world forming the occasion’s
“data” or “objects”. But, he adds immediately, such terminology tends to obscure
the very factor that gives rise to the emergence of each new occasion. He names
this factor “creativity”: it stands as the sine qua non or “ultimate category”
within his cosmological schema (Whitehead 1978: 21; cf. Griffin 2007: 187ff.).
Now, Whitehead’s approach, crudely summarised here, illuminates each of
the key dimensions of the conventional sociological problematic of agency
referred to earlier. On the one hand, he resolutely extends the property of
 On the actual occasion of agency   21
experience to all entities and consistently refuses what he was himself among the
first to delineate as the Great Bifurcation between culture and nature, or, as he
says elsewhere (Whitehead 1920: 33), between “the nature apprehended in
awareness and the nature which is the cause of that awareness”. Human discre-
tion is acknowledged, certainly, but this recognition affords no special privileg-
ing of culture over nature. Every entity – that is, every agential occasion – responds
to feelings in seeking out what Whitehead terms its satisfaction (its telos).
On the other hand, Whitehead’s theory of prehensions fully accommodates
basic notions of indeterminacy. In attaining satisfaction, any given (micro-)occa-
sion pulls in aspects of all other completed occasions in either a negative or
positive way, through “inhibition” or “intensification” (Whitehead 1978: 213) in
a concrescence that has a teleological dimension which shapes what can go with
what. “Novelty” inheres in the relative gradings of inhibition and intensification
involved as well as to the fact of passage itself – that is insofar as on the actuali-
sation of each new occasion what is there for the next occasion has altered,
however minutely (Whitehead 1978: 339).
This extremely cursory précis does little justice to the richness and ambition
of Whitehead’s thought. However, it should facilitate recognition that the con-
ventional priority afforded the agent as something that acts on reality may be
reversed. Rather, the “subject” as actor or agent is simply what emerges from
each prehensive event – it is, in Whitehead’s vocabulary (Whitehead 1978: 28),
a “superject”. Its agential character is each time uniquely dictated by the relative
coincidence of negative and positive prehensions within a satisfaction. Below,
we will attempt to elucidate this idea further by exploring the complementary
notion of suggestion.

Telos/satisfaction and potential/suggestion

As we suggested above, within both classical social theory and amodern attempts
to rethink the issue of agency, there can be no transcendent or clinching resolu-
tion of the question of where “it” properly lies or how it differentiates itself from
deterministic causes and laws. Any such assignment is itself an agential process.
A given decision of agency, within any given account, necessarily relies both on
previous distributions and its own selection of what is significant and what is to
be disregarded.
Thus to invoke agency represents a constantly repeated calling to account of
indeterminacy. Indeterminacy’s discretional element – the “why this rather than
that” – is placed at stake anew on each occasion. Any account of the agential
event intrinsically contains its own occluded others as potentialities: these others
persist as resources for future actual accounts (or better, actual occasions of
accounting).
In this section, we explore a way of rethinking the problematic pairing of
telos/potential. Specifically, we propose that the term “suggestion” offers,
through its very looseness, multivalence and ambiguity, a particularly fertile
resource. Furthermore, before returning to aspects of Whitehead’s process
22   P. Stronge and M. Michael
analytic, in particular his deployment of the notion of satisfaction, we will
attempt to link suggestion to Giorgio Agamben’s writings on potentiality.
Agamben has revisited and meticulously retraced an aporia that posed a key
question for ancient philosophy but has since been relatively neglected. Namely
what is the ontological status of a capacity that indubitably exists in some sense
but may or may not be exercised (cf. Heller-­Roazen 1999: 14)? The conceptual
challenges raised by suggestion – and especially by the notion of the unsug-
gested – find a particularly strong resonance here.
What is presupposed by suggestion? Etymologically, the word’s origins
evoke the notion of something that “carries under” or “slides beneath”. An affec-
tive or emotive connotation is often also present. In early English usage its
deployment was close to that of “temptation”. The connotation survives in our
contemporary use of “suggestive”/“suggestiveness” to imply the stimulation of
desire.
Then there is the rich seam opened up by an interrogation of the role the
concept has played within the histories of psychology, medicine and psychiatry.
Preoccupations with suggestion were especially prevalent within a period,
roughly between 1880 and 1920, often described as a high watermark of (but
also a time of crisis for) Western modernism. Frequently exemplified by a focus
on hypnosis, literary and lay discourse around suggestion at this time seems at
first sight to associate the term quite straightforwardly with the derided or feared
other of Reason: the irrational Other that threatens to subvert the modern (Carte-
sian) archetype of the independent volitional Self (cf. Royle 1991).
Yet such discourse also demands to be approached as a by-­product of ‘a field
of rationalising processes’ (Crary 1999). In the influential writings of “crowd
psychologists” like Le Bon and Trotter, suggestion was mobilised as an explana-
tory marker for contagious, emotive and often threatening properties that sup-
posedly underpinned collective “mob” action (Graumann and Moscovici 1988).
It thus played a key role in pathologising and primitivising populism while rein-
forcing favoured selective notions of (mature, civilised, healthy) individualism.
By contrast, Freud (1955a: 58) criticised the crowd psychologists for their
“magical” thinking in relying on suggestion as a catch-­all explanation for beha-
viour change. Yet in therapeutic vein he also compared the “gold” of his own
prescriptive technique to the “copper” of suggestion and eventually acknow-
ledged that to achieve mass appeal psychoanalysis would probably be obliged to
“alloy” (Freud 1955b: 168) itself with the latter. Insofar as Freud presented a
coherent alternative to classical reason, suggestion operated at a further remove
– as the other’s other, a contaminant to be isolated yet by the same token tacitly
acknowledged as effective if unexplained (Chertok and Stengers 1992).
In general, then, suggestion seems to have been used in rather negative terms
to denote a kind of mental residual “sink”; one where not only whatever doesn’t
fit a particular theory, but also what makes that theory possible, may be conven-
iently placed. Suggestion in this sense forms reason’s dark underbelly.
An exception to the general trend may be found in the work of Gabriel Tarde.
Tarde went far further than his contemporaries in mobilising the notion of
 On the actual occasion of agency   23
hypnosis/suggestion in a uniquely comprehensive and original way: he (Tarde
1903: 76) proposed “imitation” – a term he explicitly associated with the proc-
esses identifiable at work in person-­to-person suggestion and hypnosis – as
denotative of a general principle not merely reflective but fundamentally consti-
tutive of society. Moreover, the role of imitation/suggestion in Tarde’s thought
is coupled with and counterbalanced by an equal emphasis on the irreducibility
of invention – a move that parallels Whitehead’s stress on creativity or novelty.
For Tarde (e.g. 1969: 195ff.), social life is effectively the dynamic interplay
between imitation and invention. This relation is itself underpinned by a charac-
terisation of “belief and desire” (croyance et désir) as the elementary animating
forces at work in the universe.
Tarde’s adherence to the notion of belief and desire as providing – in infi-
nitely variant combinations – the “raw fuel” for agential activity thus uncannily
prefigured Whitehead’s emphasis on feeling as a basic and universal property of
experience. Similarly, Tarde may be approached as presciently holding to a
vision of the social that extends all the way down and resists treating the indi-
vidual human being as the ultimate unit of analysis. “Everything is a society [. . .]
and all things are societies”, he wrote in 1895 (cited by Latour 2005: 14).
Utilising Tarde’s work alongside that of Whitehead as a “lure”, we may con-
ceive a “register of suggestion” as one that designates processes whereby any-
thing and everything ultimately included within a given – actual – account of the
agential event originates in a potentiality from outside. Within the production of
this chapter (itself a process initiated with a suggestion or series of suggestions
involving editors, ideas for a book, prospective writers, putative themes, etc.),
for example, the vague notion of the possible relevance or appropriateness of
using a bicycle anecdote somehow suggested itself to one of us. This suggestion
was taken up, augmented and developed by the other, thus unleashing a further
proliferate sequence of suggestive exchanges, iterations, exclusions, condensa-
tions and so on.
At some point, of course (the pragmatics of busy schedules, deadlines and the
like, alongside the more inarticulate but nevertheless palpable notion of judge-
ment – “this will do”; “we’re more or less satisfied now”), we were obliged to
declare a halt. This does not mean, however, that the suggestive process really
comes to an end. For example, it may also be assumed that each separate act of
reading will trigger further suggestions and possibilities.
Invariably, we are able to make a fair stab towards retracing the routes
whereby any suggestion becomes consummated in actuality, hardening as it
were to become a piece of/to be at peace with knowledge. But we can never
follow such processes “right back to the source”. Moreover, it is impossible to
reach anything approaching certainty over the questions of where (or even if we
are warranted) to draw a line retrospectively between the suggestion and the
actual event.
From another angle, however, to think in terms of a suggestive register is also
to evoke the privative quality of potentiality. This may in turn be approached
from two radically contrasting perspectives, each readily recognisable within
24   P. Stronge and M. Michael
everyday experience. On the one hand, a multitude of possible alternatives are
clearly blocked or excluded by the adoption of any given suggestion. It might
have been otherwise. On the other hand, no suggestion, insofar as it remains one,
can be regarded as absolutely binding. “It’s only a suggestion: you may choose
to do otherwise!” So, although we may well struggle to locate it precisely, even
in hindsight, there is surely an agential cut happening here – a moment, or at
least a threshold, of decision.
How, therefore, might we begin to integrate these musings into an account of
agency that does fuller justice to the contrast (or better, the involution) between
telos and potential? Giorgio Agamben’s rereadings of Aristotle’s distinction
between dynamis (potentiality) and energeia (action) in Homo Sacer (Agamben
1998: 29ff.) and elsewhere (e.g. Agamben 1999: 177ff.) offer one way forward.
Agamben revives the key Aristotelian insight that potentiality constitutively
includes its own denial, “the potentiality not to (do or be)” or impotentiality
(Agamben 1998: 32, emphasis in original). He notes that what is potential thus
elides into actuality only at the price of “setting aside” its own impotentiality.
This idea is developed in Agamben’s thought in close juxtaposition with that
of the “absent present”. “Potentiality”, he writes (Agamben 1999: 179), “is not
simply non-­Being, simple privation, but rather the existence of non-­Being, the
presence of an absence”. It is an “authentic” mode of existence, he continues, to
possess the capacity to do something, yet to not be doing it at the moment.
Agamben offers (Agamben 1999: 181), by way of illustration, the example of
boredom as “the terrible experience of the potentiality-­not-to-­act”.
Agamben further contests the notion that potentiality is altogether “annulled”
in actuality. Rather, he maintains, it realises its own impotentiality qua potential-
ity in the transition: it “gives itself to itself to save itself ” (Agamben 1999: 184).
Once integrated with the register of suggestion, the notions of potentiality-­not-to
and the absent present are susceptible to a new gloss. Prior to its incorporation
into the actual event, a suggestion is at once an as yet inactivated capacity for
this or that to be achieved (potential), and the activation of that inactivation
(impotentiality).
However, one aspect of Agamben’s approach remains problematic. Overall,
he tends to continue to operate within a frame of reference that tacitly privileges
a notion of human (or at least animal) agency as isolable from technology and
things. As our discussion rests, moreover, we might be similarly indicted. In
returning, by way of concluding this section, to the work of Whitehead, we find
at once a corrective to this perspective and a fertile way of extending and deep-
ening the ideas outlined above.
Whitehead, as intimated earlier, elaborated a general and resolutely post- or
non-­humanist metaphysics. His “actual occasions” operate in the same way
within a “society” of electrons and a conventionally “sociological” milieu. In
fact, Whitehead would repudiate any fundamental discrimination between these
two domains as a misbegotten consequence of the bifurcation of culture and
Nature. Further, as also emphasised above, he posits experience as an absolutely
irreducible element of the real (Whitehead 1978: 167).
 On the actual occasion of agency   25
Within this general context the concept of satisfaction plays a vital role in
Whitehead’s theory of prehensions. Satisfaction equates broadly with the idea of
telos – it defines the final goal-­directed phase whereby occasions and thus events
become or “concresce”. Moreover, to adopt Whiteheadian terminology, satisfac-
tion is in each and every case achieved through the “ingression” in existing actual
entities (crudely, the past of any given event) of what he calls “eternal objects”.
The precise significance of the latter term in Whitehead’s thought is admit-
tedly not easy to grasp and has generated intense discussion among scholars (cf.
e.g. Jones 1998: 11ff.; Griffin 2007: 161ff.). Within the trajectory of Whitehe-
ad’s own work (1945: 129) the notion is developed in terms of examples – the
colour red, for instance, or a geometrical form such as a triangle. The most
important point to note however is that, regarded in itself, the eternal object is an
abstraction denoting forms of definiteness only in their realisation. As Whitehead
(1978: 23) notes, “an eternal object can only be described in terms of its potenti-
ality for ingression into the becoming of actual entities [i.e. occasions]”.
Thus, Whitehead likens “eternal objects” (Whitehead 1978: 40) to “pure
potentials”. They represent the extent of the capacity – infinite in terms of any
scale of human comprehension – of the virtual to ingress into the actual, for
experience to be rendered as of this or that or of something else again. Within
each and every eventual context, eternal objects thus include but are not limited
to any perceptions, thoughts, ideas and sensations available for prehension on
that particular occasion.
Satisfaction, meanwhile, marks for Whitehead a unity and a terminus for the
act of prehension. It is the limit-­case of indeterminacy. “The satisfaction is
merely the culmination marking the evaporation of all indetermination [. . .] in
respect to all modes of feeling and to all entities in the universe, the satisfied
actual entity embodies a determinate attitude of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ ” (Whitehead 1978:
212). However, this is by no means the end of the story. “In its ingression into
any one actual entity, either as relevant or irrelevant”, Whitehead writes, “it [the
Eternal Object] retains its potentiality of indefinite diversity of modes of ingres-
sion. [. . .] Potentiality becomes reality; and yet retains its message of alternatives
which the actual entity has avoided” (Whitehead 1978: 149).
These alternatives approach, it would seem, very close to Agamben’s “absent
presents”. But they are by no means limited to the capacities we tend to associ-
ate with subjective potential – the ability to play the piano, say, or the highly
unlikely but just conceivable possibility that one of us might become Prime Min-
ister. Potential – or by extension suggestion – rather adheres equally to the
capacity of a crystal to catch the sunlight in a certain way or of this nail on the
road to puncture a tyre.
The act of agency, within Whitehead’s account, is thus nothing more nor less
than a fresh incidence of satisfaction that is itself a new production of the
subject. To dip once more into Whitehead’s technical vocabulary, this subject-­
as-outcome is what he calls the “superject”. It becomes one more entity that
alongside the “eternal objects” makes itself available for the next creative
reconfiguration.
26   P. Stronge and M. Michael
In sum, the Whiteheadian schema seems to map readily on to the register of
suggestion (as does Agamben’s notion of the absent present and the ultimate co-­
identity of potentiality and actuality). A suggestion, we might hazard, falls some-
where in between the infinite potential of Whitehead’s eternal objects and a too
restrictive view of human or animal capacity. It already implicates a teleological
dimension: it aspires to tempt, lure or persuade towards a goal; that is,
satisfaction.
Yet suggestion also stands by definition for the potential or undecided; in this
sense it remains “only” potential insofar as it remains only suggestion. With the
attainment of satisfaction, suggestions concresce into – in fact, as – the superject.
In this sense suggestion might be expressed as the push to satisfaction’s pull. No
sooner has a suggestion participated in satisfaction than that satisfaction itself
becomes a suggestion.

The agency of anecdotes

With all this in mind, let us return to the accidental anecdote with which we
commenced this chapter. How might this episode, both in itself and in its telling,
draw together the various strands of our discussion? An initial – if perhaps over-­
obvious – remark concerns its complexity. A considerable number of different
elements both appear to be in place within the initial situation described, and to
have retained a place within the event of narration.
In other words, we are faced – in capsule form – with what might best be
described as a rich assemblage or mix of entities, to use this term in the most
inclusive possible sense. On the one hand, for example, a car and its driver, a
bicycle and its rider, other traffic, a maze of crowded streets and a cast of far-­
from-impassive bystanders. On the other, equally manifest within the storyline,
at least latently, are typically physical (or mechanical) factors like position and
momentum, psychological aspects including weariness and attention, and emo-
tional elements such as anger, pity, remorse and shame.
Now, any single one of these factors possesses the potential to be accorded a
privileged role in any account of the accident that forms the culmination of the
story. Conversely, each also has the capacity to be relegated to a greater or lesser
extent to negligibility. The phrase “privileged role” here may well strike a
clumsy note; it sounds, and indeed is, such a vague and incomplete denotation.
Yet it is deployed to evoke the sense in which, before we become more precise
and assign any status such as agent, actor, subject, explanation or cause to any
one or any subset of these components, they are all (conceivably) prospective
candidates for these “lead parts”.
This may all be very well “in thought”, as a matter of reflection. Of course,
within the story as told, and within PS’s personal experience (you must take his
word for it!), things don’t happen that way at all. For example, the role of the
bystanders is a particularly striking aspect of the account. With remarkable
alacrity, they, as much as the cyclist or driver, furnished the accident with its
explanation – and this through a presumption of responsibility which indeed,
 On the actual occasion of agency   27
wrongly as it turned out, leapt ahead to anticipate a possible legal dispensation
of agency.
The relation of telos to potential, together with that of satisfaction to sugges-
tion, as outlined earlier in the chapter, appear to quite neatly capture something
of the juxtaposition of these two perspectives, and to allow them to co-­exist. For
instance, the continued presence, even within the final, more-­or-less polished
account – a species of satisfaction in itself within the event of “recounting a
story” – a wide range of elements persist in demonstrating their merely sugges-
tive power. For the woman who wrote down the motorist’s details, the arrayed
suggestions of this event were gathered up into a satisfaction, and an account of
agency, quite distinct from those of PS, who, on discovering he was unhurt, felt
embarrassed at his outburst and sorry for the driver.
A point worth emphasising here resonates with Agamben’s insights into
impotentiality: the absent presences serve in a sense as guarantors for change. In
the present context, from a multiplicity of possibilities, one might select, for
example, the fact that – as it happens – the cyclist was wearing a protective
helmet. This is not even mentioned in the account; PS did not strike his head in
falling; in any event, as the account makes clear, he suffered no serious injury.
Yet, despite all these negative assertions – we didn’t mention it, he didn’t hit
his head and so on – within the orientation we have been following here, the
“message of alternatives” (Whitehead 1978: 149) signified by the helmet (e.g.
the materials of its construction, the technology involved in its design, the choice
to wear it and so on) are not by that token consigned to utter irrelevance in the
account of agency that does emerge. The helmet, materially and symbolically,
remains, in its very absence, a suggestive player, and this on a number of levels
(one only needs to think of the “politics” involved). For instance, in envisioning
a similar future episode; in the retelling and reusing of this anecdote (someone,
perhaps a lawyer, may well ask, “Were you wearing a helmet?”), even within the
actual experience on which the anecdote is based (again, you must take PS’s
word for it: however irrationally, he felt “grateful” that he in fact had the helmet
on).
But further, and crucially, the actual occasion of the accident presents another
suggestion: the possibility of its own telling; that is, its anecdotalisation. Thus
while the above account sifts through the problematic process of ascribing
agency, this sifting is itself a satisfaction born partly of the suggestion (of some
aspect that is being sifted) of the actual occasion of the accident. The agency
enacted in the process of anecdotalisation is thus itself suggested by the actual
occasion of the accident, just as the anecdotalisation of the actual occasion of the
accident serves in the satisfaction of the actual occasion of enacting a particular
agency – that of “analysts” (Michael forthcoming).
One would be right to ask: Why was this particular incident so readily anec-
dotalisable in the context of this joint chapter? We could attempt to identify a
number of factors – the fact that we had both had bicycle accidents, the fact that
both accidents had left a suggestive impression or an affect (e.g. Massumi 2002)
(for PS this was a matter of recency; for MM it took the form of a long-­standing
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and which they were to carry into execution. This was to the effect
that they should rob a horse from the orchard where the cavalry
mounts of my Tangier escort were picketed.
‘In this orchard was a summer-house where the English Medical
Officer who accompanied the Mission had his quarters; as also the
chief of our camp, a Moor from Tangier. The orchard was enclosed
by a high wall, and at the gate several of the Arab guard were posted
day and night.
‘“How are we to abstract a horse?” asked the Berbers. “Shall we
cut the throats of the guard at night, force open the gate, and carry
off the horse?”
‘“No such violence is required,” said Kaid Meno. “After midnight,
when all is quiet, take off your shoes, go in silence to the path round
the southern side of the wall, take pickaxes with you, and choose the
best spot for making a hole through the tapia wall. I know the
ground,” continued the Kaid; “you will find a drop of five feet from the
path to the orchard. Take plenty of rope with you. Steal up to a horse
—you will find several picketed—and lead him to the aperture in the
wall. Then cast the horse quickly and quietly, bind his fore and hind
legs firmly to his barrel, hoist him over your heads, and push him
through the hole.”
‘“What then?” asked the men; “where can we hide the horse? We
cannot take him out into the country, for the gates of the town will be
closed.”
‘“That is all settled,” replied Kaid Meno. “I have arranged with a
Berber cattle-lifter, who came to ask a favour of me this morning, that
he is to wait to-night, with four of his companions, where the river
passing under the walls enters the town.
 ‘“When a whistle is heard, a rope will be cast into the stream, with
a float and white signal attached. This rope will be taken hold of by
you and fastened to the horse, which, securely bound, will be cast
into the river. The men outside, on hearing a second whistle, will haul
the animal under the walls of the town through the archway. A little
water will not choke the horse, which will become their property, and
they will of course lose no time in making off to the mountains before
dawn.”
‘“To each of you,” he added, “I give four ducats; and if the Sultan
disgraces the Arab Kaid, I shall have an ox killed and give a feast to
our regiment.”
‘Meno’s orders were carried out. Some of my camp-followers who
slept in the orchard heard a horse moving about at night, but
supposed the animal had got loose.
‘In the morning the robbery was reported.—I visited the orchard
and saw the aperture through which the animal had been passed.
The wall was three feet thick, and the hole, five feet from the ground,
looked so small that it was a wonder how the poor beast had been
jammed through.
‘Early notice of the robbery had been given to the Governor of
Fas. The Arab Kaid was immediately placed under arrest, and orders
issued that the town gates should be kept closed and search made
in every garden and stable of a suspicious character. This was done,
but without result.
‘The Sultan “thundered and lightened,” as the myrmidons of the
Court told me, on hearing of the daring outrage that had been
committed within the grounds assigned by His Sherifian Majesty for
the quarters of the British Mission, and His Majesty vowed
vengeance on the perpetrators of the theft.
 ‘Later in the day, an Arab camel-driver reported to the Basha that
he had seen, early in the morning, a grey horse mounted bareback
by a Berber, who was riding with speed towards the mountains.
‘Cavalry were dispatched in pursuit, but the robber had escaped.
‘Suspicion then fell on the Kaid and men of the Berber regiment,
for words had been let drop which marked their glee at the disgrace
of the Arab Kaid.
‘One of the Berber soldiers was therefore seized and cruelly
bastinadoed until he offered to tell how the robbery of the horse had
been planned and carried out. His story was found to be true. The
unfortunate Kaid Meno was brought before the Uzir. Undaunted, he
denied the charge, in an insulting manner. The Uzir reported his
language to the Sultan, who ordered Meno to be disgraced and
reduced to the ranks. His horses and all his property were
confiscated. It was not until after I had left the Court that I learnt that
the horse I had received as a gift from the Sultan, a bright dun or
“snabi,” had been the property of Kaid Meno, the colonel of the
Berber regiment. In my reminiscences of boar hunting I tell how
gallant a hunter Snabi proved himself. His poor master must have
been attached to him, for Snabi was gentle with man and faithful as
a dog.
‘The unfortunate Kaid Meno was, after a year, sent prisoner to
Tetuan, where he remained incarcerated until 1886, when, through
my intercession, he was released and the Sultan placed him once
more in command of a Berber regiment.’

During the stay of the Mission in Fas, the Sultan invited its
members to be present at a grand ‘lab-el-barod’ in which he
personally intended taking part; this function to be preceded by a
picnic breakfast provided for his guests in one of the royal gardens
about two miles from the town; and in accordance with this invitation
the members of the Mission and two of the ladies were present at
the ‘lab-el-barod’ conducted by the Sultan in person.
The morning had been spent by the party in one of the beautiful
royal gardens in the environs of Fas, where the Sultan had ordered
luncheon to be served. As this picnic and the subsequent ‘lab-el-
barod’ were regarded in a semi-official light, the Mission was
escorted by the Arab Kaid and cavalry who, as described in the story
of Kaid Meno, had supplanted that Berber officer and his men.
A message arrived, soon after luncheon, requesting Sir John and
his party to proceed to a palace situated about two miles from Fas.
Here, in a large court—or rather square—the performance took
place. The Sultan, who appeared much pleased to see his English
visitors, saluted them, after every charge in which he joined, by rising
in his stirrups and raising his gun, held horizontally to the level of his
turban, as he passed the spot were they were grouped.
When the ‘fraja’ (sight) was over, we rode back to Fas, through a
gay and wild scene. The whole plain was crowded with various
tribes, grouped separately, and each dancing their own form of gun-
dance. There was one tribe of Shloh, wearing white, with red leather
belts and white turbans; another, in brown; and another, all dressed
in blue. Troops of Sus jugglers and Aisawa snake-charmers mingled
with these, whilst crowds of women took advantage of every mound
or ruined wall whence they could watch their male relatives.
We were about half a mile on our way home, when one of our
Arab escort cursed a Shloh. Immediately, from the crowd, a stone
was thrown at the offender, and this was followed by another. The
escort, who had been riding in open order, at once closed up in
expectation of a row. The three Tangier guards present, pushed
forward; the four English gentlemen surrounded Lady Hay, who rode
a mule near Sir John; and Hadj Alarbi, the chief of the Tangier
beaters—a gallant little man—hurried his mule to Miss Hay’s side,
uncovering, at the same time, Sir John’s breechloader, which he was
carrying, as the gentlemen had been shooting in the Sultan’s garden
in the morning. Seeing him cock the gun, Miss Hay said, ‘Why are
you doing that? You know it is not loaded and you have no
cartridges.’ ‘No,’ said the Hadj, ‘but it looks well!’
The escort and the rest of the party, having now drawn closely
together, were preparing to press forward; when Sir John, who was
as usual riding in front, checked them, giving orders to proceed as
slowly as possible; progress therefore became almost funereal. The
crowd thickened about the party, curses were showered on the Arab
cavalry by the constantly increasing numbers of Shloh, joined by all
the idle folk and boys of the town, who united in the abuse. Presently
a bullet struck the ground near the Arab Kaid, and a soldier of the
escort was injured by one of the stones flung from the crowd, but
these missiles were well aimed, as—though members of the escort
were frequently struck—not one touched any of the English party.
Bullets now whizzed over our heads, or struck the sand in front of us,
sending it flying up in our horses’ faces, but no one was injured. It
was not a pleasant half-hour, as the road was full of holes, and the
horses fidgetty from the noise and crush. On reaching the gates of
Fas, it was found that some of the miscreants had closed them, but
the townspeople behaved well, and, after a short pause, re-opened
the gates to admit us, closing them again immediately to exclude the
mob; but after we had entered the town, boys and other scamps ran
along the high wall, still taunting and insulting the soldiers.
That evening, a message was brought to Sir John from the
Sultan, by his ‘Hajib,’ to express His Majesty’s regret that such an
apparent insult had been offered to the Mission. The Hajib stated
that the Sultan had sent for the chiefs of the tribes and asked for an
explanation of their extraordinary conduct. They assured His Majesty
that no insult was offered to or intended for the Bashador, but that
some of the younger men of the tribes, excited by feasting and with
gunpowder, had taunted and tried to annoy the escort, who had
retorted; the Shloh had hoped to make the cavalry fly, as they were
accustomed to do on meeting them in battle, and thus prove that the
Arabs were unworthy to be guards to the British Mission.
 The Hajib then continued, ‘Sidna says he cannot rest unless he is
assured that none of you are injured, and he suggests and begs that
you, your friends and family (meaning the ladies), will return to the
same spot to-morrow to witness the “lab-el-barod,” but without the
Arab escort, and attended only by your Tangier guard.’
Sir John agreed, and next day, accompanied by his younger
daughter and some of the gentlemen, rode to the palace outside the
walls—attended only by the six faithful Suanni men. As we left the
city, each tribe sent a body of armed men to perform the gun-dance
before us.
We witnessed again the ‘lab-el-barod.’ The Sultan was, at first,
mounted on a coal-black horse—in token of his deep displeasure—
but changed soon to a chestnut, and, lastly, mounted a milk-white
steed. Afterwards we rode over the plain, mingling with the tribes.
They cheered wildly, calling down blessings on the Bashador and on
all the English—‘For they are brave and just,’ they cried.
The matters which Sir John especially pressed on the attention of
the Sultan’s advisers on the occasion of this visit were principally
those which, promised in 1873, had not been carried into execution,
in consequence of the death of Sultan Sid Mohammed. Amongst the
more urgent of these demands were the following:—
The placing of a light at Mazagan, to facilitate the entry of ships
into the harbour at night; the building of a pier at Tangier, and of
breakwaters in the harbours of Saffi and Dar-el-Baida; the erection of
more houses and stores for merchants at the ports; permission to
export bones; permission to import sulphur, saltpetre, and lead at a
ten per cent. duty, and the abolition of the Government monopoly on
these articles; the extension of the term placed on removal of
prohibition to export wheat and barley; inquiry into and punishment
of outrages on Jews; immediate settlement of all British claims. Most
particularly he pressed the importance of allowing a cable to be laid
between Tangier and Gibraltar. When he had previously obtained
from the Moorish Government permission for an English Company to
lay such a cable, one of his colleagues informed the Moorish
Government that, in case the concession was granted, he should
insist on telegraph wires being laid between Ceuta and Tangier
overland, and hold the Moorish Government responsible for the
safety of the wires. The Moorish Government, frightened by this
menace, and aware that no inland wires would be safe in the then
state of Morocco, availed themselves of the excuse to withdraw from
their promise to Sir John. On this subject he wrote to Sir Henry
Layard:—

When I presented the proposition to my colleagues, I premised by telling them

frankly of past opposition, and I asked what would have become of the network of
telegraph wires spread throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, if the petty
spirit which had prevailed here had existed on the part of the Representatives of
Foreign Powers throughout the world. I ridiculed the advantages which it was
supposed we should derive in case of war and if the cable became the property of
the British Government. ‘Imagine,’ I said, ‘my informing my Government some day
by telegraph that the Sultan was about to send a force of 30,000 Moorish troops in
the Moorish squadron to act against Spain or France. Such a dream,’ I said, ‘would
soon pass away, as any gunboat could cut the cable in this defenceless bay
whenever it pleased the officer in command. . . .
‘Once,’ I said, ‘the cable or cables introduced at Tangier, the time would not be
far distant when this Government and people would follow the example of the rest
of the world, and have telegraph wires throughout this Empire.’

In a series of letters written to his sister, Mrs. Norderling, Sir John

describes various incidents of the Mission. The first of these letters,
dated April 24, gives an account of the flattering reception the
Mission had received:—

Though we are the pets of the Harem we long to get away, but a message has
just been brought that the Sultan will not let us go till May 1. Never have I met such
a welcome at the Court as on this occasion. Royal honours paid us everywhere,
not a word, not a gesture, not a look that could be called unfriendly. From the
pompous Basha down to the humble labourer, all vie in being civil to the
Englishman who has been, as they say, the friend of the Moor, and who loves
‘justice.’ Even the women don’t hide their faces, or run away from me, but smile
brightly at my grey beard when I peer over the terrace wall, though they are more
shy when my young friends attempt to have a look at them, in their smart dresses,
walking on the terraces.
I have had two private audiences of the Sultan[52] since the public audience.
He and I have become great friends. He is about 6 feet 2 inches high, very
handsome, of a slim and elegant figure, very dignified in his manner, but gentle,
with a sad expression of countenance. I think he is about twenty-seven years of
age. His colour about the same shade as that of Hajot[53]. Features very regular.
He has taken the greatest interest in the telegraph apparatus sent to His Sherifian
Majesty by the British Government. It has been placed in the garden of his palace
between two summer-houses. I stood with the Sultan at one end, and a sapper,
sent by Government to work the instrument, and the Engineer officers at the other.
The first message he received in Arabic letters was ‘May God prolong the life of
Mulai Hassan.’ Several messages were interchanged. I left the room to
communicate with the officers, and the Sultan took possession of the instrument,
and, as the letters are in Arabic, he sent one himself. The sapper was delighted
with his intelligence. He wanted to have wires put between the palace and my
house to enable him to talk to me, he said, but there is no time. He has agreed to
allow of a cable[54] being laid between Tangier and Gibraltar, but not inland as yet,
for he declares that his wild subjects would destroy the wires. I have got, however,
the thin end of the wedge inserted for telegraphic communication. He agrees also
to the Mole at Tangier, and other improvements on the coast, and has removed
some restrictions on trade, so, after much negotiation, ‘un petit pas en avant’ is
made. He told me that he cannot introduce many of the improvements he desires,
from the fear of raising an outcry against himself by some of his ignorant subjects.
He also tells me that his father, before his death, had followed my advice, to give
salaries to the Governors of the Southern provinces, and thus check the system of
corruption and robbery practised by these grandees in office to enrich themselves.
I hear that the inhabitants of these provinces are happy and contented. His
Majesty hopes to introduce the same system into the Northern provinces, and he
sent the Governor-General of half his empire to listen to my advice.
This country is an Augean stable, and I cannot sweep it; but as the Sultan is
well disposed, we are doing our little best to aid him.
He invited us all to witness the feast of the Mulud—an unprecedented favour,
for even in Tangier the authorities think it prudent to recommend Christians and
Jews to keep aloof from the wild tribes who assemble on such occasions.
The chiefs from the Arab provinces and the Berber mountains, with their
followers, amounting to several thousand men, had come to the feast to bring
presents to His Majesty. The Sultan, with all his grandees and regular and irregular
troops, proceeded to a picturesque site two miles beyond the town.
 The Sultan sent us a guard of honour and orders to the commander to allow
me and my friends to take up any position we liked. Each chief with his retinue
formed a line and advanced towards the Sultan, bowing low from their horses. His
Majesty gave them his blessing, which was proclaimed by the Master of the
Ceremonies, and then they wheeled round, cheering, and galloped off. Some thirty
governors or chiefs were presented. The scene was beyond description. Imagine
the brilliant costumes of the Sultan’s troops; the flowing white dresses of the wild
Berber; the massive walls and bastions of Fas in the distance, with minarets and
palm-trees o’ertopping them; undulating hills covered with castles and ‘kubba’-
topped tombs, interspersed with orange-groves, olive-trees, and luxuriant
vegetation; a shining river flowing at our feet, and the snowy range of the Atlas in
the distance, and you have a picture which was wonderful to behold.
No people can behave better than the ‘Fassien’ have this time, and even the
swarms of Berbers we meet are civil to us. The Sultan sent a message to us (we
were all in our ‘armour’) that he was very glad we had come to the feast, as he
wished to show all his subjects that I was his honoured guest and friend.
This is a very chilly place. Last time I was here, in 1868, I had dysentery, and
now I have a frightful cold. Water everywhere; air hot outside, but cold in the
house.

After the Mission had returned to Tangier, he writes to the same

correspondent in July 1875, on the reforms which he was
endeavouring to introduce:—

Yes, we are sitting in Congress at the request of the Moorish Government

about the various improvements. The Representatives (with the exception of the
Don) support the Moorish Government. The silly Spaniards like not that Morocco
should improve and that our young Sultan should become popular. They always
talk (sub rosâ) about Morocco as destined for a Spanish colony, and they fear lest
the Moors should become too strong for them, or that, by improving the country
and commerce, Foreign Powers should put their veto on the petty system of
menace and bullying to which the Dons have resorted since the war of 1860.

Later on he writes to Mrs. Norderling about the Sahara scheme. A

plan had been proposed, and a company was to be formed, with the
object of flooding the Sahara by means of a canal cut on the West
African Coast, in the belief—it was said—of thus re-creating a great
inland sea in place of a sandy desert. On this subject he writes:—
 The Sahara scheme appears to me to be a ‘chateau en Espagne.’ I had a letter
from Lord Derby requesting me to aid McKenzie & Co., and to ask for the good
offices of the Moorish Government. He might as well have asked me to aid the
Naval Expedition to the North Pole. The Moorish Minister did not know the
whereabouts of Cape Bojador, and said the tribes south of Agadir would probably
be more hostile to the explorers if they heard that the Sultan encouraged them.
Remember Davidson’s fate, and that of the two Spaniards who have just been
ransomed for $27,000 after seven years’ captivity at Wadnun.
Bargash put a fair query: ‘If this inundation can really be carried into execution,
does the British Government intend to obtain the consent of the chiefs or
inhabitants of the oases of the desert or neighbouring districts, and to offer them
compensation? Or will their claims be got rid of by swamping them?’

I have not, either in reply to Lord Derby or to McKenzie, who has written to me,
opposed the scheme; but I have warned them that it will be natural to expect a
strong hostile feeling on the part of the tribes who inhabit the oases and borders of
the desert, and who have had, from time immemorial, the privilege of escorting
caravans and levying contributions on the traffic through the Sahara.
I should doubt that there would be any depth in the Kus. In my ignorance I
should say that the sea had withdrawn from that region from the uplifting of the
surface, and that even if there be parts much lower than the Atlantic, it would be a
sea too dangerous to navigate from the risk of sand-banks. I don’t think you and I
will live to hear that the cutting has been made. Money will be raised, and the
engineers will fill their pockets—‘y nada mas.’
 CHAPTER XXII.

1876-1879.

Sir John’s annual leave was generally taken in the autumn, for,
as he writes from Tangier to Sir Joseph Hooker,—

We visit England every year, but prefer going in the shooting instead of the
season, as to us, barbarians, we find English society more cordial in their ‘castles’
than when engaged in circling in a whirlpool of men and women in the ‘season.’
Our stay therefore is very short in town, and this will account for my not having
given you a hail in your paradise at Kew. We probably go home in July; if so, and
you are in town, I shall call either on arrival or return.

In the course of these yearly holidays he was entertained by many

royal and distinguished personages, with some of whom he had
become acquainted as their host at Tangier; but no record of any
special interest is left of these visits in his letters. Thus in the year
under notice, he was present at the Brussels Conference on Africa,
by invitation of the King of the Belgians, who as Duke of Brabant had
visited Tangier in 1862. In the following November he was the guest
of the Prince of Wales at Sandringham, whence he writes, ‘The
children clustered round me, and I had to tell many stories of the
Moors. Captain Nares arrived and dined. We passed the night on the
Arctic Ocean, and found it most interesting.’
Sir John always returned to the South before the cold set in in
England. This was merely from dislike of a chilly climate, after years
of residence under a Southern sky, and not on the score of health,
as may be judged from the following letter to his sister:—

Ravensrock, June 24, 1876.

 Thanks for your good wishes on my entering the shady side of sixty—bright
side I ought to say, for thanks to God I am as hearty and strong as I was twenty
years ago, though I have no longer the speed of youth. Yesterday we had all the
foreign society to play at lawn-tennis, and I flatter myself, though only my third trial
at the game, on having been the best amongst the youngsters who joined the fun.

Eastern affairs boded ill for peace in 1876, and Sir John, always
deeply interested in matters connected with Turkey, writes in July:—

The cloud in the East looks very threatening. I hope we shall not do more than
insist on fair play. If the Christian races are able to hold their own, we ought not to
interfere so long as they are not placed under the sway of Russia or other Power
antagonistic to us. If the Turks succeed in quashing the insurrection, I hope our
influence will be exerted to prevent outrages being committed by the
Mohammedans. I do not believe in the resurrection of the ‘sick man,’ but I am
convinced that Russia has done her best to hurry him to death’s door. When the
Blue Books are published, we shall have much to learn, especially if our Foreign
Office has to defend its present menacing attitude before the British Parliament
and public. If England had looked on passively, we should probably have been
forced into war.

But the crisis was averted.

‘Lord Derby’s policy in the East,’ he writes, ‘has astounded the foreigners. They
all without exception appear pleased to see the old Lion growl and bestir itself, and
Russia “reculer” (“pour mieux sauter”). The policy of the latter was evidently the
system of administering slow poison. I don’t think we can prevent paralysis of the
patient, or his final demise, but we have done right well in showing that we cannot
allow a doctor, who prescribes poison, to play the part of chief adviser to the
patient. Let him live awhile, and the course of events may prevent the balance
tipping in favour of our opponents in the East.’

Of Lord Derby Sir John entertained a high opinion. ‘I believe him,’

he says in one of his letters at this time, ‘to be a far better man and
more thoroughly English than any of his Whig predecessors—except
dear old Palmerston.’
In the following year Sir Henry Layard, Sir John’s former fellow-
worker in Sir Stratford Canning’s time, was appointed Ambassador
at Constantinople, and he thus writes to congratulate him on the
appointment:—

April 5, 1877.
I rejoiced to hear that you go to Stambul pro tem.; for I have no doubt the
appointment will be hereafter confirmed, and the right man will be in the right
place.
As you say, it will be a very difficult post, especially as I fear in these days an
ambassador cannot look alone, as in the days of Ponsonby and Redcliffe, to the
course he deems would best serve the interests of his country—and I may add of
Turkey—but he must seek to satisfy lynx-eyed humanitarians and others, even
though he may know that the real cause of humanity will not be benefited.
If vigilance, tact, and decision can gain the day, it will be yours.
I am, however, very far from rejoicing at your removal from Madrid, and shall
miss you much. Through you the evil machinations of the Don have been
thwarted. Had you been at Madrid in 1859-60 we should not have had war in
Morocco.

On the same subject he writes to his sister:—

Layard has gone to Stambul. He writes me that he has a hard task before him;
he will have to work in the teeth of humanitarians who have done much against the
cause of humanity already, though their motives are no doubt good. I have said
from the first, Russia won’t fight unless Turkey forces her. . . . Russia will get up
another massacre when she thinks the rumour suitable to her interests and views.

And again later:—

I think Layard’s dispatch of May 30 excellent.

He has a most difficult task, but is ceaseless in his efforts to prevent atrocities. I
have no sympathy with the Turkish Government, which is detestable, but I have for
the Turks.
On the other hand, I consider the conduct of the Russian Government—which
has been sapping and mining for years through agents, Bulgarian and foreign, to
bring about rebellion, revolt, and even the very atrocities committed on Christians
in Bulgaria which she now comes forward as champion to avenge—as base,
treacherous, and detestable; her sole aim being conquest. Never shall I have any
sympathy for that treacherous and ambitious Power.

In the meantime Sir John, who still maintained his influence at the
Court, continued unremitting in his efforts to abolish abuses in
Morocco.
Just before going on leave in 1877 he writes from Tangier to his
sister:—

I feel sorry to leave this even for two months, but am glad to have a rest, for as
our young Sultan makes me superintend his foreign affairs, I have no rest. We
think of leaving on the 28th. I have my leave, but I have so much work to get
through I could not well start before then.
I am striking at the Hydra, Protection, which is depriving this Government of its
lawful taxes and of all jurisdiction over Moors. Lord Derby is making it an
international question, and has hitherto given me carte blanche.

Diplomatic operations proceed slowly in Morocco, and this

question of the protection extended by foreigners to Moorish
subjects, which Sir John had so much at heart, was no exception to
the rule. To his great regret his efforts to combat the abuse were
eventually baffled. But he foresaw from the outset that the prospect
of success was never very great, and says:—

I shall fight the battle, and if abuses are maintained, and this Government is too
weak and powerless to resist them, I shall fold my arms and await events; I can do
no more.

To the same subject he returns in a letter to Sir Henry Layard:—

The Moorish Government have very strong grounds for complaint and for
insisting on reform and the abolition of these abuses, which are extending in such
a manner that soon all the wealthy merchants and farmers will be under foreign
protection and refuse to pay taxes. . . .
In my reply to Sid Mohammed Bargash, which I repeated both in French and
Arabic, I said that, though I had been thirty-two years British Representative and
was in charge of the interests of Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands, and
though British trade with Morocco was greater than the trade of all the other
nations put together, I did not give protection to a single Moorish subject not
actually in the service of Her Majesty’s Government, or in my personal service or
that of my subordinate officers.

The settlement of this question was one of the objects which

induced Sir John to remain at Morocco after his period of service, by
the new regulations at the Foreign Office, had expired. He writes to
his sister in the spring of 1878:—

I think I told you that I was informed by Lord Derby that my term of service—
five years in accordance with decree of Parliament about Ministers—had expired,
but that the Queen had been pleased to signify her desire that I should remain in
Morocco, and hopes I shall be pleased. . . . I only agree to remain until I have
settled the question of irregular protection.

The system of protection, as defined by treaty, was limited in its

operation. But, in practice, the system was extended beyond all
reasonable limits, and was capable of gross abuses and
irregularities. By the treaties of Great Britain and Spain with
Morocco, Moorish subjects in the service of foreign diplomatists and
consuls were exempted from taxation by the Sultan, and from the
jurisdiction of Moorish authorities. The same privileges of granting
exemptions were claimed by other Foreign Powers, and extended to
persons not in the employment of their Representatives. The results
were, that the Sultan was deprived of control over a large number of
his subjects; that many of the wealthiest traders, especially among
the Jews, were relieved from all contributions to taxation; and that
persons who were guilty of crime escaped from justice by obtaining a
place on the privileged lists of Foreign Representatives. To such an
extent was the abuse carried that, in Sir John’s opinion, the Moorish
Government was, by its prevalence, reduced to a dangerous state of
weakness. Moreover he felt that if the Foreign Powers surrendered
the privilege of protection or submitted to its careful regulation, they
would be enabled to bring the strongest pressure on the Moorish
Government to carry out much needed reforms in the administration
of the country. Unfortunately Sir John’s opinions on this question
were shared by only a portion of his colleagues, and he saw that
nothing in the matter would be finally achieved at Tangier. He hoped,
however, that a more satisfactory conclusion might be arrived at, if a
Conference could be conducted in some other country.

‘I have suggested,’ he writes to his sister in June, 1877, ‘to Lord Salisbury that
there should be no more palavering at Tangier, where some of the Representatives
have personal interests in maintaining abuses, but that a decision be come to by
the several Governments, or by a Conference at some Court, a Moorish Envoy
attending. As the fate of Morocco will greatly depend on the decision come to, and
as its position on the Straits and its produce must sooner or later bring this country
to the front, I have urged that my suggestion deserves attention.’

Sir John’s proposal was adopted, and a Conference was held at

Madrid on the subject of protection in Morocco. But the result was
not what Sir John had hoped, and he writes to his sister in June,
1880:—

There will be no use in my remaining to continue the imbroglio which the

Madrid Conference has produced.
The French policy has been je veux, and the silly Italians, who really have no
trade or interest in Morocco except to maintain its independence, backed the
French.
British and other foreign merchants claim now the same privileges as the
French, and they cannot be refused; so when each foreign resident in Morocco
appoints a rich farmer in the interior as his factor, and this man is placed beyond
the pale of the Moorish authorities and solely subject to the jurisdiction of a
mercantile consul, living often at a distance of five days’ journey, you may imagine
the rows that will take place, as these factors cannot be selected from angels, but
from erring barbarians. However, as I said to a colleague, ‘My appetite has
improved since I find my propositions have not been accepted,’ for now my
responsibility ceases, and when affairs take a disastrous turn I shall say, ‘I told you
so.’ It is sad, however, for I had advised that when the Powers conceded the just
demands of the Sultan, it would be an opportunity for requiring that he should
introduce gradually reforms in the maladministration of this country.
 In another letter he hints at a different grievance which he sought
to abate, but in this also old traditions and what may be termed
‘vested interests’ proved too strong for him and his allies:—

Lately we have had many meetings of Foreign Representatives, and I have had
to waggle my tongue, and my throat has suffered accordingly. I have some trouble,
being Doyen, and all the meetings take place at my house. We are trying to get rid
of abuses and of the system of Foreign Ministers and Consuls riding roughshod
over this wretched Government and people and compelling them to pay trumped-
up claims. The German and Belgian are my coadjutors.

The commercial condition of Morocco showed signs, however, of

improvement, and the Sultan evidently intended to take steps for
giving security to the lives and property of his subjects. But these
signs of increasing prosperity were doomed to be only the heralds of
terrible disasters, as was foreshadowed in the following letter to Sir
Joseph Hooker dated February 23, 1878:—

‘We continue,’ writes Sir John, ‘to progress like the cow’s tail, but one step has
been made in the right direction. The Sultan is forming a body of regular troops,
and our Government is aiding him by drilling squads at Gibraltar, who will act as
instructors to the “Askar” when they have been instructed and return to the Court.
With ten thousand regulars the Sultan ought to be able to bring under subjection
the wild tribes who only acknowledge him as the Chief of Islam. There would then
be better security for life and property. This I hope would lead to the development
of commerce and resources of this country, but we travel at camel’s pace—I may
add, a lame camel.
‘There has been a great lack of rain throughout Morocco. The usual fall is
between thirty and fifty inches; this winter since September only three and a-half
inches have fallen. The country is parched in the South, all the crops have failed,
and cattle are dying. In this province the crops still look green, and a little rain fell
last night, but water will be as dear as beer in England if we have not a good
downfall. We fear there will be famine in the land.’

These fears were realised, and Sir John writes to his sister that he
had suggested to the British Government that his visit to the Court in
the spring should be postponed, ‘as minds of Moorish Government
will be preoccupied and my preaching and praying would be of no
avail.’
In June he writes again:—

This country is in a very sad state. Robert[55] says the people are dying of
starvation round Mogador, and cattle and sheep by the thousands. I see no
prospect of warding off the famine, and fear that misery will prevail for many years
in the Southern districts, as there will be no cattle to till the land. Sultan is said to
be distributing grain. Wheat and other provisions are imported from England and
other foreign countries. Bread here is dearer than in England, though the crops in
this district are good. Robert has appealed to the British public through the Times
and Lord Mayor, but John Bull has doled out his sovereigns so liberally for Indians,
Chinese, Bulgarians, and Turks, that I fear there will be very little for the Moor.
We have got up subscriptions here for the Mogador poor.

The famine was followed in the autumn of 1878 by an outbreak of

disease, and in a letter, written in October on his return from leave,
he says:—

Good health at Tangier; but cholera—or, if not cholera, some dire disease—is
mowing down the population in the interior. At Dar-el-Baida, a small town with
about 6,000 population, the deaths amounted to 103 a day! but the disease is
moving South, not North. The rains and cool weather will I hope check the evil.
Great misery in the interior. There are reports that the starving people eat their
dead. This I think is an exaggeration, but they are eating the arum[56] root, which
when not properly prepared produces symptoms like cholera.

The closing of the port of Gibraltar against all articles of trade from
Morocco had produced great distress amongst the poorer classes,
and the arbitrary measures taken by the sanitary authorities at
Gibraltar and the Spanish ports served to add to the miseries of the
population of Morocco. In addition to these calamities, during Sir
John’s absence the terrors of some of the European Representatives
led to the introduction of futile and mischievous quarantine
regulations at Tangier itself, which Sir John on his return at once
combated.
 ‘There is good health in Tangier,’ he writes in October, ‘but I expect we shall
have cholera before the spring. My colleagues during my absence had run amuck
and established a cordon outside the town, stopping passengers and traffic,
fumigating skins, clapping poor folk into quarantine exposed to the night air, and
other follies. As I said to them, “Why do you introduce cordons in Morocco when
you don’t have them in other countries? It is only a source of bribery and
corruption. The rich get through and the poor starve outside. It is a measure which
only trammels traffic and promotes distress.”
‘A Spaniard, guard of a cordon at Tetuan, was killed, and there was nearly a
revolution amongst the Mohammedans at Tangier. Then an order came from the
Sultan to remove cordons, and saying Foreign Representatives were only
empowered to deal in sanitary and quarantine regulations by sea and not inland.
My colleagues (except German—Belgian is absent) were furious and said it was
all my doing, and they have been baying at me ever since like a pack of wolves, as
the cordon is taken off. The malady in the interior, whatever it is, cholera or typhus,
is on the wane, but deaths from starvation are numerous.
‘Sultan is feeding some three thousand at Marákesh. Rain has fallen in the
South, but cattle are dead or unfit to plough, and the poor have no seed. The ways
and means of the Government are coming to an end, and the little impulse lately
given to trade and civilisation will, I fear, be lost for years.’

On November 15 he writes again on the subject:—

The doctors at Tangier, Mazagan, and Mogador have now formally declared
that the prevalent disease is not cholera asiatica, but that it has a choleraic
character. The famished, weak, and poor invalids are carried off, but if a person in
comfortable circumstances is attacked, a dose of castor oil, or even oil, cures
them. This is not cholera asiatica. There have been cases they say at Tangier, but
the mortality this year is less than usual.
Gibraltar, however, continues its rigorous measures—thirty days quarantine—
and will not admit even an egg under that. I see no hope for improvement until
after next harvest. The poor must starve. These quarantines increase the misery,
for they check trade, and the poor engaged in labour connected with commerce
are in a starving state. The German Minister and I are doing what we can to relieve
about three hundred people here. Robert relieves some 2,700 daily at Mogador.
It is pouring; what a blessing! All the wells in the town are dry. I send a mile to
get water: two mules at work, and my water-supply must cost me two shillings a
day.
 Towards aiding the starving poor in the Moorish coast towns
£2,600 were raised in London, and at Tangier in December Sir John
writes:—

Last month six of the Foreign Representatives had a meeting, and we decided
on raising a subscription to aid these wretched people to return to their distant
homes. There are some four hundred. £60 was subscribed before the meeting
broke up, and then we sent it on to the Moorish authorities and the well-to-do folk
—Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans, and I believe the collection will amount to
£250. Clothes are to be supplied for the naked, provisions for the road, and with
money sufficient to exist on for a month, we send them off to their distant homes.
We take this step to free Tangier from a crowd of wretched people who have no
homes, and who sleep in the streets under arches. You can imagine the
consequences in our little town, which had become a model as far as scavenging
is concerned.

Though in the Northern provinces the famine had sensibly abated,

in the South there was still much distress, and disease was rife
among all classes. On March 5, 1879, Sir John writes to his sister
with reference to his son, then Consul at Mogador, who had already
been dangerously ill:—

Again we have been alarmed by the accounts of R. The doctor who attended
him reports that he had a brain fever, which finished off in typhus, brought on, as
doctor said, by over-anxiety and work in relieving the famished people. He was,
thank God, on the 23rd convalescent: fever had left him very weak, and he is
ordered to proceed to Tangier as soon as his strength will permit him to move. . . .
The Italian Vice-Consul at Mogador died of typhoid, the French Consul was at
death’s door. Poor Kaid Maclean is in a dangerous state at Marákesh. Several
Europeans at the ports have died of typhoid.
The atmosphere is poisoned by the famished people and bodies buried a few
inches below the surface or even left exposed.
We have sent off the poor, with aid from here, and as I happen to be President
of the Board this month, I am attending to hygienic measures, and hope thereby to
ward off the dread disease from this town.
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