Person, Actor, Subject, Individual

Thinking Empirical Actors from and within Social Theory

Abstract

This issue of Cuadernos de Teoría Social examines the uses of four key categories for understanding social agency: person, actor, subject, and individual. Rather than treating them as interchangeable or as mere matters of terminology, the contributions gathered here interrogate their genealogies, normative assumptions, and analytical consequences. The dossier thus shifts attention from the presumed attributes of the actor to the social, institutional, material, and relational conditions that make their constitution, continuity, and recognition possible. Organized around four central problems —how to name, what sustains a trajectory, how the relationship with the world changes, and who is admitted as an actor— the issue brings different traditions of social theory into dialogue with research situated in Latin American contexts. Taken together, the articles and reviews show that every conceptual choice enables particular forms of observation while also setting limits on what can be thought, explained, and recognized.