Many of the approaches considered thus far – processualism, structuralism, Marxism – lack adequate consideration of the agent. This lacuna was filled in part by the discussion of agency in the concluding section of the previous chapter. Nevertheless, a close reading of that section shows that in our presentation of different forms of agency, we never paid close attention to the nature of the agent that exercises (or is exercised by) agency. We were careful not to presume that the agent is always an individual in a Western sense and we argued for the cultural and historical malleability of ‘the person’, but we have yet to consider what might be dangerous about the term ‘individual’ or what justification we might have in claiming that the ‘person’ and its close relatives the ‘self’ and the ‘subject’ are so malleable.

To explore the nature of the agent, however, is not simply to add the finishing touches to an account of agency or structuration. In archaeology, theories of practice contain flaws that no amount of tinkering or refinement will eliminate. In other words, practice does not make perfect. Both Giddens and Bourdieu have increasingly come under attack in the social sciences (e.g. Turner 1994), the main criticism being that they do not in the end provide an adequate theory of the subject and of agency.