Modes of agency: how marginalised actors navigate inclusion and power

This presentation examines how marginalised actors relate to political power through different modes of agency. While much of the literature focuses on access to institutions as a marker of empowerment, this project argues that marginalised groups navigate power through distinct and coexisting forms of action. Drawing on research in post-conflict contexts across Southeast Asia, the presentation develops a three-part conceptual framework. First, conditional agency captures how actors operate within formal institutions, where participation is enabled but structured by rules, expectations, and hierarchies. Second, autonomous agency refers to actors who develop forms of survival and organization outside institutional structures, often disengaging from systems they perceive as exclusionary or unreliable. Third, subtle agency highlights indirect and culturally embedded forms of engagement, such as padungog-dungog, where actors express dissent and negotiate power without open confrontation. The presentation suggests that marginalised actors do not simply seek inclusion or resist exclusion. Instead, they move across different modes of agency depending on context, constraint, and opportunity, complicating linear assumptions about participation, empowerment, and political voice.

Speaker 

Primitivo “Prime” Ragandang is an Associate Professor at Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology in the Philippines, where he also serves as Director of the Office of Research Dissemination. His research focuses on marginalization, youth participation, and post-conflict governance, with extensive fieldwork in Mindanao and across Southeast Asia. He is the author of Peacebuilding and Transgenerational Resilience (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) and has published on peacebuilding, extremism, and community-level political dynamics.

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