Life seems to be getting ever more complicated, leaving the individual person powerless.

(At the same time, e.g. ICT - information and communication technologies - are said to make the individual more powerful than ever before...)

Culture, anyways, has commonly been considered to be a superstructure, imposed on people, removed from social - and certainly, individual - influences on it.

The concept of agency draws attention to the fact that human life, including culture, is shaped by individual persons' action. And human beings do not just act, but (can) reflect on their actions.
Furthermore, we need a sense of control - also: agency - in our lives.

In keeping with my focus on sustainability, a particular interest is on how people not only reproduce culture through their action, but act out, "play with" and change - "perform" - culture and its change.

Two themes are (at present) at the center of my interest:

• Sports
  On the one hand, sports can be near-solipsistic: The participant is mainly interested in his/her performance and the value to gain from doing sports. But even that may be pointing to the connection with the world - in breathing, listening to the heartbeat, fueling up.
  Outdoor sports provide further connection to the environment - moving in the place the participant lives in, getting to know it more deeply, seeing changes with the seasons...
• Cultures of Sustainability
  The idea of a "performance" of culture change is also at the center of this research project of mine.