We are all familiar with “agency” as a concrete noun. We have the Child Support Agency, and the Environment Agency, and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. But increasingly you hear “agency” used as an abstraction, meaning something like personal power; it is the opposite of passivity.Among those told they need “agency” are the disabled, the unemployed and the poor (not to mention those who are all three). They must make themselves the subject of every sentence, rather than the object. They must become the protag­onists of their own story, rather than bit players. It is good for them, like it or not. The word comes from the Latin agere, to act, via agentia, meaning action or activity. “Agency”, meaning “the process of acting a