Developing aspirations through social assemblages: towards a conceptual model

The theorisation of aspirations development described in this working paper has been shaped in the AHRC Fellowship Connect2Aspire. The original perspective that this study brings comes from interpreting aspirations in an ontological and epistemological framework drawing on assemblage theory, as expounded by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and most recently Manuel DeLanda. Assemblage theory lends important insights for interpreting the formation of aspirations, including: the formation of identity; the relation between being in certain assemblages and competence building; how agency is distributed in an assemblage; and how aspirations are built by interacting with different assemblages, under certain conditions.