Individualistic Approaches to Agency: A Critique

Abstract

In recent decades, many cultural psychologists have endorsed a very individualistic conception of agency. They regard agency as producing individual, personal acts and attitudes. According to this conception, individuals negotiate their life styles in interpersonal dialogues, or they construct their psychological “life spaces” individually, independent of even interpersonal, linguistic interactions. In neither case are broader social constraints on these constructions acknowledged. Culture is merely the sum of individual acts (Bhaskar, 1989, p. 27). This individualistic view of agency is prevalent throughout the social sciences, especially in anthropology and cultural psychology. Although this viewpoint repudiates the cultural aspects of agency discussed in Chapter 1, ironically it is presented as cultural psychology by scholars who are reputed to be cultural psychologists. This trojan horse threatens to subvert the cultural thrust of cultural psychology. I therefore feel it necessary to critique it here.