This paper examines the project of cultural psychology proposed by Aaro Toomela in his recent paper (2025) through the prism of current discussions in sociology, primarily the theory of neo-structuration. This theory claims the increasing dependence of the transformation and the very survival of institutions and communities upon human agency, which is principally not determined by social environment. Toomela is right and timely in his critique of the mainstream and his call for a structural-systemic approach to psyche and culture, relying upon the ideas of Vygotsky, Luria and Anokhin, including the idea of a possible transformative stance of the individual towards the surrounding world. However, more attention should be paid to the most recent changes in socio-technical environment, primarily those brought about by the Artificial Intelligence, which entails both risks and opportunities by increasing the transformative power of human agency and becoming a producer and disseminator of cultural (or quasi-cultural) content. Considering this, we, first, suggest refinements to the definitions of "culture" and "psyche", proposed by Toomela, and, second, offer preliminary answers to the three basic questions that Toomela puts forward in his paper (2025): (1) What is the whole? (2) What are the parts or elements of the whole? (3) In which particular relationships these parts are? We argue that human agency, enhanced by novel technological tools and understood as a capacity to generate not only linguistic signs but new communities and modes of action - is an important theme for cultural psychology from both theoretical and practical points of view.

We comment on Aaro Toomela’s article Toomela Quo Vadis, (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 59:75, (2025), in which the author proposes using Piotr Anokhin’s model of self-regulating system as a general theoretical basis for the development of cultural psychology. In light of self-regulating systems theory living systems, and social objects appear capable of maintaining homeostasis through accommodation in the context of environmental changes thanks to the predictability of environmental changes for the system. As scientific knowledge advances, great ideas formulated in the past reveal their potential for new interpretations and applications. We agree with Toomela about the relevance and potential of Anokhin’s theory for actual development of cultural psychology. However, we assert the necessity along with implying the ideas of self-regulation, to introduce fundamentally different theoretical models, due to the insufficiency of homeostatic models for challenges of the contemporaneity. We argue that the world as a whole, and, first and foremost, humans and human culture, are currently undergoing significant unpredictable changes that go beyond the logics of homeostasis. Comprehending this complex reality requires enhancing the conceptual toolbox of cultural psychology with a different kind of theoretical models — those representing self-developing systems capable of changing their self-regulatory principles over the life course. The idea of ​​this type of development is not new. It echoed in Hegel’s “interruption of gradualness” and in Kierkegaard’s “leap”. It echoes in the works of Vygotsky and Rubinstein. However, to date these ideas have not been operationalized and remain only beacons of future paths for cultural psychology. The difficulties of developing theoretical models of this kind and their relevance to the practical challenges of contemporary development are discussed.

Статья посвящена изучению проявлений и способов поддержки агентного поведения как фактора успеха современных корпораций в условиях неоструктурации, то есть новой фазы социетальной эволюции, которая предполагает изменение отношений между инициативным человеческим действием и социальной структурой. Индивидуальное действие становится не просто механизмом развития корпоративных структур в заданной ими логике, но «каркасом», обеспечивающим их выживание как динамических образований в слабо предсказуемой среде. В условиях кризисных тенденций в экономике определение перспективных форм поддержки агентности в корпоративном секторе и их классификация становятся важной теоретической и практической задачей, для решения которой авторы статьи обращаются к обзору российской и международной научной и практической литературы, охватывающей более 350 источников, опубликованных не ранее 2015 г. Обнаружено, что агентность высоко разнообразна по формам и источникам, в частности, она может реализовываться как в индивидуально-автономных, так и в командных формах, а также может генерироваться не только во внутренней, но и во внешней среде организации, включая потребителей или пользователей. Кроме того, агентность различается по силе и масштабам эффектов: она может оказывать более или менее выраженное трансформирующее влияние на организационную среду. Отдельно рассматриваются так называемые самоорганизованные рабочие команды как пример «полей агентности» ― нового типа структур в корпоративном контексте, сформированных на базе индивидуальной агентности и усиливающих ее эффекты. Кроме этого, авторы анализируют формы проявления и эффекты индивидуальной агентности в контексте платформенной занятости и корпоративный краудсорсинг, значение которых повышается в условиях снижения жесткости границ не только внутри компании, но и между внутренней и внешней средой организации. Благодарность. Исследование выполнено за счет гранта Российского научного фонда № 23-78-10182.

The concept of human agency has attracted considerable interest in academic and expert discussions concerning various life domains and age groups, including adolescents. However, the field lacks a unified approach to measuring agency for adolescents and understanding its relationship with their behavioral characteristics and attitudes. This study addresses these gaps by introducing an Adolescent Agency Index and examining its associations with behavioral characteristics such as сonformity, problematic behavior, and the need for cognition. The data was collected from students in grades 4 to 8 (N = 4,603; Mage = 12.6, SD = 1.7; 50.3% female). The analyses indicated a negative relationship between agency and conformity and a positive relationship between agency and problematic behavior; moreover, a stronger positive relationship was found with the need for cognition. At the same time, the nature of the relationship between agency and these characteristics is complex, non-linear. These findings provide valuable insights for educational policymakers, researchers, and families.

The paper analyzes current discussions concerning the so called "replicability crisis" - a notion describing difficulties in attempts to confirm existing research findings by their additional scrutiny or by new empirical studies. We propose interpretation that this "crisis" may be seen as a manifestation of the increasing inconsistency between, on the one hand, the outdated views on a human being and social structures dominating in the academic mainstream across various disciplines, including psychology and sociology, and, on the other hand, the reality of the emerging new stage of societal evolution, neo-structuration, which brings to the forefront individual agency. Our analysis suggests the possibilities for the future inter-disciplinary paradigmatic shift, which implies putting in the center of research not the idea of a constant or predictably developing individual in the context of solid external structures operating in line with a presumably sustainable "progress". Instead, under increasing neo-structuration, individual agency becomes, simultaneously, a manifestation of the essence of human nature (as cultural psychology argues) and the driving force for societal transformations, including solving most acute social problems, in the concrete historical period. It means a fundamentally new task for social sciences and humanities: to elaborate methodological solutions and theoretical frameworks to systematically comprehend the contextually conditioned human ability to create and transform - and not only to reproduce. Addressing more attention to agency manifestations in digital environment and, in particular, to those congruent to social activism or volunteering, seems especially fruitful for comprehending human activity in the neo-structurated world.

“Agency” or active transformative behavior of individuals in relation to the social world remains one of the central concepts of discussion and research for both the social and the political sciences, and for practice in the field of education, economics, culture, and social policy. The current state of societal processes, de-structuration, makes individual agency especially important for both individual and collective well-being. The contribution of art to understanding and promoting agency remains little known in the scholarly world. The purpose of this research is to study the vision of agency issues by representatives of the contemporary European artistic process in the context of social and cultural trends relevant to Europe and to compare this vision with interpretations in other spheres of public life. The authors try to show how initiatives aimed at developing agency originate in the institutional and noninstitutional art fields in Europe; how they manifest themselves and with what effects. The article puts forward a typology of agency in the contemporary cultural process: 1) social transformation; 2) escapism; 3) crisis adaptation; 4) transformation of actor; quantitative characteristics and concrete examples for each type are provided. Particular attention is paid to the concrete forms of agency that the field of art generates, and how discovered cases reflect broader processes in the social life of Europe.

This article investigates the relationships between strategies of parental involvement in education and manifestations of children’s agency during the pandemic seen as a potentially harmful and stressful context, requiring agency for sustaining well-being to a greater extent than before COVID-19. Data for the study were obtained through an online survey of students engaged in extracurricular activities, about the transition to distance learning and self-isolation during the pandemic. To elucidate the understanding of differences among respondents regarding changes in their interaction with parents, latent profile analysis was applied. It was found that joint activity between children and parents can be associated with the formation of a special type of agency, which is called ‘cooperative agency’, while parents providing children with freedom and facilitating support are associated with other behavioral characteristics of the child, i.e., ‘autonomous agency’. At the same time, the absence of interaction with parents, as well as parents’ display of strict control, do not contribute to successful adaptation to crisis conditions.

In the context of various global crises following one another, transformational transitions of major socioeconomic systems to new development models are becoming a frontier of scientific discussions. There is growing need for actors capable of efficiently managing such comprehensive radical transformations focused on innovation. Building up human agency of the transformational type (TA) has always been a very relevant issue, but the demand for this competence has dramatically increased in today’s highly turbulent, variable, and unstable world against the background of the increased adoption of the inherently complex Industry 4.0. and 5.0 development models, and the exhausted potential of management tools which have been effectively applied in previous, relatively stable contexts. This paper explores the possibilities for developing and scaling up TA and proposes approaches to working with this complex and elusive phenomenon to facilitate successful development. On the basis of various concepts (including a personally developed one) and case studies, the author opens up the TA “black box”, bringing clarity to the process of the proper development of rare, transformational abilities. The conclusions reveal the sources of management systems’ renewal potential, which will help organizations successfully adapt to the increasingly complex flow of change.

В последние годы понятие индивидуальной агентности занимает центральное место в социальных науках и все чаще обсуждается в контексте практик государственной политики. В условиях ослабления социальных структур и быстрых технологических и экономических изменений возрастает значение самостоятельных действий человека: умения выстраивать собственное развитие и участвовать в совершенствовании институциальной среды. Агентность становится не только характеристикой личности, но и предметом институциального интереса со стороны государства, бизнеса и гражданского общества. Цель статьи — проанализировать, каким образом формируется и поддерживается «запрос на агентность» и какие институциальные формы служат ответом на этот запрос. На основе анализа международных академических и экспертных источников, а также программных документов международных организаций выделены три ключевые сферы институциализации агентности: образование, экономика и социальная сплоченность. В образовании агентность рассматривается одновременно как цель (один из ключевых образовательных результатов) и как инструмент подготовки индивида к жизни в условиях неопределенности. Усиливается внимание к самообразованию, индивидуальным образовательным траекториям и неформальному обучению, а цифровые платформы расширяют автономию обучающихся. В экономике агентность становится ресурсом инноваций и гибкости, но сопровождается рисками индивидуализации ответственности и нестабильности труда, особенно в условиях платформенной занятости. В сфере социальной сплоченности агентность проявляется в коллективных формах действия — от социальных предприятий и локальных инициатив до международных проектов, направленных на укрепление доверия и развитие межкультурного диалога в условиях растущего разнообразия. Полученные результаты показывают, что развитие агентности становится важной частью современной социальной политики. Поддерживая самостоятельность и ответственность, эти меры одновременно перекладывают риски на индивида. Однако это противоречие лишь внешнее: в современном обществе индивидуальная инициатива все чаще служит источником коллективного развития и общественного благополучия.

In recent years, the concept of individual agency has occupied a central place in the social sciences and is increasingly being discussed in the context of public policy practices. In conditions of weakening social structures and accelerating technological and economic change, the importance of a person's ability to act independently increases. This includes not only the proactive formation of their own development trajectory, but also participation in the improvement of the institutional environment. Agency becomes a characteristic not only of personality, but also of institutional interest on the part of the state, businesses, and civil society. This article aims to analyze how the 'request for human agency' is formed and maintained, and the institutional forms that respond to this request. Based on an analysis of international academic and expert sources, as well as policy documents from international organizations, three key areas of agency institutionalization have been identified: education, economics, and social cohesion. In education, agency is considered both a key educational outcome and a tool for preparing individuals for life in conditions of uncertainty. Self-education, individual educational trajectories and informal learning are receiving increasing attention, and digital platforms are becoming a means of expanding students' autonomy. In economic activity, agency acts as a resource for innovation and flexibility; however, it also carries risks such as the individualization of responsibility and job instability, particularly in platform employment. In the context of social cohesion, agency is evident in collective forms of action, ranging from social enterprises and local initiatives to international and national projects that promote intercultural dialogue and cultivate trust between different groups in an era of increasing diversity. The results show that the development of agency is becoming an integral component of contemporary social policy. While supporting individual independence and responsibility, the measures under consideration also shift risks onto the individual. However, this is only an apparent contradiction: in conditions of neo-structuration, individual creative action becomes the foundation of both personal and collective well-being.

The article is devoted to the study of the types, features, conditions and factors of proactive behavior (agency) of children engaged in various practices of the NTI-Club Movement of Russia. The empirical basis for qualitative sociological analysis was the materials (transcripts) of 53 interviews conducted with schoolchildren participating in the NTI-Club Movement from 2019 to 2022. It is shown that the majority of respondents manifest different levels and forms of agency, including "autonomous", when the subject becomes the initiator of proactive action and "cooperative", manifested in the form of searching and joining a team of like-minded people, or creating organized teams and groups. The main factors contributing to the formation of proactive behavior are the favorable educational environment, the support of the immediate environment, primarily family and parents, as well as classmates, friends and teammates. An important role is that of a mentor, a professional in his field, which consists in introducing the child to certain resources where he/her can independently search for information, inspire and motivate the child. It was important to reveal the detached parental position, which leads to two possible variants of the child's development: either unwillingness to do anything, or development and implementation despite the lack of parental support. The main external barriers hindering the implementation of agency are the school, which puts forward formal educational requirements, as well as the strictly controlling, limiting position of parents. Internal barriers are lack of motivation, uncertainty and fear of the future, as well as the need to overcome one's own inertia. The important fixation of the interview was the idea about two basic motives for the development of proactive behavior (agency). One is a focus on personal well-being, and the other is a public good, which as a rule do not contradict each other, can complement each other, be implemented jointly.

Human agency, implying, from sociology’s perspective, proactive or even transformative individual behaviour upon the social world (or “social structures” as sociologists call them), remains one of the central concepts and problems for both social science and practice. Current stage of societal evolution, de-structuration, makes individual agency especially important for both individual and collective well-being. In this context, the contribution of contemporary art (2018–2022) to agency issues remains little known in the academic world. The objective of this paper is to examine how contemporary art representatives (artists, curators, and experts) express the issue of agency through their artworks, and to compare this viewpoint with the interpretations from other areas of public life. The focus is on those aspects, ideas, and meanings related to agency that are accessible to a broad audience and can be applied to phenomena outside the realm of art but remain overlooked or underdeveloped in current academic discussions on agency. The authors analyse initiatives in both institutional and non-institutional art on a global scale, and explore their manifestations and impact in comprehending and advancing agency. Finally, this article proposes a typology of agency manifestations in contemporary art: (1) straightforward (strong, radical, protest) agency; (2) escapism; (3) panic agency; (4) subject-object carnivalism.

Формирование человека, способного в различных сферах жизни действовать эффективно, ставить цели и их достигать, находясь в гармонии с окружающими и способствуя общественному благополучию, – один из ключевых приоритетов социального, экономического и культурного развития России в условиях современных вызовов. В стратегических документах Российской Федерации уже поставлена цель создания условий для формирования гармонично развитой и социально ответственной личности. В настоящем докладе изложены девять ключевых тезисов, раскрывающих теоретико-методологические основания понятия гармонично развитой и социально ответственной личности, основы которого были заложены еще в конце XVIII – начале XIX века, в момент перехода от традиционного к современному типу общества. Авторами очерчены базовые контуры этого явления на данном этапе его осмысления с учетом внешних и внутренних вызовов для развития России и на базе принципов личностной автономии (самостоятельности), этичности, гражданственности и универсализма.

The article looks at the two dimensions of skills, namely skills that entrepreneurs need and skills that can be obtained as a result of entrepreneurship education. The authors consider skills using two approaches: the Human Capital theory including the distinction between general and specific capital, and the typology by Dobryakova and Froumin which involves the distinction of three types: competence of thinking, competence of interaction with other people, and competence of interaction with oneself. The empirical material is based on a unique sample of respondents who have both entrepreneurial experience and experience in entrepreneurship education in one of the programs in Russia. The empirical base of the study consists of 82 semi-structured interviews with respondents from 9 educational initiatives aimed at entrepreneurship education. The data was collected using the method of semi-structured interviews. The authors have identified a gap between the skills that entrepreneurs need and the skills acquired in entrepreneurship education programs. Respondents have a more pronounced demand for general human capital, while their experience in education was focused primarily on the development of specific capital. Respondents have a request for general skills, for example, for competence in interacting with themselves (self-regulation skills, self-control), but they are taught more specific skills: accounting skills, programming skills, the skill of building/describing a business model. The results indicate the need for significant improvement of entrepreneurship education programs in order to more fully take into account the practical demand for skills.

The article discusses how Russian youth search for resilience strategies, opportunities for decision-making and meaningful participation in times of uncertainty. Being in a high-risk political climate, young Russians turn to prefiguration: they embody the alternatives to the existing regime of neoliberal governmentality via organizing or engaging in grassroots activist initiatives. Based on the analysis of in-depth interviews with young St. Petersburg residents in 2022 and 2023, we show how they define their civil positions in the presence and how they mark their (non)adulthood. We demonstrate that involvement in prefiguration via informal grassroots youth organizations is an important condition for the formation of the youth’s civic consciousness.

Insufficient understanding of the driving forces and mechanisms of proactive human influence on the social environment has recently been discussed as one of the key problems for fundamental science and practical politics. One of the key concepts in scientific discussions is agency. The field of art, as both a medium of manifestation and a factor in the formation of agency, receives limited attention, despite the fact that historically it occupies an important place in the developments on the problems of structural dynamics (for example, in the works of P. Bourdieu, B. Latour). Based on theoretical analysis, a review of discussions in the field of contemporary art, as well as on the basis of five interviews with contemporary artists, this article puts forward and substantiates the hypothesis about the existence of "fields of agency" as a special type of social formations, resulting not so much from change or development through individual action of existing structures, but from the direct creation of new practices of action and communities, which in turn change the wider environment. This hypothesis is considered as a development of the concept of strategic action fields by N. Fligsteen and D. McAdam, as well as a clarification of the neostructuration concept (de-structuration) previously put forward by one of the authors of this article. The authors conclude that the formation of fields of agency may be an important mechanism through which individual action can transform the social world and which has not been sufficiently studied in contemporary social theory.

An increasing number of cases have revealed that previously stable systems have shown attitudes towards unstable ones, not only generating risks, but also showing opportunities for manifestation in the manifestation of new communities and manifestations of action. There is a growing demand for agency, as an independent existence of the totality. In order to determine how adequately the institution responds to this demand today (and may be likely in the future) of the key human development, the formal education system, it is important to take into account key educational theories that take into account the logic of the development of an initiative in the field of education. This article provides a review and analysis of the capture and recognized classical educational theories (learning theory) of behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism regarding their opposites for solving the problems of developing abilities for independent creative action (agency). The outcomes that are most relevant to the development of agency are constructivist theory, in which the learner is given an active role in the exploration of outcomes. But this theory also has significant requirements, since the focus is on learning cognitive abilities - knowledge and feelings that reproduce the flesh of the flesh given from the outside, and not the ability to develop an independent creative action that maintains and improves the social world (including the creation of communities or institutions). The authors attempted to formulate possible grounds for a new educational theory - neo-construction, which emphasizes the ability for independent creative action as a key educational result, and also takes into account a number of achievements of cognitivism and behaviorism, which are influenced by the interpretations of constructivism.

The study aims to empirically demonstrate and conceptually interpret the manifestations of an emerging approach to the issues of human capital, its measurement and development on the international academic, expert, and corporate agenda. We document a gradual shift from a focus on individual skills, their measurement and development, to an approach that considers the complexity of human capital and emphasizes holistic individual activity and the proactive role of the individual in his/her human development and in transforming the corporate environment. The authors show that the formation of this novel approach can be associated with new trends in socioeconomic development, including the growing share of non -routine jobs, the transformation of work formats and broader processes of de -structuration, which require a proactive role of the individual in the maintenance and development of social structures, including business organizations. The study has shown that the formation of this new approach occurs gradually and simultaneously at the global level on the academic, expert, and corporate agendas, but with varying degrees of intensity and with different focuses. At the same time, it is the corporate agenda that can be regarded as a frontier. This study is based on a content analysis of academic publications, expert reports of international organizations and think tanks, as well as public reports and documents of the world's leading innovative companies. The research employs the Big Data intelligence system iFORA.

The task of developing individual "agency" (autonomy, proactivity, initiative, etc.), in education is widely discussed in scientific and practical circles. To systematize multi-disciplinary research elaborations in the field of "agency" as an umbrella concept, an analysis was carried out using keywords in the main scientific database Scopus. The analysis includes both publications that directly use the concept, and works using other close terms (resistance, autonomy, initiative, etc.). In addition, a sample of scientific publications of researchers, most authoritative in the field of practical educational policy was separately considered. The systematization of the key concepts and constructs was based on four main criteria: 1) the distinction between “agentic” action and intention/perspective, 2) the scale of the action, 3) the strategic/non-strategic nature of the intention/perspective, 4) the universal/local applicability of the concept or construct. The analysis showed a dominating focus on the "agentic perspective" in the discovered works, as well as a focus on micro-level and local manifestations and effects of “agentic” behavior or plans. From the point of view of empirical indicators of "agency" and related concepts, necessity for operationalization of the action-based and "strategic" manifestations of agency are revealed, which raises the question of the fundamental adequacy of the current approaches to measuring a human being dominating in contemporary mainstream of social sciences.