Human Agency and the Problem of Replicability in the Dynamic Neo-Structured World

Summary

Social reality is undergoing rapid transformations, giving rise to new challenges for both social theory and practice. One of these much-discussed challenges is the so-called replicability crisis, a notion that describes the failure of the social sciences and humanities to verify established research findings with new empirical investigations. In the related debates, it is argued that this “crisis” can be interpreted as a sign of the growing disconnect between, on one side, traditional perspectives on human nature and social structures that still dominate academic mainstream and, on the other side, the reality of an emerging new phase of societal evolution—neo-structuration, which emphasizes individual agency as a driver of development—in contrast to the well-known “structuration” argument by Antony Giddens, whereby human agency is seen as ontologically fused with the social structure, procuring stability of the latter rather than its transformation. Bridging the gap requires an interdisciplinary paradigm shift. This shift would involve moving away from considering human beings as changeless or predictably evolving subjects whose intentions and actions are determined both internally and externally by structures that supposedly follow a linear trajectory of “progress,” assuming the reproduction of the basic principles and forms of social interaction. Instead, in the context of intensifying neo-structuration, individual agency emerges as both an expression of the core of human nature and a catalyst for societal change, including the pressing social issues within the techno-material environment, which have radically changed in the first decades of the 21st century, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. This presents a fundamentally new challenge for the social sciences and humanities: to develop methodological approaches and theoretical models capable of systematically analyzing the human capacity for creation and transformation—not just reproduction.

Under conditions of neo-structuration, individual agency causes transformations of both social structures and the agentic subjects themselves, which makes the crisis of replicability inevitable. The crisis itself is evidence of changes in social reality and human nature as the objects of research, not only the mere sign of the imperfection of measurements. Thus, the replicability crisis relates not only to the epistemology of science but also to the ontology of its subject matter.

Most important is to give an adequate theoretical and methodological account for the so-called strong agency, capable of a significant transformative impact on social environment. A special challenge refers to understanding the power of human agency in the context of technological advancement, including the opportunities related to artificial intelligence. Distinguishing between two types of such agency is necessary: on one hand, a conditionally “free” creative individual initiative, leveraging digital infrastructures as tools for forging new communities, transforming existing behavioral patterns, practices, and so on, and, on the other hand, a sphere of a “hybrid” strong agency, partially stimulated and augmented by targeted, customized systems of artificial intelligence’s recommendations, suggestions, navigation services, consultancy, and advice. Within these intersecting realms, the foremost theoretical and practical challenges emerge—particularly regarding the reconceptualization of human agency as a pivotal driver of institutional change under the condition of neo-structuration, which puts the problem of replicability in a principally new light.