Relational Interdependence Between Social and Individual Agency in Work and Working Life

TLDR

Current conceptions of learning in work life overemphasize social agency and neglect the relational, negotiated contributions of individual and social agency that shape cognition and culture. The article seeks to balance these views by advancing a conception of relational interdependence between individual and social agency in learning for work and throughout working life. It proposes that individual agency—intentionality, subjectivity, identity—shapes and is shaped by social and historical contexts, generating cognitive experience and constructing social experience, thereby enacting relational interdependence.

Abstract

A greater acknowledgment of relational interdependence between individual and social agencies is warranted within conceptions of learning throughout working life. Currently, some accounts of learning tend to overly privilege social agency in the form of situational contributions. This de-emphasises the contributions of the more widely socially sourced, relational, and negotiated contributions of both individual and social agency. As these accounts fail to fully acknowledge the accumulated outcomes of interactions between the individual and social experience that shape human cognition ontogentically and that also act to remake culture, they remain incomplete and unsatisfactory. In response, this article proposes a consideration of the role for individual agency (e.g., intentionality, subjectivity, and identity), the ways in which it is socially shaped over time and serves to be generative of individuals' cognitive experience, and its role in subsequently construing what is experienced socially. This agency also enacts a relational interdependence with social and historical contributions. Through advancing the conception of relational interdependence, this article aims to balance views that currently privilege particular social influences in conceptions of learning for work and throughout working life.