The Replicability Crisis and Human Agency in the Neo-Structured World.

Abstract

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that this "crisis" may be seen as a manifestation of the increasing inconsistency between, on the one hand, the outdated views on a human being and social structures dominating in the academic mainstream across various disciplines, including psychology and sociology, and, on the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.