Page 161 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 4

Recommended Books

Psychology and

The Question of Agency

Martin, Jack, Jeff Sugarman, Janice Thompson.
Albany: StateUniversity ofNew YorkPress, 2003.186pp.

Jack Martin is the Burnaby Mountain Endowed Pro-
fessor of Education at Simon Fraser University. He is
the coeditor of Research as Praxis: Lessons From Pro-
grammatic Research in Therapeutic Psychology, and
the author of several books.
Jeff Sugarman is Assistant Professor of Education and
Janice Thompson is Associate Dean of Education at Si-
mon Fraser University.

Recommendation by Dr. UnHye Kwon

Maum Counseling & Research, Deajeon, South Korea

The authors of Psychology and the Question of Agencys-
dividuals to be nothing more than large aggregations of
trongly contend that disciplinary psychology has failed
very small units completely determined by genetic and
to achieve a coherent conception of human agency by
environmental factors (46). Between those two extreme
wavering between two disparaging agency conceptions:
stances there are middle positions, such as compatibilism
a scientistic and reductive approach to choice and action,
or soft determinism, which I suspect is the authors’ posi-
and an instrumental approach to free will.
tion. The difficulty is obviously how personal agency can
be both determined and not determined.
First, al through reductionism in psychology, human
agency has been overly simplified, generalized, and ta-
Thus, the criticism of a natural science conception of hu-
med. It is falsely identified with the physical, biological
man agency points toward a postformal resolution that
requirement and ignored sociocultural constitution and
“human agency can arise from both biology and culture,
agentic character (24). In other words, human experi-
without being reducible to any combination of biologi-
ence andaction --whichrequire brains,biological bodies,
cal and cultural determinants. Also, humans can be both
and behavior--are simply identical to cerebral activity,
determined and free, and not merely in the sense of de-
biological processes and functions, or bodily movements.
monstrating voluntariness in their activities” (pp. 2-3).
This criticism of biological reductionism in psychology,
however, does not defend on the other extreme either,
Although this book is not written from the Christian
which reduces human agency too radically and irretrie-
perspective, the authors share several valuable under-
vably to its sociocultural and historical origins (43). Like
standings about human agency with Christianity, which
biological reductionism this anti-scientism and anti-
make it different from other secular natural-science the-
foundationalism also place insufficient importance on
ories. In major psychological disciplines, human agency
meanings of life and moral significance, too.
has been commonly understood as the human capacity
to choose and act in ways that are fully determined by the
Second, the question of human agency is addressed bet-
agent’s own self-determination, because human beings
ween determinism and human freedom. One end of the-
are ‘autonomous’ beings.
se positions, libertarianism, espouses the human sense of
Against this conception, the authors recognize that hu-
self as a person who makes his or her own way in life
man beings are not self-reliant in choosing and acting.
through exercising capacities for freedom of choice and
History, culture, and society also are required as well;
action. The other end, hard determinism, perceives in-
161
1 6 1