I
Let me state my conclusion right here: In the policy and management world with which I am familiar and from which I generalize, human agency is the only global counternarrative I have come across.
Because human agency is constrained differently at different times in different places under different conditions, it has a much more important function than one of being universalized like the human rights narrative.
The differences in context and function are obvious the second anyone defines human agency. Here is my definition (not an uncommon one): “an individual’s capacity to determine and make meaning from their environment through purposive consciousness and reflective and creative action“. Mine accents the reflexivity; your definition on the other hand might stress self-determination, imposition of the one’s will on the environment, or some such. That said, I suspect similar or parallel points, to which we now turn, would be observed in applications of your definition(s) as well.
II
So that we are on the same page, here are two examples of human agency that illustrate how I am defining human agency, one from a case study of migration and the other from case studies of child labor:
Specifically, the current mainstream narrative is one that looks at these people as passive components of large-scale flows, driven by conflicts, migration policies and human smuggling. Even when the personal dimension is brought to the fore, it tends to be in order to depict migrants as victims at the receiving end of external forces. Whilst there is no denying that most of those crossing the Mediterranean experience violence, exploitation and are often deprived of their freedom for considerable periods of time (Albahari, 2015; D’Angelo, 2018a), it is also important to recognize and analyse their agency as individuals, as well as the complex sets of local and transnational networks that they own, develop and use before, during and after travelling to Europe.
Schapendonk, J. (2021). “Counter moves. Destabilizing the grand narrative of onward migration and secondary movements in Europe.” International Migration: 1 – 14 DOI:10.1111/imig.12923
First, as the data [from three countries] have demonstrated, labor, and the need for children to work, is the predominant lens through which young people and the adults that surround them conceptualize children’s engagement with gangs and organized crime. This was in contrast to the other standpoints that permeate discourse. Labeling the children as gang members is a poor reflection of their drivers of involvement in crime and is likely to stigmatize children engaged in a plight to ensure their own survival. Alternatively, the young people were not child soldiers nor were they victims or perpetrators of trafficking or slavery. A victim lens is also problematic in this context. The relationship between young people and organized crime is complex and multifaceted. Young people are victims of acute marginalization, poverty and violence but they do have some agency over their decision making. The data from all studies illustrated how gangs offer young people ways to earn an income but they also provide social mobility, ‘social protection’ (Atkinson- Sheppard, 2017) and ‘street capital.’ In some instances, criminal groups offer young people ways to earn ‘quick and easy money.’ Thus, the young people are not devoid of agency, but their decision making should be considered within the context of restricted and bounded lives.
Atkinson-Sheppard, S. (2022). “A ‘Lens of Labor’: Re‐Conceptualizing young people’s involvement in organized crime.” Critical Criminology https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09674-5
III
With those specific examples in mind, let’s first turn to four positions often taken with respect to “human agency.”
There are those who think human agency is among core precepts around which to design large-scale systems involving humans, individually or collectively. Others are more apt to focus on the individual or micro-level, where here the agent acts. Whether at the macro- or micro-levels, contestation abounds over the term, human agency, if only because of different optics on the micro from psychology, phenomenology, law, microeconomics, and more.
There are, however, two other levels and units of analysis, which are the ones I want to focus on with respect to human agency as the global counternarrative.
Far less mentioned than the micro and the macro are really-existing better practices for realizing human agency–in your or my definitions–that have evolved over widely different cases. Then there are the cases where macro-precepts are modified over widely different contingency scenarios that also vary locally. In both of cases, human agency is better understood as an insistent counternarrative for moving away from the current dominant micro and macro-level narratives of human action
IV
In this view, overarching claims that human agency, in theory or as a right, govern all cases is a non-starter for actually-existing patterns and contingency scenarios in policy and management.
One thinks of rush to judgment in macro-labeling election results and protest numbers as “populist” as long as the behavior fits into schema like alt-right, left, authoritarian, or nationalist populism. From the perspective presented here, this is a rush to judgment when the criteria for this first-cut differentiation in populism pre-exist the analysis offered. How so?
In the cases of pattern recognition or local contingency scenarios, however, the features and evaluative criteria instead emerge from the political complexities of elections, protests and agency dominating the cases at hand. Human agency as a counternarrative emerges from the cases; it is not an a priori position from which to assert macro principles or micro experience.
V
More, human agency in this way becomes sufficiently granular to be actionable when applied and modified to the next case at hand. Though there are no guarantees, this is an incredibly important point of policy and management relevance.
The limitation of staying at the macro and/or micro positions, e.g., “human rights apply uniformly to every single individual on this planet,” is that these positions on their own degranularize the conditions for taking action between whole system and single person. Think here of those who want to believe that the rest of us are stirred to action by their claims that the climate emergency creates atrocities or extractive capitalism is genocide, as if perpetrator intentionality and the very real distinctions between perpetrators and victims no longer matter for taking action case by case.
When it comes to policy and management, what is human agency if it is only decontextualized?
Other sources
Lemaire, G. (2025). “Fossil Modernity and Climate Atrocity.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12: 688 (accessed online at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-04883-z)
Montesinos Coleman, L; H. M. Martínez; & L. Wise (2025): “Reparation for Extractivist Genocide: harm, responsibility and implications for a just transition.” The International Journal of Human Rights (accessed online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642987.2025.2519583)
For the importance of systemwide pattern recognition and localized scenario formulation to actionable granularity, see https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2024/12/09/actionable-granularity-what-is-it-why-does-it-matter-what-to-do-about-it/
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 