What is a useful notion of agency, after all?

TSElosophers meeting on 11 December 2025

Participants: Samu Kantola, Anniina Kinnunen, Kari Lukka, Ari Nieminen, Behnam Pourahmadi, Nicolas Balcom Raleigh, Mia Salo, Marja Turunen, Milla Unkila

Reading

Schatzki, T.R. (2025) Agency. Information and Organization, 35 (2025). 

Summary

Schatzki (2025) offers an essay-style commentary that intervenes in the broad contemporary debate between humanism and posthumanism, where the concept of agency plays a central role. At its core, Schatzki defends three key ideas, each of which challenges influential positions proposed by posthumanist and sociomaterial theorists such as Latour and Barad.

First, Schatzki maintains that although the notion of agency has been expanded in recent decades to refer to virtually any effective ‘doing’ by any entity – human or non-human – we should not overlook that its richest form, intentional agency, remains uniquely and centrally human. Second, while agency often unfolds within ‘nexuses’, understood as constellations formed by human and non-human entities, and while these nexuses can themselves produce effects as emergent entities, human agency frequently plays a distinctive role within them – one that should not be downplayed. Third, relatedly, although various entities tend to operate in an entangled manner within such nexuses, these nexuses should still be understood as aggregations of the distinct agencies or doings of the entities and events that compose them. For Schatzki, the sociomaterialist claim that the boundaries between entities within a nexus can be erased is therefore problematic. In this sense, Schatzki represents a familiar form of realism: Neither entities nor relations should be given ontological primacy; both matter.

Discussion

The TSElosophers’ discussion of the text was unusually vivid, energetic, and wide-ranging. Although the essay consisted of only nine pages, all participants found it challenging to read and grasp, and this difficulty likely contributed to the breadth of the discussion. Interestingly, the complex sentence structures were also considered a blessing in disguise – it was impossible to just skim through this paper; one really needed to focus and dive deeply into the argument.

For simplicity, the conversation can be grouped into three broad positions.

1. Those appreciated Schatzki’s core ideas but were somewhat disappointed that he did not express them more directly or clearly.
2. Those who supported the recent broadening of the notion of agency.
3. Those who focused on particular concepts or passages and wished that Schatzki had clarified them more thoroughly, elaborated certain notions further, or presented them in a more structured way.

Members of the third group suggested, for example, that Schatzki’s list of agency-related concepts could have been presented in a comparative table to help readers better digest the argument. The choice of the term ‘nexus’ also drew attention: How would it function in relation to general systems theory? One participant additionally wondered whether Schatzki conceives of causality too broadly, and how well intentional action fits within such a conception.

Those in the second group defended Barad’s approach to sociomateriality, arguing that, given the scale and severity of current global challenges, it is helpful to place humans and non-humans on an equal footing. Doing so could also serve as an interface between Western scientific approaches and diverse knowledge systems of Indigenous people, most of which already emphasize a relational perspective. Another participant supported this view, suggesting that Schatzki may be overly Aristotelian in insisting on the unique status of human agency. In addition, one TSElosopher pointed out that even if one rejects the strong form of enlarged agency, it might be useful to treat human agency in more relative terms than traditional humanism does. In humanism, the speciality of human agency is simply taken for granted but not empirically tested, which limits the scope of research. For instance, recent biological studies on animal behaviour have revealed that diverse species have behavioural patterns that are more human-like than previously assumed.

It was also noted that one of the reasons the article triggered vivid discussion was the fact that it touches directly on one of the fundamental philosophical questions: Are humans qualitatively unique (in whichever way defined) or ultimately just compilations of biological, physical, and chemical components as perceived in the more reductionist and natural scientific approaches? The TSElosophers were reminded of Dilthey’s old view, where he distinguished between natural sciences as studying the “causal nexus of nature” and social sciences studying the “productive nexus of history” – a view highlighting exactly this same ontological quandary.

The first-mentioned group found Schatzki’s three key claims compelling and appreciated his critical stance toward Latour, Barad, and others advancing posthumanism or strong sociomateriality – especially their claims that human and non-human agency are fundamentally equivalent, that relations should be the ontological starting point, and that separate entities (including humans) can effectively be erased within nexuses. Their main criticism concerned Schatzki’s overly diplomatic tone: He seemed to be kind of both agreeing and disagreeing at the same time, possibly with the intention of trying to balance various views. Such diplomacy, however, dissolved some of the important edge from the essay. In particular, Schatzki could have more explicitly restricted the notion of agency to those capable of exercising it in its richest form (in practice, humans), treating all other causal ‘doings’ simply as effects. Returning to such a pre-posthumanist position would likely be acceptable to most scholars – except for posthumanists themselves – and, importantly, this seems to be the core idea Schatzki is actually developing in the essay. Such a position could have been more forcefully supported by foregrounding the ethical dimension of responsibility: Only those capable of intentional agency can meaningfully be held responsible for the consequences of their actions. For non-humans, such ethical responsibility does not appear to be a concept that fits.

The insistence of the first-mentioned group of TSElosophers relates to a broader concern: We should not assume that expanding the meaning of well-established concepts necessarily enhances their usefulness – quite the contrary. When a concept encompasses too much, it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint the phenomenon (signified) a label (signifier) points to, which may even render the concept ultimately meaningless. In the case of agency, it can be asked that if, in its widest form, it is understood as doing and effecting of any kind, why should we use agency if doing or effecting would suffice? The widespread broadening of the notion of agency over the past decades can arguably be traced back to an unfortunate ball set rolling by Latour in his early ANT writings. As Schatzki notes, Latour’s move was, at least in part, political, serving certain purposes in Latour’s theorising at the time. Yet today, the downsides of Latour’s move may outweigh its benefits. First, Latour’s claim on the overarching principle of symmetry has certainly confused many researchers. Even more importantly, we do not need an inflated notion of agency to remain mindful, in our research, of the large-scale global problems the planet Earth faces, in which both human and non-human entities play a role. Acknowledging that humans are somehow unique in their capacity for conscious and intentional action and can be expected to bear responsibility for their actions merely highlights a qualitative difference from non-humans; it does not imply that humans should be considered the only valuable entities in the universe and that the often huge effects which the various non-human entities can cause should not be taken into serious consideration.