ABSTRACT
The attitude that we can be active creators of our lives is primarily a product of psychological thinking focused on the individual spheres of human experience. Other social sciences seem to find little opportunity to discuss individual agency, particularly the possibility that we can be creators of culture. Collective theories of development focus on the externalities of the lower-right “social” quadrant and have largely ignored the lower-left “cultural” quadrant. Further, because of their methods of inquiry, the passive observation of visibly apparent behaviors taking place in social systems, there has been little place for individual agency. However, following my research with progressive activists and the fuller story I am telling about how the individual can play an active role in the creation of culture, it is possible and necessary to develop a fuller understanding of the cultural sphere. It is especially important to work out its connection to the individual sphere. Such a fuller theory is not only possible but already exists in nascent form in the multiple images surround the idea of “political development.”
