Cognition and agency
Karen Wells
June 3, 2026 DOI: 10.4324/9781003489610-2 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Agency philosophy Subjectivity Context archaeology Situated cognition Socio-cognitive Sense of agency Epistemology Cognitive science |
| Key points | Proposes that a 4A model of agency (audience, assistant, apprentice, artisan) derived from children's making activities in rural West Africa specifies the relational and hybrid character of agency, supporting the thesis that making is central to the development of subjectivity, agency, and cognition. |
Abstract
This chapter develops the connection between cognition and agency and contends that the concepts of 4E cognition and 4A agency applied to the analysis of children’s activities will enable us to specify more concretely the relational and hybrid character of agency. It elaborates the existing theorisation of cognition within what is called 4E cognition, where 4E stands for cognition extended, embodied, enacted and embedded. The second section of the chapter sets out a novel theory of children’s agency in the context of making and material culture that proposes a 4A (audience, assistant, apprentice and artisan) model of agency and cognition derived from the description and analysis of our data on the experiences of children in rural West Africa but applicable more widely. This chapter elaborates on the concepts that were briefly introduced in Chapter 1 , where the term Homo faber was presented to gesture towards book’s central thesis: that making lies at the heart of how children develop subjectivity (or sense of self), agency and cognitive abilities. This thesis supports the contention advanced by material engagement theory and post-phenomenology that ‘[h]umans are self-conscious fabricators that become (onto-genetically and phylogenetically) through their creative engagement with the material world’ (Ihde & Malafouris, 2018, p. 200). This chapter develops the connection between cognition and agency and contends that the concepts of 4E cognition and 4A agency that are applied to the analysis of children’s activities will enable us to specify more concretely the relational and hybrid character of agency.