Confronting Biological Reductionism From a Social Justice Agenda: Transformative Agency and Activist Stance

This article draws attention to contemporary research and theorizing that counters and resolutely dispels biological determinism laden with a plethora of mythic racial, gender, dis/ability and other types of unproven assumptions, conjectures, and biases. Based on a wide range of emerging conceptual breakthroughs and a growing body of evidence across neurosciences, epigenetics, developmental systems perspectives, and activity-centered cultural–historical frameworks, the argument can be made that all persons have infinite potential—incalculable in advance, unlimited, and not predefined in terms of any putatively inborn “endowments.” From this perspective, educational success is correlative with access to social resources and mediators such as teacher experience and skills. These and other radical implications can be drawn out with more force if this emerging body of anti-reductionist and anti-biodeterminist knowledge is connected to and integrates critical and sociocultural scholarship with agendas of social justice and equality such as exemplified in works by Marx and Vygotsky. At the same time, critical and sociocultural scholarship can draw on this emerging body of knowledge to support its struggles for a better society and education. For these two broad strands of scholarship to connect and benefit from each other, a revision of the role of subjectivity and activism in research is required, with steps in this direction discussed in this article