Abstract. This paper suggests a framework in which the importance of the individual dimension and agency can be reclaimed within a profoundly social and relational view of the self. Juxtaposed with recent research on the self, cultural-historical activity theory is discussed, including its foundational premises formulated by Vygotsky and its conception of the self articulated by Leontiev. Expanded in a number of ways proposed in this paper, this theory helps to theorize the self (a) in its practical relevance, as a lawful and necessary moment in human collective practices, (b) as endowed with the capacity to generate new cycles of practice, and (c) as immanent in activities that position individuals to contribute to meaningfully changing the world. The concept of 'self as a leading activity' is discussed as a way to capture what the self is, where it is located, and what its purpose and relation to society are.Key Words: agency, cultural-historical activity theory, development, dialectical, Leontiev, personality, self, social-individual dichotomy, Vygotsky Although much of psychology today remains devoted to the cognitivist agenda of studying human functioning as context-free information processing in individual minds, there is a powerful current of ideas, both in psychology and in neighboring disciplines, that contests the most cherished individualist assumptions of cognitivism. Perhaps more clearly than in any other field, the research on the self has witnessed a move away from the essentialist and context-independent notions of individual possessions (e.g. personality traits, attributes) toward viewing the self as being embedded within sociocultural contexts and intrinsically interwoven with them. The recent approaches to the self, although united in their quest to overcome the extreme individualism of traditional accounts by capitalizing on sociocultural contexts, vary greatly in how the very notions of the self, contextTheory & Psychology