ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters I have discussed various dimensions of social interaction and I have sought to establish its irreducibility. Interaction involves emergent properties and some of these properties act back upon actors such that the latter are as much products of interaction as producers of it. We become linguistic, strategic, trusting, empathic (etc.) inter-actors by virtue of an interaction history in which we acquire and maintain these (variable) properties. Interaction shapes actors, making them capable of more sophisticated and complex interactions, which both shape them further and shape the wider network of interactions and relations comprising the structures of the social world (on structure see Chapters 8, 9 and 10). Moreover, network structure and the durable relations it entails both constrain interaction, such that each ‘part’ of the process affects every other part.
