ABSTRACT
John Dewey and Arthur Bentley approached social philosophy using a technique they called transactional strategy. A key element of this strategy is their proposed removal of dualisms from philosophy. Examples include body versus mind, organism versus environment, and stimulus versus response. Once accepted as real, a problem arises; how to fit the divided items together'. Too often, philosophers have treated 'conventional separations, divisions, or dualisms as something ontological or real. Dewey presented an example using the organism/environment dualism: wherever there is life, there is behavior, activity. In order that life may persist, this activity has to be both continuous and adapted to the environment. Mustafa Emirbayer's work is firmly grounded in processualist ontology – what he called relational sociology. Emirbayer reinforced Dewey and Bentley's concept that all human activity is transactional. By transforming the social sciences into studies of human processes rather than studies of static human substance, the perspective and the results are completely different.
