ABSTRACT
Social reality is not external to she who experiences, makes, or observes it. Conceive of it this way: people bring into being for one another a ‘structure’ (I use this term metaphorically here) which they inhabit temporarily and which drops away behind them; of course it is not made any way we want; what we put together in the past shapes the direction and framework of the future; what we build interlocks with what others build; we build what we know how to build with the materials that come to hand. None the less, we move into the future as into a building, the walls, floors, and roof of which we put together with one another as we go into it. It is an ongoing creation of and in action.
