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This is merely a particular version of the question ‘Why study social institutions at all?’ Some social theorists do not,22 and substitute the investigation of ‘practices’, ‘transactions’, ‘networks’, ‘activities’ and so forth. Those doing so find themselves driven to introduce a ‘qualifier’whose job is to register that these doings are not freefloating but are anchored temporally and spatially, the most common being the term ‘situated’. However, to talk, for example, about ‘situated practices’may seem to give due acknowledgement to the historical and geographical contextualization of doings such as ‘transactions’ but only serves to locate them by furnishing the co-ordinates of their when or where. Simply to provide these spatial and temporal co-ordinates is not to recognize the fact that all actions are contextualized in the strong sense that the context shapes the action and therefore is a necessary component in the explanation of any actions whatsoever, since there is no such thing as non-contextualized action (contra Depelteau).23