In the first part of this book I have described in some detail what I believe to be the major deficiencies in current theoretical conceptualizations of the relationship between social interaction and social structure. As an integral part of this I have also argued that this theoretical relation cannot be viewed as somehow separate from epistemological and ontological issues. As I stressed in the introduction, and here it needs to be reiterated, the view that I have put forward cuts across such questions as how one can evaluate substantive work undertaken under the aegis of one of the particular theoretical traditions or schools that I have discussed. That is to say, it has not been (and is not) my concern to try to argue that because some particular school of thought is deficient in some respects on the theoretical question of the interaction / structure relation, that therefore substantive work which has taken its cues from this particular school of thought is therefore equally deficient. For instance, because I have argued that phenomenological or interactional theories have a built-in tendency to underplay the effects of the sometimes hidden deterministic properties of social systems, this does not mean that particular substantive work done, for example on mental illness, a. la Laing or Goffman, is therefore somehow wrong or misconceived. This is an important point. What I have to say in this book relates exclusively to the integrated set of theoretical ideas that are constitutive of the theoretical frameworks of different schools of thought. Of course, theoretical work of this nature does not exist for its own sake, there are obviously ramifications for empirical work and I shall be dealing with some of these issues in the following chapters. What I am pointing out is the fact that particular substantive works cannot be judged simply in terms of their implications for specific theoretical issues (for example, the interaction / structure relation) because often they do not address such issues explicitly, and instead are the outcome of (a sometimes quite loose) adherence to the general parameters of a theoretical tradition.