The conventional foundations of action. Elements of a sociological pragmatics

Summary: This article develops a model of action that outlines a 'pragmatic' approach to conventions, while establishing links with universalist or cultural approaches. It clarifies the scope of the sociological pragmatics concerned with analysing the different procedures by which people establish a link between their personal experience, traces of the past revealed in the environment, and their horizons of expectation. It advances the hypothesis that several systems of thought and behaviour combine during the course of action, and then explores the architecture of these systems by examining their articulation in time and their distribution in space.