The concept of joint action is fundamental to the understanding of social life in general, and social action in particular. In this chapter I will offer a philosophical analysis of joint action and defend it against rival accounts. In subsequent chapters I will use this analysis of joint action in the analysis of a variety of social action categories, including conventional action, social norm-governed action, and organisational and institutional actions.

As we saw in Chapter 1, joint actions are actions involving a number of agents performing interdependent actions in order to realise some common goal. Examples of joint action are: two people dancing together; a number of trades people building a house; and a group of robbers burgling a house. Joint action is to be distinguished from individual action on the one hand, and from the “actions” of corporate bodies on the other. Thus when an individual walks down the road or shoots at a target, these are instances of individual action. When a nation declares war or a government takes legal action against a public company, these are instances of corporate action. Properly speaking, there are no such things as corporate actions (as I will argue in Chapter 5). At any rate, my concern in this chapter is simply with joint action.