This book is about social science's difficulties in acknowledging that people's relation to the world is one of concern. When we ask a friend how they are, they might reply in any number of ways; for example:

Such responses indicate that things matter to people, and make a difference to ‘how they are’. Their lives can go well or badly, and their sense of well-being depends at least in part on how these other things that they care about – significant others, practices, objects, political causes – are faring, and on how others are treating them. In some respects the answers are very subjective and personal, yet they are not just free-floating ‘values’ or expressions projected onto the world but feelings about various events and circumstances that aren't merely subjective. They reflect the fact that we are social beings – dependent on others and necessarily involved in social practices. They also remind us that we are sentient, evaluative beings: we don't just think and interact but evaluate things, including the past and the future (Archer, 2000a).