ABSTRACT
Having just eaten oysters on a small hill overlooking a beach, I toss the shells on a pile and go on my way. Eating oysters here is quite popular. The hill that is a nice spot for a picnic turns out to be made of shells discarded by those who have come before. It might be said that I along with others have made a large midden. But this is not something that we do jointly in any robust sense. The midden is, rather, the accretion of countless individual acts, performed independently of one another. Whereas, we might imagine many individuals jointly deciding to create a pile of shells as a monument, and together setting about to do this. Here, what each individual does is not independent of what the others do; they are acting collectively. The jointness of the monument building, absent in the midden making, would seem to have something to do with how the agents involved are related to one another. If so, what integrates participants in joint activity? What is the nature of the ties that bind us when we act together?
