Abstract

The article confronts James Coleman’s and Randall Collins’s approaches towards action theory: reviews both their similarities and diff erences. Coleman supports the homo oeconomicus thesis and understands actors as beings, which make rational decisions and direct their actions on the basis of costs and gains calculations. Collins, on the other hand, emphasizes the extra-rational factors of emotions and routine. By putting up these approaches against each other two ideal type constructions arise, which are particular intellectual modes yet cannot comprehend social reality in its full complexity.