Interaction, transaction and relation. Ideas for a closer comparison of Emirbayer and Donati’s relational outlooks.

The thesis of the paper is that the original relational approach developed by Donati is in fact antithetical to what in his Manifesto Emirbayer presents as "relational sociology" and which is based on the "transactional" approach developed by Dewey and Bentley in the volume Knowing and the known (1949). The paper therefore presents: a) the main theses of the transactional approach; b) the consequences of application of the transaction approach to sociology; c) the fundamental differences between Emirbayer and Donati's approaches; d) the epistemological foundations of Donati's approach; e) factual examples of the validity of Donati's approach.