It has become a commonplace for sociologists to observe that there is no action in Parsons' famous voluntaristic theory of action or action schema. Either they argue that his elaborate and analytic model never did actually find room for action as such, or else they argue that whatever merit it might have had in this respect was only contained in The Structure of Social Action (first published in 1937) and that this early promise was not fulfilled in his later work. But perhaps this view embodies a judgement which is unfair to Talcott Parsons; not because, as some have claimed, that his is indeed a genuine theory of action, but rather because there is no action in any of the existing, designated ‘theories of action’ in the discipline of sociology. Parsons is certainly not the only theorist against whom such an accusation can be levelled. It can equally be argued, for example, that Alfred Schutz's phenomenologically inspired ‘theory of action’ is really only a theory of meaning, whilst symbolic interactionism is merely concerned with individuals who ‘name’ objects, people and events or ‘negotiate meaning’ with others rather than with people who ‘act’. In a similar vein one can argue that the actor in Goffman's dramaturgical model is portrayed as ‘impressing others’ through the manner of their action rather than accomplishing the action itself.