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This essay offers a compact discussion of acting together as in, for instance, walking together. Notably, participants take themselves to have rights to their continued participation. A prior agreement would guarantee such rights, but those who act together need not have agreed to do so. Further, an appeal to agreements would be an appeal to something not well understood. Assuming that acting together involves a collective goal, an account of collective goals is proposed, in terms of a joint commitment to espouse a given goal as a body. The formation of a joint commitment need not amount to an agreement. Any agreement, however, can be argued to involve the formation of a joint commitment. A joint commitment account of agreements is briefly sketched.

This essay sets out with some care the author’s concept of a joint commitment, introduced in her book On Social Facts (1989). It then addresses some comments on her work from Ulrich Balzer, Rudiger Bittner, and Michael Robins. In particular it considers a question from Robins: how can people become jointly committed if they are not already “joined at the hip”. It is argued that this is not a matter of the expression of conditional personal commitments, where a personal commitment is understood in a manner specified. Also addressed is Balzer’s concern about large-scale joint commitments, and Bittner’s contention that acting together does not involve obligations and rights.

This chapter discusses two forms of interaction: sustained dialogue and public deliberation. Sustained dialogue and public deliberation are forms of structured human interaction that address, name, and frame issues of mutual concern. These approaches involve processes of deliberative democracy, or public talk, wherein citizen participants engage in designed and moderated discussions with the goal of increasing understanding and reducing conflict among themselves and the solidary groups to which they may belong. Dialogue is a five-stage process: Deciding to Engage; Mapping and Naming; Probing Problems and Relationships; Scenario Building; and Acting Together. Here, dialogue occurs by which enmity and suspicion become transformed into understanding and accommodation. Public deliberation is a means by which citizens make tough choices about basic purposes and directions for their communities and their country.

This chapter discusses the stages in conducting a sustained dialogue in a campus. In stage one, Deciding to Engage, students should develop a plan for establishing dialogue groups on their campus and gather participants for those groups. Once individual groups are formed, the group leaders should explain the process to each participant. Then, the groups move into stage two, Mapping and Naming, where participants share their personal experiences. The group leader will notice a change in the character of conversations as the dialogue progresses into stage three, Probing Problems and Relationships, where participants are beginning to understand each other’s problems concerning race, gender and the like. With this understanding of the problem, the group then moves into stage four, Scenario Building, where members generate possible solutions to the problem. In stage five, Acting Together, group members enact the suggested solutions.