Modern economic activity would not be as it is were it not for the fact that all members of the population have mastered these concepts and an indefinite variety of others. … Concepts such as these, and the theories and empirical information linked to them, are not merely handy devices whereby agents are somehow more clearly able to understand their behaviour than they could do otherwise. They actively constitute what that behaviour is and inform the reasons for which it is undertaken.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 105