Abstract
Equipped with patients' different ontological presumptions, structuralist, post-structuralist, phenomenological and hermeneutical, and action-oriented studies of medical practices reduce the phenomena of patients in action to issues of particular contexts. Based on fieldwork materials from interviews, an onsite ethnography, and documents that present the mediated existences of haemodialysis patients in action, this paper explores ＂being in action＂ and proposes an alternative ＂driftworks＂ ontology. This driftworks ontology is a means to investigating heterogeneous, mediated, and unfolding social existence in empirical experiences. Such an empirically based, dynamic ontology can transcend the antagonistic opposition of the individual and collective existences in social theory. It is hoped that this approach will be useful for researchers to tackle existing theoretical frameworks that reduce changing phenomena into a single reality and other residues and keep them from being trapped in dilemmas of intertwining materiality and sociality, and individuality and collectivity in other fields of research.