 According to Elder-Vass, social entities like firms and universities are composed of individuals (and sometimes material things as well) that stand in certain relation to one another (Elder-Vass 2007: 31). In virtue of being composed, at a given moment in time, of interrelated individuals, social entities have various causally effective social properties. Most notably, they have emergent social properties, of which there are two kinds. The first is constituted by emergent social properties that are ascribed to social entities as wholes. These are exemplified by a government’s power to introduce a new tax, or a quartet’s ability to deliver a harmonized performance. The second kind consists in emergent social properties that are ascribed to individuals. These are illustrated by a boss’s power to hire or fire employees. Individuals have these properties in virtue of being interrelated so as to form a social entity, and that’s why they constitute emergent social properties (Elder-Vass 2010: 74). Individuals who form part of social entities have non-emergent properties too. These are the causally effective properties, like the ability to read or talk, which individuals have independently of being, at a given moment in time, part of a social entity. From these reflections, Elder-Vass contends, it follows that holist explanations cannot be dispensed with. The effects of emergent social properties should be explained. To this end, it is necessary to offer holist explanations—that is, explanations that state how a social property partially brought about some effect. Individualist explanations are not up to this task inasmuch as they are confined to describing how individuals, in virtue of their non-emergent properties, partially brought about some effect. Simply pointing to the properties that individuals have independently of being, at a given moment in time, part of social entities, does not add up to an explanation of the effects of emergent social properties (see 2010: 66).