Methodological individualism (MI) is often associated with a model of economic action. As a result, criticism of it tends to equate it with this “individualistic” economic model. However, this kind of reductive critique is in fact irrelevant and ignores the basic arguments of MI, and the misconceptions it introduces should be dispelled. At the same time, MI is often opposed to the “holism” model that is argued to be incompatible with MI because it centers on a “collective” dimension of representations and behaviors (Descombes 1996). This article seeks to unite these two paradigms by demonstrating that MI is in fact compatible with the existence of norms, institutions, and collective representations. In the first section, I begin by reviewing three basic ideas of the MI tradition. In the second section, I argue that these ideas are entirely compatible with an analysis of institutions, norms, and collective representations, including with in-group identification. This requires, however, that MI not be reduced to an economic or psychological analysis. I devote two sections to discussing and critiquing these two reductive possibilities, where I develop two main arguments simultaneously: first, that MI’s fundamental ideas need not be reduced to a cost-benefit analysis or to a psychological analysis focused on an unconscious dimension of behavior; and second, that cost-benefit and psychological analyses themselves tend to be inseparable from the collective representations and norms that orient them…