4. Social Action Theory Flashcards
What does the SAT focus on?
Focuses on individuals and how they interact with each other
What type of approach is the social action theory?
A micro approach
What is our behaviour the result of according to the SAT?
The result of the way that we interpret our norms and values
Key features of the SAT (4)
Society and institutions are socially constructed
People have free will to form their own identity and behaviour
Research on small groups
People’s behaviour is driven by their beliefs as well as the meanings and emotions given to a situation
Who developed the SAT?
Weber
What combination is essential to understanding human behaviour according to Weber’s SAT? What’s good about each element of the combo?
Combination of structural and action approaches essential to deeper understanding of human behaviour
Structural approach allows you to understand how social structures can determine someone’s position in society
Action approach allows you to identify the subjective meaning an individual gives to a situation and how this affects behaviour
What do researchers need in order to understand human behaviour according to Weber’s SAT?
Verstehen (concept developed by Weber)
Who developed the 4 types of action and what are they? (ATVI)
Weber
1. Affectual - behaviour that expresses/is motivated by emotion
2. Traditional - behaviour performed as a routine
3. Value-rational - individual has a goal and sets out to achieve it regardless of the difficulty
4. Instrumentally rational - individual assess most rational mean of achieving a given goal
2 writers of symbolic interactionism
Mead and Blumer
What does Mead focus on in symbolic interactionism?
Focuses on how we create the social world through our interactions
Focuses on the language and symbols that help us give meaning to our life experience
3 parts of Mead’s symbolic interactionism
Symbols
Role taking
The “looking-glass self” (Cooley)
Symbols (Mead - symbolic interactionism)
We attach symbols to make sense of everything and this influences our behavioural responses
Role taking (Mead - symbolic interactionism)
We mentally take the role of another person/group to understand the world from their PoV. Allows us to understand how we may be viewed
The “looking-glass self” by Cooley (Mead symbolic interactionism)
We view ourselves based on what we imagine others to think of us
We eventually become what we believe others to see us as
Who identified 3 basic assumptions of symbolic interactionism?
Blumer
Blumer’s 3 basic assumptions of symbolic interactionism
Humans act towards things based on the meanings things have for them
The meaning of things derive from social interactions
Interpretation modifies the meaning people give to things
What did Goffman develop?
The dramaturlogical theory
Goffman’s criticism of the labelling theory
Sees individuals as the passive victim of those who label them
Goffman believes we have more freedom to choose how we construct our self image to manipulate other people’s impression of us
What does Goffman’s dramaturlogical theory compare life to?
Compares life to a play where people play different roles and are forced to act in a particular way
Impression management (Goffman)
We try to create a particular image of ourselves in the mind of our audience by attempting to control how they perceive us
Who developed phenomenology?
Schutz
Why do phenomenologists deny objective reality?
Because they believe that things have no meaning in themselves, and that it’s through experience that we attach meaning to things
What are typifications and why do we create them according to Schutz’s phenomenology?
Typifications - the way we organise our experiences and knowledge of things into mental categories
They allow humans to have shared meanings and understand each other
What do typificiations make possible according to Schutz’s phenomenology?
They make social order possible as they allow us to have common knowledge
What did Garfinkel develop?
Ethnomethodology
What is ethnomethodology interested in?
Interested in how people communicate with each other and construct their social world
What an illusion according to Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology?
Social order is an illusion - our minds unconsciously make life appear to be ordered
Two concepts of ethnomethodology and what they are
Indexicality - no such thing as a meaning for anything
Reflexivity - process where we use common knowledge to construct and attach a sense of meaning to the actions/behaviour occurring
Positive evaluation of social action theories: what does it show about Marxism and functionalism?
Shows that functionalist and Marxist theories are too deterministic as it focuses on free will
Positive evaluation of social action theories: provides insight into…
Provides insight into how the construction of meaning has consequences for the individual
Negative evaluation of social action theories: how do structuralists criticise Weber’s approach?
Believe he overestimate that capacity of individuals to change social structures
Negative evaluation of social action theories: what does it tend to deal with and what does it ignore as a result?
Tends to deal with small-scale interactions, ignoring the most crucial issues in society like power, poverty and inequality
Negative evaluation of social action theories: what does it under-estimate?
Underestimates the extent to which human behaviour is shaped by wider institutions
