Action theories

Question 1

Action theories

Answer 1

• Society is created through our actions and meanings.

Question 2

Weber: social action theory

Answer 2

• Level of cause - big things that cause us to do something.
• Level of meaning - why does an individual do something.
• We need verstehen, put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.

Question 3

Mead

Answer 3

• We need to take the role of the other in order to understand what people mean.
• We need to learn how to do this through social interaction.

Question 4

Labelling theory

Answer 4

• Derives from symbolic interactionism.
• Education - Becker, Dunne and Gazeley
• Crime & Deviance - Lemert, Cicourel

Question 5

Phenomenology

Answer 5

• Studies how we create common sense. These are the things we assume other people will understand. Schutz says we do this through ‘recipe knowledge’ or typifications.

Question 6

Ethnomethodology

Answer 6

• Developed by Garfinkel - a methodological approach. They are interested in how social order is created. We pretend that society is stable and predictable, but it isn’t, we create it through what we do.