Social Action

Question 1

Social Action

Answer 1

-meanings and interpretations that individuals assign to actions
-bottom up approach
-assumes individuals have free will to act and differ in interpretations of events
-micro as individuals shape society
-no grand theory

Question 2

Max Weber

Answer 2

-motivations behind actions
-rational beings with meanings
-actions based on series of events
-affective action of emotional and state of mind
-traditional action based on custom and habit
-rational action: instrumental rational efficiency e.g. exams/value rational value and beliefs
-suicide study, we need to study how we come up with these assumptions

Question 3

Phenomenology

Answer 3

Schultz
-structure of consciousness
-individuals are in a shared society based upon typification of objects
-develop common sense knowledge to communicate

Question 4

Ethnomethodology

Answer 4

Garfinkel
-study of peoples actions
-people made sense of the world through documentary methods, patterns of peoples behaviour
-distributing the pattern, people reactions can be studied
-indexicality, meaning drown from context and store behaviour for future reference

Question 5

Usefulness

Answer 5

-contribution to society
-understand people reject the idea of institutions/family and education
-identity is shaped from this
-changed from top down approach

Question 6

Evaluation

Answer 6

-fails to explain how society works
-underestimates importance of structural factors/industrial racism
-ignores larger social issues
-subjective, ignores objective nature of scientific research