Social Action Theory

Question 1

What is Social Action Theory?

Answer 1

A theory that focuses on individual behaviour in everyday social situations, exploring how people interpret things and how others’ reactions affect your sense of identity.

A micro, bottom-up interpretivist approach to society.

Question 2

What do Social Action Theorists believe?

Answer 2

• We shape society
• We have free-will
• Our behaviour is driven by beliefs and emotions, not just external forces
• Focus on meanings
• Interpretivist methodology

Question 3

What did Weber (the founding father of social action theory) theorise?

Answer 3

The idea of Verstehen = empathetic understanding of others.

Action/human behaviour is meaningful: a result of our own interpretations of the world. Not just simply puppets.

Question 4

What is the Protestant Ethic?

Answer 4

Where Protestants lived a Calvinistic lifestyle, and reinvested money which would mean they worked hard/were carrying out God’s will > would be rewarded.
- To cope with ‘salvation panic’.

Led to Capitalism.

Question 5

Evaluation of Weber:

Answer 5

• Fails to consider how institutions create social order (Functionalism).
• Does not consider structural inequalities which affect ourselves (Marxism).

Question 6

What did Mead’s theory of Symbolic Interactionism suggest?

Answer 6

Humans actively respond to the world, choosing their actions, telling lies, etc. We assess how to respond to situations rather than reacting automatically.

We respond to the world by giving meanings to symbols (things that are significant to us). Must interpret meanings.

Taking the role of the other, where we interpret people’s meanings by putting ourselves in their place, which develops through interaction.

Seen from the POV of society = generalised other.

Question 7

Evaluation of Mead:

Answer 7

Unable to explain how meanings develop, are generated by social institutions.
Only focus on small-scale interaction which tells us little about the historical development of society.

Question 8

What did Becker’s labelling theory suggest?

Answer 8

We are perceived > Labelled > Self-fulfilling prophecy as we internalise that label and change our behaviour to adhere to it.

‘Ideal Pupil’ study, pictures of students to teachers, labelled the middle-class students more positively.

Question 9

Examples of Labelling:

Answer 9

Harvey and Slating = 96 teachers, each teacher shown 18 photographs, labelled according to background.

Rosenthal and Jacobson = labelled a group of children in a mixed-ability class as ‘spurters’, found that their progress had improved more than the ‘normal’ group of children.

Question 10

Cooley’s “looking-glass self”:

Answer 10

Our self-concept is shaped by how we think others perceive us. E.g: imagining how we appear to others, imagining their judgement and developing feelings based on that judgement. = social interactions forming our identities.

Question 11

Evaluation of Labelling Theory:

Answer 11

• Doesn’t explain why people get labelled.
• People can reject the label, like self-negating prophecy with Fuller.

Question 12

What did Goffman’s Dramaturgical Analogy suggest?

Answer 12

We actively construct ourselves by manipulating other people’s impressions of us; taking a role as ‘actors’ based on the situation.

Impression Management = tone, gestures, props, etc.

Front Stage (fake self) and Backstage (real self).

Role Distance = not always believing in the role we play.

Question 13

Evaluation of Goffman:

Answer 13

Weak as there is role conflict, we can be both actors and audience members. Deterministic.

Question 14

What did Garfinkel’s theory of ethnomethodology suggest?

Answer 14

Studies how people understand and make sense of their everyday lives as society has no real objective structure. Things only mean what we take them to mean = ‘How’ people create a sense of social order.

Garfinkel’s study, where students were asked to go home and behave as if they were guests at a hotel run by their parents. The parents believed that their children were suffering from mental illness or had taken drugs.

Question 15

What are Breaching Experiments?

Answer 15

Breaching experiments are used to uncover hidden social rules, intentionally breaking these to see how people react.
- Understand the unwritten rules of society by breaking them.

1. Finding Hidden Rules = breaking them to see how people react, which helps reveal the rules.
2. Seeing reactions = reactions show how important the rule is.
3. Understanding Social Order = shows how people try to fix things when social rules are broken.

Question 16

Evaluation of Ethnomethodology:

Answer 16

• Spends too much time ‘uncovering’ rules which are no surprise to anyone.
• Denies the existence of wider society, seeing it as a shared fiction, ignoring how poverty, etc affect the meanings we construct.

Question 17

What did Giddens theorise?

Answer 17

Structuration: where both social action and structural theories are combined.
- They cannot exist without eachother (Duality of Structure).
The idea that our actions change/produce the structure of society, but these structures make our actions possible in the first place.

E.g: The Lads (Willis) were aware that they would not succeed in the education system (structure), but felt they were free agents by choosing to misbehave (action).

Question 18

General strengths of social action theory:

Answer 18

• Changed the way research is conducted, strive for meanings.
• Investigated the ‘underdogs’ of society, gathering an understanding of those labelled as deviant.
• Addresses the micro nature of contemporary society.

Question 19

General weaknesses of social action theory:

Answer 19

• Deterministic, assumes concepts influence behaviour.
• Ignores wider social conflicts, offers a psychological approach, not sociological.
• Methodology used is subjective.