Social Action Theory

Question 1

Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology. He saw both structural and action approaches as necessary for a full understanding of human behaviour. He argued that a full sociological explanation involves two levels:

Answer 1

The level of cause – explaining the objective structural factors that shape people’s behaviour.

The level of meaning – understanding the subjective meanings that individuals attach to their actions.

Question 2

Weber’s Types of action

Answer 2

Instrumentally rational action is where the actor works out the most efficient means of achieving a given goal. For example, a capitalist may calculate that the most efficient way of maximising profit is to pay low wages.

Value-rational action involves action towards a goal that the actor regards as desirable for its own sake. For example, a believer worshipping their god in order to get to heaven.

Traditional action involves routine actions. This action isn’t rational as the actor has always done it and no conscious thought has gone into it.

Affectual action is action that expresses emotion. For example, weeping out of grief, or violence sparked by anger.

Question 3

Criticisms: of Weber

Answer 3

Alfred Schutz (1972) argues that Weber’s view of action is too focused on the individual and cannot explain the shared nature of meanings.
Weber’s categorisation of action is difficult to apply. For example, among the Trobriand Islanders, individuals exchange ritual gifts called ‘kula’ with others on neighbouring islands. This could either be seen as traditional action (it has been practised in the same way for generations) – or it could be seen as instrumentally rational action (because it is a good way of cementing trading links between kula partners).
Weber encouraged people to put themselves in other people’s shoes. As we cannot be that person, we can’t fully understand their actions or views.

Question 4

Phenomenology

Answer 4

It examines the social construction of particular phenomena and the results of this subjective way of seeing and talking about them (a discourse) on people’s attitudes and behaviour.
Jack Douglas studied concepts of suicide, suggesting that some people viewed it as a means of crying for help, some as a way to get revenge, others as a spiritual hope of reaching a better place. These different motivations for suicide meant that it could not be regarded as a single type of act, making nonsense of analysing patterns in suicide statistics in the hope of finding causes.

Question 5

Schutz’s phenomenological sociology
Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) argues the way we categorise and label the world is not unique to ourselves – rather, we share them with other members of society.

Answer 5

Typifications
Schutz calls these shared categories typifications. Typifications enable us to organise our experiences into a shared world of meaning. In Schutz’s view, the meaning of any experience depends on its context or situation. For example, raising your hand in class means one thing, and something entirely different in an auction. For this reason, meanings can be unclear and unstable.
However, typifications can stabilise and clarify meanings by making sure that we are all ‘speaking the same language’ – all agreeing on the meanings of things. Without shared typifications, social order would become impossible.
The natural attitude
Society appears to us as a real thing, existing outside of us. The natural attitude leads us to assume that the social world is a solid, natural thing out there. However, Schutz says that it merely shows that people shared the same meanings, and this allows us to cooperate and achieve goals.

Question 6

Criticisms:
of shutz

Answer 6

Berger and Luckman (1971) argue that although reality is a social construct, as Schutz believes, once it has been constructed, it takes on a life of its own and becomes an external reality that reacts back on us.
Individuals for a variety of reasons might interpret different symbols and/or words differently so it is difficult to determine if that is actually what the participant was intending to mean.

Question 7

Ethnomethodology - unspoken rules

Answer 7

can certainly be described as microsociology as it examines how people speak to each other and interact in everyday conversations and in relationships within their own homes. Ethnomethodology reveals that there are unspoken rules when people of a common culture chat to each other.

Harold Garfinkel (1967) conducted ‘breaching experiments’ in which participants were asked to break these conventions in order to reveal how much we take them for granted. For example, students were asked to go home and behave as if they were guests at a hotel run by their parents. The result was that the parents, not aware that an experiment was taking place, believed their children were suffering from some sort of mental illness or had taken drugs.

Question 8

Garfinkel takes the view that social order is created from the bottom up. Social order is something that members of society actively construct in everyday life using their commonsense knowledge:

Answer 8

Indexicality – nothing has a fixed meaning: everything depends on the context. This is a threat to social order because if meanings are unclear, communication and cooperation becomes difficult and social order breaks down.

Reflexivity – refers to the fact that we use commensense knowledge in everyday interactions to create a sense of meaning and order and to stop indexicality occurring. Language is important in achieving reflexivity. Although language gives us a sense of reality existing ‘out there’, in fact all we have done is to create a set of shared meanings.

Question 9

Criticisms:
of ethnomethodology

Answer 9

Craib argues that its findings are of little value because it spends a lot of time ‘uncovering’ taken-for-granted rules that turn out to be no surprise to anyone. For example, one study found that in phone conversations, generally only one person spoke at a time.
Ethnomethodology denies the existence of wider society.
It ignores how wider structures of power and inequality affect the meanings that individuals construct. For example, Marxists argue that ‘commensense knowledge’ is really just ruling-class ideology’, and the order it creates serves to maintain capitalism.

Question 10

Symbolic Interactionism

Answer 10

Mead observed that unlike animals, our behaviour is not shaped by fixed, pre-programmed instincts. Instead, we respond to the world around by giving meanings to the things that are significant to us. We create a world of meanings by attaching symbols to the world. A symbol is something that represents something else.

Question 11

Taking the role of the other - symbolic interactionalism

Answer 11

Mead argues that we interpret other people’s meanings by taking the role of the other – putting ourselves in the place of the other person and seeing ourselves as they see us. Our ability to take the role of the other develops through social interaction. We do this first as children; through imitative play when we take on the role of significant others such a parents or doctors. Later, we come to see ourselves from the point of view of the wider community – the generalised other. Through shared symbols, especially language, we become conscious of the ways of acting that others require of us.

Question 12

Herbert Blumer (1900-87) identified three key principles:
of symbolic interactionalims

Answer 12

1. Our actions are based on meanings we give to situations, events, people etc.
2. These meanings arise from the interaction process – they are negotiable and changeable.
3. The meanings we give to situations are the result of the interpretive procedures we use – especially taking the role of the other.

Question 13

Goffman’s dramaturgical model

Answer 13

Labelling theory describes how the self is shaped through interaction. It often sees the individual as the passive victim of other people’s labels. By contrast, the work of Goffman describes how we actively construct our ‘self’ by manipulating other people’s impressions of us. His approach is described as dramaturgical because he uses analogies with drama as a framework for analysing social interaction. We are all ‘actors’, acting out ‘scripts’, using ‘props’, resting ‘backstage’ between ‘performances’ we present to ‘our audiences’ and so on. Our aim is to carry off a convincing performance of the role we have adopted.

Question 15

impression management

Answer 15

Two key dramaturgical concepts are the presentation of self and impression management. For Goffman, we seek to present a particular image of ourselves to our audiences. To do so, we must control the impression our performance gives. This involves constantly studying our audience to see how they are responding, and monitoring and adjusting our performance to present a convincing image.

Question 16

roles

Answer 16

Goffman’s view of roles differs sharply from that of functionalism. Functionalists see roles as tightly ‘scripted’ by society and they see us as fully internalising our scripts through socialisation. Instead, Goffman argues, there is a ‘gap’ or role distance between our real self and our roles. Like the stage actor who plays Hamlet, we are not really the roles we play. He says that roles are only loosely scripted by society and we have a good deal of freedom in how we play them.

Question 17

Criticisms: of symbolic interactionalsm

Answer 17

• Some criticise symbolic interactionism for being a loose collection of concepts (such as labelling or dramaturgical) rather than an explanation theory.
• It focuses on face-to-face interactions and ignores wider social structures such as class inequality, and it fails to explain the origin of labels.
• Not all action is meaningful – like Weber’s category of traditional action, much is performed unconsciously or routinely. Interactionism lacks the means to explain it.
• Goffmans dramaturgical analogy is useful but has its limitations. For example, in interactions everyone plays the part of both actor and audience, and interactions are often improvised and unrehearsed.

Question 18

Giddens’ structuration theory

Answer 18

According to Giddens, there is a duality of structure. By this Giddens means that structure and action - or agency as he calls it - are two sides of the same coin; neither can exist without the other. Through our actions we produce and reproduce structures over time and space, while these structures are what make our actions possible in the first place. Giddens calls this relationship structuration.
Giddens illustrates this with language. A language is a structure it is made up of a set of rules of grammar that govern how we can use it to express meanings. This structure seems to exist independently of any individual, and it constrains our behaviour, like one of Durkheim’s ‘social facts’.

For example, if we wish to use a language to communicate, we must obey its rules, otherwise, we will not be understood. This shows how our action (communication) depends on the existence of structure (language rules). But structure also depends on action. For example, a language would not exist if no one used it. It is produced and reproduced over time through the actions of individuals. speaking and writing it. Furthermore, these actions can also change the structure. People give words new meanings and create new rules.

Question 19

Reproduction of structures through agency
For Giddens, structure has two elements:

Answer 19

• Rules - the norms, customs and laws that govern action. Resources - both economic (raw materials, technology etc) and power over others.
  Rules and resources can be either reproduced or changed through human action. For example, obeying the law reproduces the existing structure, while inventing new technology may change it.
  However, in Giddens’ view, although our action can change. existing structures, it generally tends to reproduce them. He identifies two reasons for this.
  First, society’s rules contain a stock of knowledge about how to live our lives. Earning a living, shopping and so on largely involve applying this knowledge to everyday situations. Similarly, when shopping, for example, we use resources in the form of money. Thus as we go about our routine activities, we tend to reproduce the existing. structure of society.

Second, we reproduce existing structures through our action because we have a deep-seated need for ontological security a need to feel that the world, both physical and social, really is as it appears to be, and especially that it is orderly, stable and predictable. This need tends to encourage action that maintains existing structures, rather than changing them.

Question 20

Change of structures through agency

Answer 20

However, despite this tendency to maintain the structure of society, action or agency can also change it. This can occur in two ways.
First, we ‘reflexively monitor’ our own action, constantly reflecting on our actions and their results, and we can deliberately choose a new course of action. This is more likely in late modern society, where tradition no longer dictates action, thus increasing the likelihood and pace of change. Second, our actions may change the world, but not always as we intended. They may have unintended consequences. For example, according to Weber, the Calvinists who adopted the Protestant work ethic did so with the intention of glorifying God, but the actual consequence was the creation of modern capitalism.

Question 21

Evaluation of Giddens

Answer 21

Giddens implies that actors can change structures simply by deciding to do so. Margaret Archer (1995) argues that he underestimates the capacity of structures to resist change. For example, slaves may wish to abolish slavery but lack the power to do so.
According to Craib, structuration theory isn’t really a theory at all, because it doesn’t explain what actually happens in society. Instead, it just describes the kinds of things we will find when we study society, such as actions, rules, resources etc.
Craib argues that Giddens fails to unite structure and action. He regards Giddens’ work as ‘a thoroughgoing action theory’ that reduces the idea of structure to the rules governing routine everyday actions. Giddens fails to explain how his theory applies to large-scale structures such as the economy and the state.