Topic 4 Social Action Flashcards
What are the 4 main social action theorists?
Weber, Blumer, Mead and Goffman
Define social action theories
Micro theories that take a bottom up approach, they are less likely to be deterministic. People posses agency and make there own choices.
Who founded the social action theory
What did he believe?
Weber - we should look at action and structure to gain a true picture of society.
- Level of cause: we should understand structures that are imposed and shape people’s behaviour
- Level of action: understand meanings that individuals attach to actions
What are 4 categories weber identified to understand society?
- Traditional action - routine actions that don’t involve conscious thought
- Affective action - based on emotions of the social actor
- Value-rational action - actions taken to achieve a goal
- Instrumentally rational action - social actors calculate the most effective way to achieve a goal
How can we criticise Webers belief that we need Verstehen
How can we be sure that we understand the motives of another person?
What are the 2 symbolic interactionists
Blumer and mead
What does symbolic interationism mean? (1 theorist)
All actions are based on meaning. They are conveyed through symbols. We interpret these symbols and respond.
Mead suggests that to understand society we need to understand the meanings attached via vertehen
What are the 3 key principles of symbolic interactionism (1 theorist)
Blumer
1. Action is dependent on meaning
2. Different people can give different meanings to things
3. The meaning we give to something can change
Criticise symbolic interactionism using a perspective
functionalists disagree with this viewpoint as they think socialisation and social control will ensure individuals conform
Who created the looking glass theory. What is it?
Cooley we become the person that people see us as. Basically, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy
Who created the dramaturgical model? What is it?
Goffman he believes we actively construct ourselves based on others just like an actor
What are the two parts of goffman’s dramaturgical model?
- Impression management - we must control the impression our performance gives. We have to study how everyone responds.
- Roles - there is a role distance between our real self and our role. Our roles have freedom, and we can manipulate it to get what we want to achieve.
Criticise symbolic interationism (including the looking glass theory and Dramaturgical model) using a theorist.
Reynold symbolic interationism ignores the fact structures such as the patriarchy influence our actions.
Who (other than weber) tries to combine structure and action in structural theory? What does he say?
Giddens says individual actions shape the social world, but those choices are shaped by society. Via the duality of structure
What assumptions is Giddins’ structural theory based on?
People are knowledgeable about the social world
People are not puppets of external factors
People create and reproduce existing structures
Explain the assumption about Giddens’ structural theory - People create and reproduce existing structures.
We as people follow and use the rules of structures as such reproducing the structures not changing them.
Within Giddins’ structural theory, how does he say we can change structures.
Change if structures through agency:
We can reflect on our actions and deliberately choose a new course (more likely in postmodern society)
Actions may have unintended consequences producing change that was not part of our goal.
Analyse Giddens’ structural theory
It makes an important attempt to overcome the division between structure and actions
Criticise Giddens’ structural theory using a theorist
Archer argues the structures giddens says we can change are too powerful for most social groups.
