Assess the contribution of different ‘action’ theories to our understanding of society today
Social action theories are known as micro theories which take a bottom-up approach to studying society; they look at how individuals within society interact with each other. There are many forms of social action theories, the main ones being symbolic interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology. They are all based on the work of Max Weber, a sociologist, who acknowledged that structural factors can shape our behaviour but individuals do have reasons for their actions. He used this to explain why people behave in the way in which they do within society. Weber saw four types of actions which are commonly committed within society; rational, this includes logical plans which are used to achieve goals, traditional-customary behaviour, this is behaviour which is traditional and has always been done; he also saw effectual actions, this includes an emotion associated with an action and value-rational actions, this is behaviour which is seen as logical by an individual. Weber’s discovery of these actions can therefore be seen as useful in the study of society. Weber discovered these actions by using his concept of verstehan, a deeper understanding. However, some sociologists have criticised him as they argue that verstehan cannot be accomplished as it is not possible to see thing in the way that others see them, leaving sociologists to question whether Weber’s social action theory is useful in the study of society.
Max Weber saw both structural and action approaches as necessary for a full understanding of human behaviour. Adequate sociological explanation involves two levels; the level of cause explaining the objective structural factors that shape people’s behaviour and the level of meaning which understands the subjective meanings that individuals attach to their actions. Unless we account for both of these levels, our explanation will be incomplete or false. The level of structural cause refers to changes at an institutional level, for instance, the Protestant Reformation introduced a new belief system, Calvinism. This changed people’s worldview which led to changes in their behaviour. As an example, Calvinism promoted a work ethic that brought about the rise of capitalism. At the level of subjective meaning, work took on a religious meaning for the Calvinists, as by working, you could glorify God’s name. This motivated them to work and led to them becoming wealthy and the first modern capitalists.
As there are many numbers of subjective meanings, Weber attempts to classify actions into four types, based on their meaning for the actor. The first one is instrumentally rational action; this involves finding the most efficient way of achieving a given goal for example achieving profit by lowering wages instead of the goal being desirable such as giving to charity. The second one is value-rational action; this involves action towards a goal that the actor regards as desirable for its own state, for example, worshipping god in order to go to heaven. Unlike instrumental, its success is not measurable e.g. the worshipper doesn’t know whether their action has benefited them or not. Following on, the third one is traditional action; this involves customary, routine or habitual actions. It’s a ritual and doesn’t necessarily have a goal as well as it lacking rationality as no conscious thought or choice has gone in to it. It is something we do because we have always done it. Lastly, there is affectual action which involves action that expresses emotion. Action is motivated by emotion for example revenge and stress. It is not orientated towards a specific goal and can be seen as irrational as it is uncontrolled behaviour. Weber sees it as important in religious and political movements with charismatic leaders, who attract a following based on their emotional appeal. Verstehen criticises Weber for his use of empathetic understanding of the actor’s subjective meaning. We can’t actually put ourselves in the actor’s perspective; therefore we can never be sure of their true motives. Moreover, Schutz criticises Weber as being too individualistic and fails to explain why people have a shared culture towards a stimuli. For example, when people raise their arm in an auction, they mean to make a bid, but Weber doesn’t explain how everyone else present also comes to give his gesture the same meaning.
One of the major theories from G.H. Mead is symbolic interactionism which is an ‘action’ approach that focuses on the study of people’s meanings. Within this theory, there are symbols vs. instincts, our behaviour isn’t fixed, and instead we give 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 therefore we don’t simply respond to a stimulus, we first must interpret its meaning. Once we have done this, we then can choose an appropriate response. When one dog snarls at the other, the other dog immediately responds, automatically adopting a defensive posture. There is no conscious interpretation by the dog of the other’s actions. However, if a person shakes their fist at you, they are using a symbol, which can have many meanings. Therefore, you must interpret the meaning of the symbol, to identify whether the person is doing it to represent anger or just joking. Once you have interpreted, you then know how to respond.
In Mead’s view, we manage to interpret the other person’s meanings by taking the role of 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 comes through social interaction. We first do this as children through imitating significant others, such as parents, where we learn to see ourselves as they see us. This then develops to us seeing ourselves from the view of wider society - the generalised others. Therefore, in Mead’s view, we need to be able to see ourselves as others see us to function properly in society. Through shared symbols, especially language, we are more able to become more aware of the ways of acting that others require of us.
Interactionists have three concepts that underpin the labelling theory. The first one is the definition of the situation; a definition of something is a label for that thing. If people define a situation as real, then it will have real consequences as well as believing something to be true will affect how we act which will have consequences for those involved. For example, if a teacher labels a student as ‘trouble’, then they will act differently towards that student. The next one is ‘looking glass self’. A term used to describe how we develop our self-concept which is achieved through our ability to take the role of the other. Through the way they respond to us, we are able to see how they perceive us and how we present ourselves. Moreover, through this process, a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs, as we become what others see us as. Lastly, there is ‘career.’ This normally refers to the stages through an individual progress in their occupation. Labelling theorists have used this concept to certain groups and deviance, for example with an individual who has had mental illness; they have a career starting with ‘pre-patient’ with certain symptoms. Through labelling by a psychiatrist, they become a hospital in-patient and then to discharge. Each stage has its own status and problems, at the discharge phase, the ex-patient may find it hard to reintegrate back into society, and just how through our normal career, we achieve a status, the ex-patient may achieve a ‘master status’, through their alternative career. In the eyes of society, this master status may be a ‘mental patient.’
Goffman’s dramaturgical model is an alternative theory to other interactionists. While labelling theorists describe how the self is shaped through interaction, with the individual as the passive victim of other people’s labels, Goffman believes we actively construct our ‘self’ by manipulating other’s impression of us. He believes life is like a drama and we are all ‘actors’ with roles. People then react to you based on your roles which can be altered and are quite loose. Our aim is to carry off a convincing performance of the role we have adapted to our audience. Impression management is when we seek to present a particular image of ourselves to the audience. To do this, we must study the audience’s reaction to us and altering it to make it convincing. He uses this model to describe 2 different types of setting: Front stage - where we act out our roles and Backstage - where we act ourselves. While functionalists see roles as tightly ‘scripted’ by society, Goffman believes there is a role distance between our real self and our roles. Roles are only loosely scripted by society; therefore we have freedom of how to act them. (e.g. Some teachers are strict and some aren’t) Some roles we may also not believe in, but we play them to fool the audience, in the dramaturgical model, appearances are everything and actors seek to present themselves to their best advantage. However some criticisms include it not really being a theory, but more of a loose collection of descriptive concepts (such as labelling theory and Goffman’s model). Some interactionist theories (except Goffman’s) see our actions and identities as shaped by the way others label them - therefore, they are accused of determinism. Lastly, some actions don’t actually represent the person and instead, are just natural (e.g. Traditional action - Weber).
Phenomenology is the idea that we can never have definite knowledge of what the world outside our minds is really like - all we can know is what our sense tells us about something. Husserl believes we create the world by imposing meanings; these meanings are constructed into mental categories to help us classify and file information coming from our senses. We only obtain knowledge of the world through our mental acts of categorising and giving meanings to our experiences. The world ‘as we know it’ is a product of our own mind. Typifications refer to these shared categories which enable us to organise our experiences into a shared world of meaning. In his view, the meaning of any given experience varies according to the situation, for example, raising your hand in class and raising it at an auction. The meaning is not given by the action in itself, but by its context, due to this, meanings can become unclear and unstable, especially if people classify the meanings differently to you. Typifications are used to stabilise and clarify these meanings, by making sure we all agree on the meanings of things. However, in Schutz’s view, members of society do have a shared ‘life world’ too, where we share typifications and commonsense knowledge that we use to make sense of our experience, such as shared assumptions of what things are; this common sense knowledge creates the world. Schutz refers to this as recipe knowledge, it means something we can follow easily to achieve a goal. The social world is a shared, inter-subjective world that can only exist if everyone has shared meanings e.g. a red traffic light only means ‘stop’ because everyone agrees it does. Nevertheless, society appears to us as a real, objective thing existing outside us. Schutz uses the idea of posting a letter to a bookshop to order a book, we just have the idea that someone will carry out the job of posting the letter and providing the books. Due to receiving the book, it encourages us to adopt ‘the natural attitude’ - the belief that the social world is a solid, natural thing out there. However, for Schutz, this idea shows that everyone involved in the example had the same shared meanings, which allowed for us to cooperate and achieve the goals.
Ethnomethodology refers to the study of “a member’s knowledge of his ordinary affairs, of his own organised enterprise, where the knowledge is treated by us (as researchers) as part of some setting that makes it order-able.” Garfinkel is interested in how social order is achieve is achieved, he takes a bottom up approach, where people construct society, rather than society constructing them. Indexicality refers to “meanings that are unclear” as well as depending on the context. Indexicality is a threat to social order, as it causes difficulties in communication. However, there is a paradox here; Indexicality suggests that we can’t assume anything as fixed or clear, yet to make sense of the context, we must make a fixed idea of what it means. Reflexivity is what enables us to behave as if meanings are clear and obvious. It is the use of common sense to make sense of the meaning in context and avoid indexicality. Language is key to achieve reflexivity, as it gives what we are talking about a description and reality. However, although language gives us a sense of reality existing ‘out there’, all it does is create a set of shared meanings. They carried out an experiment to disrupt social order. Their aim was to disrupt people’s sense of order and challenge their reflexivity by undermining their assumptions about the situation. As a result the parents felt anxious and accused the students of being nasty or assumed they were ill. Garfinkel concluded that by challenging people’s taken-for-granted assumptions, the experiments show how the orderliness of everyday situations is not inevitable but can change due to the participant. Therefore social order is participant produced by members themselves. However, a criticism of ethnomethodology is that it ignores how wider structures of power and inequality affect the meanings that individuals construct. ‘Common sense knowledge’ is really just ruling class ideology, serving to maintain capitalism.

Structural theories tend to be deterministic, seeing society as something objective, while action theories tend to be voluntaristic, seeing society as the creation of its members through their subjective actions and meanings. Both these theories have bits that can be seen to be true but also bits that can be criticized. Therefore, there has been a combination of structural and action theories. Giddens’ structuration theory has a duality of structures- structure and action can’t exist without the other. We can create structures through our action (relationship structuration), but they only exist so long as they are useful to us. As language is a structure, it can constrain our behaviour, as if we wish to use language, we have to obey its rules otherwise we will not be understood. However, structure depends on action e.g. a language would no longer exist if no one used it. Structure has 2 elements: Rules - norms, customs and laws that govern and affect action and resources - both economic (raw materials, technology etc) and power over others. Rules and resources can be either reproduced or changed through human action, although our actions can change existing structures, it generally tends to reproduce them for 2 reasons: society’s rule contain a stock of knowledge about how to live our lives - when we carry out our routine activities, we tend to reproduce the existing structure of society (e.g. Shopping - pay with money). We use these rules to help us get through the activity. Moreover, we reproduce existing structures through our action, as we have a need for ontological security - need to make sure the world is stable and physically and socially as it appears. On the other hand, a criticism of Giddens is that it underestimates the power of structures to resist change. Giddens believes actors can change structures by simply deciding to do so. To conclude, there are many different ‘action’ theories to our understanding of society today. Every theory has a different view and criticism and takes upon a different understanding. However, the main ones are symbolic interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology.