A Level Sociologyaqusociology.weebly.com/.../39117217/theory_-_social_action_bookl…  · Web viewSocial action theory – Max Weber: Weber was one of the founding fathers of sociology.

A Level Sociology

Unit 3: Theory and Methods

Topic 3

Social Action Theory

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Social Action Theory

Objectives: Know the difference between structural and action theories Know the main types of action theory and understand the differences between them Be able to evaluate the strengths and limitations of action theories

Introduction: As we have discussed earlier, we can divide sociological theories in to two broad types: structural theories and action theories.

Action theories start at the micro level. They are bottom up approaches that focus on the actions and interactions of individuals. Action theories are more voluntaristic – they see individuals as having free will and choice. Our actions and ideas are not determined by society. Rather we possess agency – the ability to act as free agents, creating and shaping society through our choices, meanings and actions.

The four main action theories we will look at are:

Social action theory Symbolic interactionism Ethnomethodology Phenomenology

Although they all emphasise action or interaction, they differ in how they see society and the individual.

Overview:

Social action theory He saw both structural and action approaches as necessary for a full understanding of society. He argues that an adequate sociological explanation involves the level of cause and the level of meaning.

Symbolic interactionism It focuses on our ability to create the social world through our actions and interactions and it sees these interactions as based on the meanings we give to situations. We convey these meanings through symbols, especially language. Mead, Blumer, labelling theory and Goffman are all symbolic interactionists.

Ethnomethodology An approach developed by Garfinkel. It rejects the idea of an external social structure and sees society as a social construct. He discusses notions of common sense knowledge to achieve as sense of order.

Phenomenology An approach developed by Schutz. He argues that we make sense of the world through shared concepts or categories called typifications. Meanings are potentially unstable and unclear, but typifications clarify and stabilise them, allowing us to communicate and cooperate.

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Social action theory – Max Weber:

Weber was one of the founding fathers of sociology. Weber saw both structural and action approaches as necessary for a full understanding of human behaviour. He argued that an adequate sociological explanation had two levels:

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

Unless we account for both of these levels, our explanation will be incomplete or false.

However, there are an infinite number of subjective meaning that actors may give to their actions. Weber attempts to classify them in to four types, based on their meanings for the actor:

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

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

3. Traditional action – involves customary, routine or habitual actions. The actor does it because they have always done it

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Using page 225 summarise Weber’s work on the Protestant ethic

4. Affectual action – is action that expresses emotion – for example, violence sparked by anger. Weber sees affectual action as important in religious and political movements with charismatic leaders who attract a following based on emotional appeal

Symbolic interactionism:

MEAD

Symbols versus instincts – our behaviour is not shaped by fixed, pre-programmed instincts. Instead we respond to the world by giving meanings to the things that are significant to us. We create and inhabit a world of meanings. We do this by attaching symbols to the world. Unlike animals we do not simply respond to a stimulus in a pre-determined way. Instead we have an interpretive phase – before we know how to respond to the stimulus, we have to interpret its meanings

Taking the role of the other – we manage other people’s meanings by taking on 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 other develops through our social interaction. We take on the role of significant others (eg parents) and later we come to see ourselves from the point of view of the wider community – the generalised other.

BLUMER

He developed Mead’s key ideas and identified three key principles:

1. Our actions are based on the meanings we give to situations, events, people etc. Unlike animals, our actions are not based on automatic responses to stimuli

2. These meanings arise from the interaction process. They are not fixed at the outset of interaction, but are negotiable and changeable to some extent

3. The meanings we give to situations are the result of the interpretive procedures we use – especially taking on the role of other

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In what way would a dog and a human differ in their responses to seeing a burger/food that wasn’t theirs on a table?

This contrasts strongly with functionalist views, who see individuals as puppets, passively responding to the system’s needs. Socialisation and social control ensure that individuals conform to society’s norms and perform their roles in fixed and predictable ways. By contrast, Blumer argues that although our action is partly predictable because we internalise the expectations of others, is not completely fixed. There is always room for negotiation and choice.

LABELLING THEORY

Develops interactionist theory to look at many key areas in education, health and crime and deviance:

The definition of the situation – this is a label. Thomas argues that ‘if people define a situation as real, then it will have real consequences’. If a teacher labels a student as a troublemaker then labelling theorists argue that this student will become a trouble maker

The looking glass self – Cooley – we develop a self-concept (an idea of who we are) based on our ability to take on the role of other. In interactions, by taking the role of the other, we come to see ourselves as they see us. In other words a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs

Career – Becker uses this concept to identify how individuals take on a status based on a given label and this becomes their master status and shapes our interactions with others

GOFFMAN’S DRAMATURGICAL MODEL

Labelling theory discusses how the self is shaped through social interaction. Goffman describes how we actively construct our ‘self’ by manipulating other people’s impression of us. He describes this as a dramaturgical model because he uses an analogy with drama as a framework for analysing social interaction. We are all ‘actors’ acting out scripts, using props, resting backstage between performances. We present ourselves to audiences and so on.

Impression management – we see to present ourselves in a favourable light, 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 good image. As in the theatre, there is a front stage where we act out our roles, while back stage we can step out of our roles and be ‘ourselves’.

Roles – Goffman’s views 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. Goffman rejects this view, he argues there is a gap or role distance between our real self and our roles.

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How do people manage their impressions on social media?

Evaluation:

1. It is a loose collection of theories of descriptive concepts rather than an explanatory theory

2. It ignores wider social structures such as class and inequality and it fails to explain the origins of labels. Similarly, it cannot explain the consistent patterns we observe in people’s behaviour. Functionalists would argue that these patterns are the result of norms dictating behaviour

3. Labelling theory is quite deterministic and it assumes individuals are passive victims of labels and cannot change the label that is attached to them

4. Ethnomethodologists argue that interactionism is correct in focusing on actors’ meaning, but it fails to explain how actors create meanings

Phenomenology:

An interpretivist approach developed by Schutz. He argues that we make sense of the world through shared concepts or categories called ‘typifications’. Meanings are potentially unstable and unclear, but typifications clarify and stabilise them, allowing us to communicate and cooperate. In doing so, they give the world the appearance of being natural, orderly and real, but in fact it is simply a construction produced by typifications.

SCHUTZ’S PHENOMENOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGY:

He argues that the categories and concepts we use are not unique to ourselves – rather, we share them with other members of society:

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 given experience varies according to its social context. For example, raising your arm in class means something completely different to raising your arm in an auction. The meaning is not given by the action in itself, but by its context. For this reason, meanings are potentially unclear and unstable – especially if others classify the action in a different way than oneself. Fortunately, however, typifications stabilise and clarify meaning by ensuring we are all speaking the same language. Without shared typifications, social order would become impossible. He calls this shared, common sense knowledge – recipe knowledge. Like a recipe, we follow it without thinking too much.

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This common-sense knowledge is not simply knowledge about the world – it is the world. For Schutz the social world is a shared, inter-subjective world that can only exist when we share the same meanings. For example, a red traffic light only means stop because we all agree that it does.

Ethnomethodology:

This emerged in the 1960s, mainly the work of Garfinkel, whose ideas stem from the work of Schutz and phenomenology. He rejects the very idea of society as a real objective structure out there. He views social order as being created from the bottom up. Order and meaning are not achieved because people are puppets whose strings are being pulled by the social system, as functionalists believe. Instead, social order is an accomplishment – something that members of society actively construct in everyday life using their common-sense knowledge. Ethnomethodology (EM) attempts to discover how we do this by studying people’s methods of making sense of the world.

EM differs from interactionism, because interactionists are interested in the effects of meanings, whereas EM is interested in the methods or rules that we use to produce the meanings in the first place.

Indexicality – nothing has a fixed meaning, everything depends on context. Indexicality is a threat to social order because its meanings are inherently unclear or unstable. Indexicality suggests that we cannot take any meaning for granted as fixed or clear, yet in everyday life, that is what we do most of the time.

Reflexivity – this is what enables us to behave as if meanings are clear and obvious. We use common sense knowledge in everyday interactions to construct a sense of meaning and order and top stop indexicality from occurring – this is similar to Schutz’s typifications.

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RE-CAP – Cicourel was a phenomenologist – what did he discuss?

Use page 230 to summarise suicide and reflexivity

Structure and Action:

Structural theories – deterministic, see society as something objective, existing outside individuals and constraining them

Action theories – voluntaristic, seeing society as the creation of its members through their subjective meanings

Some sociologists have sought to unify both theories.

GIDDENS’ STRUCTURATION THEORY

According to Giddens, there is a duality of structure. By this Giddens means that structure and action 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 structuration. For example, a language would not exist id no one used it.

1. Reproduction of structures through agency - structure has two elements:

Rules – the norms, customs and laws that govern or affect action Resources – both economic (raw materials, technology) and power over others

Rules and resources can be either reproduced or changed through human action. However, although our action can change existing structures, it generally tends to reproduce them. This is because society’s rules contain a stock of knowledge about how to live our lives. We also 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.

2. Changes of structures though agency – however, despite this tendency to maintain the structure of society, action or agency can also change it. This can occur in two ways:

We reflexively monitor our action. That is we constantly reflect on our actions and their results, and we can deliberately choose a new course of action

Our actions may change the world, but not always as intended. They may produce unintended consequences, producing changes that were not part of our goal

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EVALUATION – 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 and resources

Methodology:

Interactionism rejects positivist approaches and the search to find laws or causes of human behaviour. Because it seeks to understand people’s meanings it suggests more subjective approaches and uses interpretivist methods. Participant observation is a favoured method as well as other qualitative approaches.

We can give examples of the sort of studies interactionists do by looking back at our work in education, crime and suicide.

Give examples below of three key studies:

1.

2.

3.

Top tip: for exam questions you must examine the relationship between theory and methods. You must include the contribution of interpretivist methodology.

Quick check questions:

1. What are the main differences between structural and action perspectives?

2. Identify the four types of action classified by Weber

3. Why is Mead’s interactionism symbolic?

4. Explain what is meant by a dramaturgical model

5. Suggest two examples of techniques someone would use for impression management

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6. Explain the difference between indexicality and reflexivity

Concept grid:

KEY WORD DEFINITION Structure

Action

Interpretive phase

Significant other

Generalised other

Labelling

Dramaturgical model

Impression management

Typifications

Indexicality

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Reflexivity

Exam technique:

Item A

Action approaches reject the idea that we are simply ‘puppets’ whose behaviour is determined by tightly scripted roles imposed on us by society. Instead, they start from the assumption that we create and shape society through our choices and actions. For example, interactionists argue that we create the social world through our interactions with one another, based on the meanings we give to situations. Similarly, ethnomethodologists argue that we use common-sense knowledge to construct a set of shared meanings.

However, critics argue that action approaches ignore the influence of wider social structures.

Applying material from Item A and your knowledge, evaluate the contribution of action approaches to our understanding of social behaviour (20 marks)

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