Essay On Action Theories

Action Theories
MAX WEBER: SOCIAL ACTION THEORY: * Types of action: * Instrumentally rational action= the actor calculates the most efficient way to achieve a goal. E.g. maximise profits by lowering workers wages * Value-rational action = an action towards a goal that has no way of being calculated, e.g. praying to go to heaven * Traditional action= customary routine with no conscious thought put into it * Affectual action= action that expresses emotion e.g. weeping from grief * Evaluation: * Alfred Schutz says it’s too individualistic and doesn’t explain shared nature of meanings * Some actions may be hard to categorise. E.g. Trobrian Islanders give gifts to neighbouring islands, but is it a traditional action or is it instrumentally rational to form trade links? * Weber’s ‘verteshen’ or empathetic understanding can’t be achieved as we will never actually be in the other person’s place to understand their motives

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM: * G.H. Mead: * Humans respond to the world via giving meanings to things, and attach symbols to the world * Before we know how to respond to a stimulus we must interpret it’s meaning * Animals act instinctively and don’t decide what to do consciously * Mead says humans take the role of the other in order to interpret meanings * We first did this through imitative play in our childhood * Later, we become to see ourselves from the point of view of the wider community or generalised other * To function as members of society, we have to see ourselves as we are seen via shared symbols * Herbert Blumer: * Our actions are based on the meanings we give to situations and events * The meanings arise from the interaction process and are subject to change to an extent * The meanings we give to situations are from the interpretive procedures we use * This contrasts with functionalism who sees the individual passively responding to the systems needs * Labelling theory: * The labelling theory describes how the self is shaped via interaction * A definition for something is a label for it and if we believe something to be true, it will affect how we act. E.g. a teacher labels a pupil as naughty, she will act differently towards him by punishment * The looking glass self, by Cooley, is the idea of how we develop our self-concept. Others act as a looking glass and we see ourselves according to how they respond to us. Through this, a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs whereby we come to be what others see us as * Goffman’s dramaturgical model: * Goffman describes how we actively construct our ‘self’ by manipulating people’s impressions of us * We seek to present a particular image of ourselves to our audiences * We must study how the audience responds and we monitor our performance to present a convincing role * Evaluation: * Focuses on face to face interactions and ignores wider social structures, e.g. class inequality * Ignores the origin of labels * Can’t explain consistent patterns in people’s behaviour * Not all action is meaningful * Ethnomethodologists say it ignores how actors create meanings * In interactions, everyone plays the audience and the actor, which is a limitation of Goffman’s theory

PHENOMENOLOGY: * Husserl argues that the world only makes sense because we impose meaning and order on it by constructing mental categories that we use to classify and ‘file’ information coming from our senses * Schutz’s phenomenological sociology: * We share categories and concepts with the rest of society. Categories are called typifications. * Typifications let us organise experiences into a shared world of meaning * This makes it possible for us to communicate and cooperate * E.g. raising one’s arm in an action/classroom has different meanings * Schutz says that members of society have a shared ‘life world’- shared

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