1. Social Action Theories
A2 Sociology
Social Action Theories

2. Pair work Working in pairs: Identify the signs on the sheet
What do these signs stand for?
What might the consequences be of misinterpreting these signs?

3. Recapping key concepts
Socialisation
Culture and identity
Power and Stratification
Social differentiation

4. What do social action theorists do?
Focus on individual and small group behaviour
Are interested in the meaning people make of social contexts
How people define their identities and are defined through other people’s perceptions of their behaviour
How people define situations that they are in

5. G.H Mead/social order
Influenced by pragmatism and behavioural psychology
Meaningful acts
Gestures
Constant interplay
Intelligence – fitting in with others expectations, reading symbols
Reflexive behaviour

6. GH Mead and ‘the self’ Every individual has a ‘self’
The self is a synthesis of internal processes and the reaction of others
The ‘I’ – how you see yourself
The ‘Me’ your concept based on other’s interpretations

7. Erving Goffman Very important social theorist
Interested in the meaning of social action
No objective reality, merely how we interpret social action through context
Social situations are open

8. Erving Goffman Dramaturgy – The social world as a play Context
Self presentation/Impression management (Masks)
Front region
Back region
NVC - props
Idealisation
Performance teams

9. Pair work Complete the table you have been given
How might self presentation work in these contexts?
(A) Nightclub
(B) Working in a supermarket
(C) At a funeral

10. Individual work
Outline five evaluative points of symbolic interactionist theory
p246

11. Another branch/ Phenomenology
Alfred Schutz (1967)
No objective world
Intrapersonal ‘typifications’ make social order possible (‘common-sense’)
Meaning of ‘action’ is contextual
Recipe knowledge

12. Phenomenology/The natural attitude
Social order based on expectation of cooperation
‘Evidence’ of external world comes in the form of others meeting expectations

13. Berger and Luckmann (1971)
Outline Berger and Luckmann’s three criticisms of Shutz’s phenomenology
Page 248

14. Another branch of social action theory
Ethn omet hod ologyis asoci olog icaldis cipline wh ichstu diesways inw ich peo plemak esen se o fthe wor lddisp layt hisun derst an dingtoo the rs andp roduce themu tuallys har edso cia lor derinw hichth eylive thete rmw asin iti ally coined byh ar old gar fink elin 1954
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

15. Ethnomethodology Garfinkel (1967)
People’s (ethno) methodology (methods)
People create society from the ‘bottom up’
Social reality is an active construction
Ethnomethodolgists interested in how we make sense of the world
Unlike S.I are interested in where meaning comes from not the meaning itself

16. Ethnomethodology/Indexicality
Indexical signs – signs that refer to something else
Indexicality – not being able to understand the meaning
No meaning can be taken for granted
We use ‘common-sense meanings’ and language to give ‘meaning’ to a situation
Breaching experiments
Social order as continually remade

17. Individual activity
Outline 5 evaluative points of ethnomethodology

18. Individual activity/Faking it
Watch the first 15 minutes of faking it
Fill out the sheet you have been given to illustrate your understanding of social action theories.

19. Complete the questions on social action theory

20. Integrated Approaches
“We are both the bearers and producers of social structure”.
- Giddens (1985)

21. Weber (1904) Influenced by both idealism and materialism
Example The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism

22. Giddens (1986) Structuration
Invented ‘third way’
High influential in New Labour
Behaviour is both constrained and enabled by social structure
The structure provides a framework of norms, values, laws etc – social order
Structure undergoes change when it outlives usefulness

23. Examples of changes in Laws AO2
Gay marriage (2014)
Divorce Act 1969
Equal Pay Act (1970)
Race Relations Act (1976)
Disablity discrimination Act (2000)
Don’t forget countless other shifts in ‘normative behaviour’

24. Individual activity
Outline three evaluative points of ‘structuration theory’