1. Social Action Theories

2. Social Action Theories are seen as ‘micro’ bottom up theories that focus on the interactions, and actions of individuals. They are more voluntaristic and see people as having free will and choice.
They argue that people’s actions are not determined by society, and individuals are free agents, creating and shaping society through their choices, meanings and actions

3. Max Weber
Initially Weber was influenced by Structural Theories, but his work evolved to combine structure and action approaches to develop a full understanding of behaviour. He saw this as having two levels
The level of cause – explaining the objective structural factors that shape people’s behaviour
The level of meaning – understanding the subjective meaning that individuals attach to behaviour

4. Recapping Weber’s work on Calvinism, identify
The Level of Cause
Protestant Reformation produced new belief system Calvinism which promoted a new work ethic
b. The level of meaning
Work took on a new meaning for Calvinists and they felt that they had a calling to glorify God’s name through his labours, and this motivated them to work hard

5. Types of Action
Weber classifies actions into four types –
Instrumentally rational action - where an actor
calculates the most efficient means of achieving a
given goal e.g. a capitalist paying low wages will maximise profit
2. Value-rational action – an action towards a goal which an actor sees as desirable for its own sake e.g. a believer worshipping God to get to heaven (hard to know if this is effective)

6. 2. Traditional action – involves customary, routine or habitual actions (not necessarily rational)
3. Affectual action – action expressing emotion or anger e.g. grief (seen as important in religious movements for attracting followers)

7. Applying Weber’s typology
Which of the above categories of action apply to the following examples?
Soldier laying down is life for his/her country
Slapping someone on bus after being teased by them
Maximising income by selling drugs
Adopting Strict rights to Succession in pre-primitive societies

8. Evaluation of Weber
Strength (AO3) – Weber corrects the over-emphasis placed on structure by the Functionalists and Marxists, drawing attention to the need to understanding actor’s subjective meanings if sociologists want to adequately explain individual’s actions.
Criticisms (AO3) –
Schutz argues that Weber’s view of action is too simplistic and cannot explain the shared nature of meanings e.g. when a person at an auction raises his arm to make a bid, Weber doesn’t explain how others present would give this action the same meaning.

9. Weber’s typology of action is difficult to apply
Weber’s typology of action is difficult to apply. For example, in the Trobriand Islands, individuals exchange gifts called ‘kula’ with neighbouring islands can be seen as traditional action, because it has been done like this over generations but also instrumentally rational action because it’s a good way of establishing trading links
Weber advocated the use of verstehen; however, the researcher cannot be totally sure that they have truly understood the other’ person’s motives.

10. Symbolic Interaction (The Chicago School of Sociology)
This theory focuses on the individual’s ability to create the social world through actions and interactions based on meanings given to situations. These meanings are conveyed through symbols especially language.
G.H.Mead (AO2)
Mead argues that social behaviour is not pre- programmed and fixed. Individuals are responding to the world by giving meanings to the things that are seen as significant. This is done by attaching symbols to the world. A symbol is something that stands for or represents something else.

11. He suggests that when an individual experiences stimulus they have to interpret its meaning, and hence they choose to make the appropriate response.
For example, if someone shakes their fist, the receiver must interpret the meaning, is the person being angry or is it a joke?
This is in part done by putting oneself in the position of the person they are interacting with. The ability to take the role of the other develops through imitative play from childhood.

12. Seeing ourselves from the point of the wider community is known as the generalised other.
By developing the ability to see ourselves as others see us, means that we become conscious of the ways of acting that others require of us.

13. Herbert Blumer (AO2)
Blumer identified three key principles of Mead’s idea:
Actions are based on meanings given to situations, events, people - they are not automatic reactions to stimuli.
Meanings arise out of the interaction process (they are negotiable and interchangeable)
Meanings given are based on an interpretation
of the individual’s role.

14. Whilst Structural theories see an individual’s behaviour as puppet like and passive, Blumer suggests that action is partly predictable because people internalise the expectations of others.
However, there is always some room for explanation and choice.

15. Labelling Theory
Three key concepts underpin labelling theory
The definition of the situation: A definition of a situation is a label for something. This may then illicit a particular response to the situation. E.g. the teacher calls a boy ‘troublesome’, and consequently acts differently towards him.

16. The Looking-glass self: A person’s self-concept arises out of the way others look at the individual. The label given by others becomes part of the individual’s self-concept. E.g. an individual may come to see themselves as mentally ill if defined as such by psychiatrists and relatives.

17. Career: Labelling theorists like Becker apply this concept to groups such as medical students and those suffering from paranoia. After being labelled the label takes on a master status and the individual finds it difficult to reintegrate back into society.

18. Irving Goffman (AO2)
Although labelling often sees labelling as the passive victim of others labels, Goffman describes how individuals actively construct the concept of self by manipulating others’ impressions.
The approach is often known as dramaturgy, as he uses drama as a framework for describing social interaction. Goffman suggests that all actors are acting out scripts, using props that are presented to audiences.
The aim is to carry out a convincing performance of the role a person has adopted – just like an actor in a Shakespearean play persuades the audience that they are playing the role of Hamlet

19. The two dramaturgical concepts are ‘the presentation of self’ and ‘impression management’.
In terms of impression Management, social actors adjust their language, tone of voice and gestures and facial expressions to convince the audience of the role they are playing

20. Evaluation of Symbolic Interactionism (AO3)
This perspective ignores the wider social structures such as class inequality, and fails to explain the origin of labels. It does not explain the patterns seen in behaviour
Interactionism fails to explain how not all action is meaningful, i.e. many actions are routine and performed unconsciously by actors. Similarly, in the case of Goffman, his work does not explain how actors and audience behaviour is improvised and unrehearsed.

21. Phenomenology
In its broadest sense, 'phenomenology' refers to a person's perception of the meaning of an event, as opposed to the event as it exists externally to (outside of) that person.
Phenomenologists focus on what people experience in regard to some phenomenon or other and how they interpret those experiences.
A phenomenological research study is a study that attempts to understand people's perceptions, perspectives and understandings of a particular situation (or phenomenon).
In other words, a phenomenological research study tries to answer the question 'What is it like to experience such and such?'.
By looking at multiple perspectives of the same situation, a researcher can start to make some generalisations of what something is like as an experience from the 'insider's' perspective.

22. Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl argues that to make sense of the world, people impose meaning and order by constructing categories, e.g. four legged furniture to eat off enables people to identify a particular set of sensory data as a table.

23. Schutz calls these shared categories typifications, and enable people to organise their experiences into a shared world of meaning.
For Schutz the meaning of any experience varies according to the social context.
ACTIVITY
What is happening in the following examples
A man and woman go to church, he wears a morning suit and she is dressed in a long white dress. There are 50 people at the church to watch the couple who interact with the vicar to exchange vows about their future lives together. A friend of the couple brings along rings for both of them to share ___________

24. Schutz refers to the common sense knowledge that people use to make sense of their experiences. It includes assumptions about the way things are, what certain situations mean and what their motivations are. Schutz calls this ‘recipe knowledge’.
To the individual the world appears to be a real and objective thing, existing outside of us.

25. Ethnomethodology
Harold Garfinkel rejects the idea that there is a real objective structure ‘out there’. Whilst Parsons argues that there is a shared value consensus, a top down approach, Garfinkel sees social order as a result of a bottom up approach; something that people actively construct in everyday life drawing on their commonsense knowledge.
However, ethnomethodologists differ from Interactionists because they are more interested the methods or rules through which we make sense of the world.

26. Indexicality
Indexicality suggests that while people cannot take any meaning for granted or as fixed, in everyday life this is, in fact, exactly what people do.
Reflexivity, however, proposes that people use a commonsense knowledge of everyday interactions to construct a sense of meaning and order.

27. Field Experiments
Garfinkel encouraged his students to carry out so-called
breaching experiments that disrupt people sense of order and challenge their reflexivity by undermining their assumptions about the situation. E.g. his students were asked to behave as lodgers in their home. This disturbed reality as parents thought that they were being nasty, or assumed they were ill.
These experiments show how the orderliness of situations is
not inevitable but an accomplishment of those who take part in them, i.e. social order is produced by participant produced by members of society.

28. Evaluation of Garfinkel (AO3)
Craib sees EM’s arguments as trivial, suggesting that they spend a long time uncovering taken for granted rules that are no surprise to anyone.
EM describes the existence of wider society seeing it as shared fiction, yet by analysing how members apply general rules or norms to specific contexts, it is assuming that there is a structure of norms behind these contexts.
EM ignores the wider structures of power and inequality e.g. Marxists would argue that commonsense knowledge is just ruling-class ideology.

29. Structuration and Giddens
According to Giddens, there is a duality of structure – that means that structure and action are two sides of the same coin: neither can exist without the other. Through action people produce the social structure, while these structures are what make the actions possible.
He calls this structuration.

30. For example, individuals may use language to communicate, but the rules of language must be obeyed if communication can take place. Language is produced and reproduced through time.
New words added to the Oxford Dictionary e.g. ‘binge- watch, vape, cray, ‘bank of Mum and Dad…… any more examples? __________________________________________________________________________ _________________

31. For Giddens structure has two elements
Rules – norms, customs and laws of social action
Resources – both economic and power over others
Rules and Resources can be reproduced or changed by human interaction. For example, obeying the law reproduces the existing structure, while inventing new technology may change it

32. Giddens argues that people reproduce structures because they feel the need for the world, both physical and social, as they want to world to be orderly and predictable.
However, people can change the social structure through agency or action, i.e. deliberately choosing a new course of action or there may be unintended consequences from actions e.g. Calvinists adopted the Protestant work ethic not to establish capitalism but work to the glory of God.

33. Evaluation of Giddens (AO3)
Although Giddens makes an attempt to overcome the division between structure and action, his approach has been criticised for underestimating the capacity of structures to resist social change. For example, slaves may wish to abolish slavery but don’t have the power to do so.
According to Craib, Giddens’ ‘structuration’ isn’t really a theory at all, because it doesn’t explain exactly what happens in society. He fails to unite structure and action, and does not explain how his theory relates to the economy and state.

34. Possible Questions
Outline and explain two concepts that symbolic interactionist use to understand everyday life (10 Marks)
Applying material from Item A and your knowledge, evaluate the contributions of action approaches to an understanding of social behaviour’ (20 marks)