Social Action Theories Flashcards
Max Weber
people can influence social structure and social structures can influence people.
Calvinist’s - they controlled by God as they try to please him showing religion controlling them however their individual action caused the industrial revolution and started capitalism.
> people behaviour has become less influenced by emotions and irrational thinking and their decisions are more orientated and rational now.
RATIONAL ACTION: thought carefully about how a goal can best be achieved and acting on it.
TRADITIONAL ACTION: individuals believe in ways as that is how it has always been done, no clear goals and no rational actions.
AFFECTUAL ACTION: actions which express emotions - crying out of grief and violence from anger are examples.
In his study of ‘bureaucratic organisations’ he saw how other social structures increasingly squeeze human creativity and freedom.
> routines, formality and inflexibility of routines acts as an ‘iron cage’ - while tis allows capitalism to thrive, it is ironically seen to be ‘irrational’ in Weber’s view.
> ‘individual behaviour’ shapes organisations - both structures and social actions are important therefore.
> secularisation in many ways is the result of people increasingly thinking logically, scientifically and rationally - this shows how a change in people’s behaviour can have a huge impact in shaping and controlling society’s institutions
EVAL of Weber
attempt to sit on the fence is too simplistic - hard for individual behaviour and social structures have the same control on society and equal control over each other.
is human behaviour always rational: some behaviour occurs out of emotion for example violence comes from anger.
Symbolic interaction
like other micro, bottom-up approaches - symbolic interactionists believe that individuals ‘create’ their social worlds by acting and behaving in certain ways during their interactions with other people
Their behaviours are based upon shared meanings. These are shared through culture, language etc. Human behaviour is far too complex to assume we are merely ‘puppets’ on society’s strings.
This calls for a detailed examination of how people behave.
George Hebert Mead
in vast majority of cases, people’s behaviour is a ‘reaction of the ways in which we interpret the behaviour of other people’
> persons body language, facial expressions, clothes appearance help our brain to form impressions and judgements.
> we ‘make sense’ of people’s behaviour by placing ourselves in their shoes - we ‘read’ a person based on our own standards.
> our sense of self is acquired by thinking about how other people see us - this becomes a ‘looking-glass self’
> a process of ‘role-taking’ allows us to see ourselves through the eyes of other people.
> when we think about ourselves, we ‘imagine’ what others see - this becomes a ‘master status’ which helps create a form of self.
Labelling theory
labels can help form the impression on has on them self - this is called the ‘looking-glass self’ - this influences and shapes a person’s identity.
> the dominant label is known as the ‘master status’ - this label overrides all other labels given.
> ‘self-fulfilling prohecies’ follow the ‘master status’
> small scale, interpretivist research methods are used to find out why people behave the way they do.
EVAL - it is deterministic - it assumes the label has total power on any individual, people can reject labels all the time if they really wanted to.
Symbolic interaction EVAL
exaggerates free will: they are accused of ignoring power that society’s institutions have over people’s behaviour.
accused of ignoring how deep-rooted structures in a society’s culture and history shape and influence people’s behaviour.
phenomenology and ethnomethodology
