Action Theories

• Structural Theories- Top Down

  •Also known as a macro orpositivist perspective•Gives an overall view of society,as if looking down from above•From the top-down perspective, you can understand:–How many people there are–What people are doing (social action)•Linked to positivism and quantitative data–
• Action Theories- Bottom Up


  •Also known as a micro or aninterpretivist perspective•Gives a detailed view on ‘pockets’ of society, as if being on the ground•From the bottom-up perspective, you can understand:–Why people do things (social meaning)–How people do these things•Linked to interpretivism and qualitative data
• Main Features Of Social Action Theories

  Society and social structures/ institutions are socially                                 constructed (family does not exist externally to our minds,People have free will to do things and form their own identities,Prefer to research on small groups of individuals (micro),People’s behaviour is driven by their beliefs, meaning and emotions gives to a situation
• Action theory states that people’s behaviour and life-chances are not determined by their social background.
• Instead, it emphasises the role of the active individual and interactions between people in shaping personal identity and in turn the wider society. In order to understand human action we need to uncover the individual’s own motives for acting.
• Weber Classifyes Action Into 4 Diff Types

  (1) Instrumentally rational action - the actor calculates the most efficient means of achieving a given goal.

  (2) Value rational action - action towards a goal that is desirable for one’s own sake

  (3) Traditional action - customs, habitual actions, which are often automatic

  (4) Affectual action - action which expresses emotion
• Level of cause = (objective) structural factors that shape people’s behaviour.
• Level of meaning = (subjective) meaning that the individual attaches to their action.
• Dramaturgical model

  Where as labelling sees people as passive victims of their labels, Goffman believes people use ‘presentation of self’ and ‘impression management’ to control how we come across, as well as the roles that we play.
• Dramaturgical analogy – life is like a stage….


  ●As in the theatre, roles are not fixed. People can interpret their roles in many different ways●People are aware they are doing this and life is a process of ‘self-presentation’●We use props, stages etc. to control how we appear to others. This is made possible by our ability to see ourselves as other see us.●Asylums – participant observation – ‘Institutionalized’, ‘disculturalisation’,  ‘notion of self’
• Taking The Role Of Others- Mead

  Mead believes that humans are different from animals, because our behaviour is more than just instinct, because of the meaning we give things.

  Crucially, we gain this meaning through taking the role of the other. As children, we do this through seeing ourselves through the eyes of those close to us, like our parents. As we get older, we begin to see ourselves from anybody and everybody else - the generalised other.
• PHENOMENOLOGY- Schutz

  Schutz says that the social world is experienced by us through our senses. For example, we experience someone by meeting them, and Schutz believes we give them a typification, which helps provide order to the world.

  He also believes that the social world is only possible when people share the same meanings. The fact that the social world appears real to us shows that this is working!
• ETHNOMETHODOLOGY

  Garfinkel believes that social order is created from the bottom up. He believes that a sociologist’s job is to uncover the rules that govern our lives, which are sometimes hidden or taken-for-granted.

  Indexicality = meanings are always unclear, and this is a threat to social order

  Reflexivity = the way we stop indexicality from occurring, through using commonsense knowledge to construct meaning.
• •Ethnomethodology basically analyses the way that people, as rational actors, make sense of their everyday world by employing practical reasoning rather than formal logic.
• •Essentially, a phenomenon is something that we can experience through our senses.