Action Theories
Action theories are micro level, bottom up approaches that focus on the actions and interactions of individuals. Actions theories see individuals as having free will and choice. Our actions and ideas are not determined by society. Rather
we have the ability to act as free agents, creating and shaping society through our choices, meanings and actions.
There are 4 main actions theories, they differ in how far they see a role for structural explanations of behaviour.
Weber’s Social Action Theory
Symbolic Interactionism (G.H. Mead)
Ethnomethodology
Weber saw both structural and action theories as
This theory focuses on our actions and interactions, it sees
Ethnomethodology is based on the same principles are phenomenology. This argues that we can never have a
necessary to develop a full understanding of human
these interactions as based on the meaning we give the
definitive knowledge of what the world outside our minds is really like ‘in itself’ – all we can know is what our senses
behaviour. An adequate explanation involves two
situations. We convey these meanings through symbols,
tell us about it. Therefore ethnomethodologists reject the very idea of society as a real objective structure ‘out
levels:
especially language.
there’.
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The level of cause – explaining the
Mead observed that, unlike animals, our behaviour is not
Garfinkle believes that social order is created from the bottom up. Order and meaning are not achieved because
structural factors that shape people’s
shaped by fixed, pre-programmed instincts. Instead we
people are ‘puppets’ whose strings are pulled by their social system, as functionalists believe. Instead, social order is
behaviour (objective)
an accomplishment – something that members of society actively construct in everyday life using their
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The level of meaning – understanding the respond to the world by giving meanings to the things that
are significant to us. In effect, we create and inhabit a world
commonsense knowledge. EM attempts to discover how we do this by studying people’s methods of making sense
subjective meaning that individuals
of meanings. We do this by attaching symbols to the world.
of the world.
attach to their actions.
This can be applied to unemployment. The
structural factors that cause unemployment in the
UK at the moment are the economic downturn of
2008 and post-industrialisation. (The fact that we
buy in services and goods from foreign countries at
cheaper prices). The level of meaning for this would
be that people who are unemployed lack self-worth,
confidence and motivation to succeed.
Unlike animals, we do not simply respond to a stimulus in an
automatic way. Instead an interpretive phase comes
between the stimulus and out response to it – before we
know how to respond to the stimulus, we have to interpret
its meaning.
Mead illustrates this with an example. When a dog snarls as
another, the snarl acts as a direct stimulus to which the
second dog responds instinctively, automatically adopting a
defensive posture. There is not conscious interpretation by
the dog of the other’s actions. However, if a person shakes a
fist at another. They are using a symbol (with a variety of
possible meaning). To understand what is going on, the
person must interpret the meaning of this symbol. Are they
angry? Joking? Victorious? Only then can the second person
respond appropriately.
How do we manage to interpret others’ meaning? We do
this by taking the role of the other – putting ourselves in the
place of the other person and seeing ourselves as us. Our
ability to take the role of the other develops through social
interaction. We first do this as young children through
imitative play when we take on the role of significant others
such as parents and learn to see ourselves as they see us.
Later, we come to see ourselves from the wider community
– the generalised other.
An application of symbolic interactionism is labelling theory.
Developed initially by H Becker it has been used widely in
Education and Deviance. We all label people and objects.
Those with power are able to label someone, and make
others accept that label. Labelling of humans can lead to a
self-fulfilling prophecy. If the label is especially damaging, it
can become a master status.
NB: Elaborate this point with your own example of labelling
from either education or crime and deviance.
This is also where EM differs from interactionism. While interactionists are interested in the effect of meaning (for
example the effects of labelling), EM is interested in the methods or rules that we use to produce the meanings in
the first place.
Ethnomethodologists believe that the meaning of any given experience varies according to its social context. For
example, raising your arm means one thing in class and quite another at an auction. The meaning is not given by the
action in itself but the context in which it occurred. For this reason, meanings are potentially unclear and unstable –
especially if others classify action in a different way.
EM sees all meanings as potentially unclear – this is known as indexicality. Nothing has a fixed meaning, everything
depends on its context. Indexicality is a clear threat to social order because if meanings are inherently unclear or
unstable, communication and cooperation become difficult and social relationships begin to break.
For Garfinkle, what enables us to behave as if meaning are clear and obvious is reflexity. Reflexity refers to the fact
that we use commonsense knowledge in everyday interactions to construct sense of meaning and order and stop
indexicality occurring.
Garfinkle and his students sought to demonstrate the nature of social order by a series of so-called ‘breaching
experiments’. For example, they acted as lodgers in their own families – being polite, avoiding getting personal etc.
The aim was to disrupt people’s sense of order and challenge their reflexity by undermining their assumptions about
the situation. For example, parents of students who behaved as lodgers became bewildered, anxious and
embarrassed or angry. They accused the students of being nasty and assumed they were ill. Garfinkle concluded that
by challenging people’s taken for granted assumptions, the experiments show how the orderliness of everyday
situations is not inevitable but is actually an accomplishment of those who take part in them.
This can be applied to Atkinson’s study of Suicide. A potential suicide case can be an example of indexicality as the
meaning of the death is unclear. (Is it murder or suicide? Why did they commit suicide etc?) Atkinson found
coroners look for primary clues. e.g. type of death and secondary clues e.g. biography of the deceased when
investigating suspicious deaths. They use reflexity by putting the actions in the context of the situation. (Was there a
note? Was there signs of a struggle?) However, coroners use different criteria in classifying particular acts as
suicide. He concluded that coroners are a major source of bias in official suicide statistics. He maintains that
variations in suicide rates between and within societies may simply reflect the different ways in which coroners go
about categorising suspicious deaths.
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A strength of Weber’s approach to
sociology is that it takes into account
both structural and action factors when
understanding behaviour.
A weakness of Weber’s theory is that it
has been criticised by Schutz for being an
inadequate explanation of behaviour. For
example, when a person at an auction
raises their hand, they mean that they
are making a bid – but Weber doesn’t
explain how everyone else present also
comes to give the same gesture the same
meaning.
A further flaw in Weber’s theory is that
he advocated the use of verstehen
(where we put ourselves in the actor’s
place to understand their motives and
meaning.) However, we cannot actually
be that other person, meaning we can
never be sure we have truly understood
their motives.
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Evaluation of Theories
A major strength of Symbolic Interactionism is
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that it largely avoids the determinism of
structural theories such as functionalism. It
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recognises that people create society through
choices and meanings.
However a weakness of this theory is that it
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cannot explain power relationships in society in
the way that Marxists or feminists have. It does
not explain why some individuals / social groups
are more powerful than others.
It concentrates too much on small-scale, trivial
aspects of social life, therefore ignoring the much
bigger picture of life at a society-wide level of
analysis.
A strength of EM is that it draws attention to how we actively construct order and meaning, rather than
seeing us as simply puppets of the social system, as functionalism does.
However, EM has been criticised by Craib who argues that its findings are trivial. Ems seem to spend a lot
of time ‘uncovering’ taken for granted rules that turn out to be no surprise to anyone. For example one
study found phone conversations, generally involved only one person speaking at a time!
A further problem with EM is that it denies the existence of wider society, seeing it as merely a shared
fiction. Yet, by analysing how members apply general rules or norms to specific contexts, it assumed that
a structure of norms really exists beyond these contexts. From a functionalist perspective, such norms
are social facts not fiction.
Gidden’s Structuration Theory
According to Giddens, there is duality of structure. By this he means that structure and action are two sides of the
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A major strength of Gidden’s Structuration Theory is that it attempts to overcome the division between
same coin; neither can exist without the other. Through our actions we produce and reproduce structures over time
structure and action in sociological theory.
and space, while these structures are what make our actions possible in the first place. Giddens calls this
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A major weakness of this approach is that it implies that actors can change structures simply by deciding
relationship structuration.
to do so. Margaret Archer (1995) argues that Giddens underestimated the capacity of structures to resist
change. For example, slaves may wish to abolish slavery but lack the power to do so.
This can be demonstrated with language. A language is a structure – it is made up of a set of rules of grammar that
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A further limitation of this theory comes from Craib. They point out that structuration theory is actually
govern how we can use it to express meanings. This structure seems to exist independently of any individual, and it
not a theory at all, because it doesn’t explain what actually happens in society. Instead, it just describes
constrains our behaviour. For example if we wish to use a language to communicate, we must obey its rules,
the kinds of things we find when we study society such as actions and rules.
otherwise we will not be understood. This shows how our action (communication) depends on the existence of
structure (our knowledge of language rules).
However, structure also depends on action. For example, a language would not exist if no one used it. It is produced
and reproduced over time through the actions of individuals speaking and writing it. Furthermore, these actions can
also change the structure. People give words new meanings and create new rules.