Theory and Methods: Action Theories

Action Theories

Weber: Argued that there was a need for both structural and action theories, his study inspired the development of action theories.

Symbolic Interactionism

Mead: Believed that each individual interacts with others through symbols. However, each symbol can mean something different to each individual as well as being dependant on the time and context of the situation. Mead argues that individuals do not act based on instinct, but based on social audience instead.

Goffman: 'Dramaturgical Approach'. Argues that life is like a theoretical performance in which people are the social actors who are moving between being upstage and backstage. He argues that when people are backstage with no social audience they are their true selves but once upstage with a social audience they become their social selves. People are completely manipulated by their social audience.

Blumer: Argues that social audience is learnt through childhood, that children don't understand what things mean they just know what to do to gain a positive reaction. This suggests that individuals are not puppets of the system.

Labelling Theory

Cooley: Argues that labelling has an impact on our 'self-concept'. Due to things such as the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' and 'master status' occur.

Rosenthal and Jacobson: Created a false IQ test for children, they chose the top 20% at random. Teachers labelled this selection of students as 'spurters' and as a result of this positive label these students excelled quicker than their classmates. This proves that the self-fulfilling prophecy exists.

Phenomenology

Schutz: Believed that individuals interact through symbols but not based on the social audience but they construct meanings in their mind using 'common sense knowledge', meaning they think of their past experiences and what symbols have worked well in the past, they make an assumption of that correct way of doing things as individuals have shared meanings of symbols but you can never be 100% certain people will interpret them correctly.

Ethnomethodology

Garfinkel: Argues that when trying to make a choice of symbol people do two things, they assess the evidence of the situation and use their common sense knowledge to create an assumption. He believes that social order is people understanding the interactions. He argues that social order is difficult to achieve as not everyone understand every symbol (indexicality). He argues that people will try to infer the meaning behind a symbol (reflexivity).

Structuration Theory

Giddens: Argues that both structure and agency are needed to have a full view of society.