Social action and social structure are two fundamental concepts in sociology that explore the dynamic interplay between individual behavior and the broader societal framework. Social action refers to actions that are motivated by the meaning and interpretation that individuals attach to their surroundings. It encompasses intentional, purposeful behaviors that are influenced by social norms, values, and expectations. Social structure, on the other hand, refers to the interconnected patterns of social relationships, institutions, and norms that shape human behavior and organize society. It encompasses the rules, roles, and expectations that guide interactions and define social positions.
The relationship between social action and social structure is a constant interplay of influence. Social action shapes social structures by reinforcing existing norms and patterns of behavior, while social structures, in turn, influence social action by providing guidelines and expectations for individuals. This reciprocal relationship is at the heart of sociological understanding, as it highlights the interplay between human agency and the influence of society on individual behavior.
Social action theorists emphasize the role of individuals and their subjective understandings in shaping social phenomena. They argue that individuals interpret their social world and make choices based on their own values, beliefs, and motivations. These actions, in turn, contribute to the reproduction and transformation of social structures.
In contrast, structural theorists focus on the overarching patterns, institutions, and power dynamics that influence individual behavior. They argue that social structures, such as class, gender, and ethnicity, constrain individual choices and shape opportunities and outcomes. These structures are seen as relatively stable and enduring, influencing how individuals understand their place in society and make decisions.
The relationship between social action and social structure is complex and multifaceted, with various theoretical perspectives offering different insights into the dynamics between individuals and society. Understanding this relationship is crucial for comprehending how social phenomena emerge, persist, and change over time.
Prominent British sociologist Anthony Giddens is widely known for his scholarly findings, including influential publications in the humanities, a holistic view of modern societies, and putting together the theory of structuration. The theory was proposed in The Constitution of Society (1984), which examines phenomenology and social practices at the inseparable intersection of structures and agents. Though the theory has received much criticism, it remains a pillar of contemporary sociological theory.
The theory of structuration is a social theory of the creation and reproduction of social systems that are based on the analysis of both structure and agency, without giving primacy to either. In structuration theory, neither micro– nor macro-focused analysis alone is sufficient.
According to Giddens, the main concepts of structuration theory should be looked at from the perspective of division between functionalism (F) and structuralism (S).
- Similarities of F & S: both claim a naturalistic standpoint, lean towards objectivism & “emphasize the pre-eminence of the social whole over its individual parts.”
- Differences: F has been chiefly focused on biology, “analyzing processes of evolution via mechanisms of adaptation.” S – “hostile to evolutionism and free from biological analogies” (L. Strauss).
How should the concepts of action, meaning and subjectivity be specified, and how might they relate to notions of Structure and constraint? Based on Giddens’ theory – the basic domain of study of social science – social practices are ordered across space and time, rather than experiences of individual actors or, e.g. any form of societal totality.
- Human social activities are not brought by social actors, but in and through their activities, agents reproduce the conditions that make those activities possible.
- A Reflexive form of knowledgeability of human agents is most deeply involved in the recursive ordering of social practices. Reflexivity – not only self-consciousness but the monitored character of the ongoing flow of social life. To BE a human – purposive agent, who has reasons for his activities and can elaborate upon them.
- Stratification model – treating a reflexive monitoring, rationalization and motivation of action as the embedded set of processes.
- Power within social systems as regulated relations of autonomy and dependence between actors or collectivities. Here emerges a new concept of dialectic of control – where subordinate can influence the activities of their supervisors.
- Social Structure is also only ever the outcomes of practices that have previously happened, and it makes practices possible (the duality of Structure), and it is not separate from action
Giddens rejects Positivism because of its mistaken search for the general laws of social life. Giddens believes that human beings are thoughtful and creative and thus cannot be wholly predicted in advance.
- Marx downgraded the centrality of capitalism to being just one of four pillars of late-modernity along with surveillance, military power and industrialism. Giddens draws selectively on a wide range of action theories, including Goffman, to argue that individuals always have some form of agency to transform a situation; even enslaved people can act in different ways.
- Practices always have the possibility of changing, and we can never guarantee that they will be reproduced. One of the key features of late-modern (compared to traditional) societies is that there are more transformations in a shorter period of time. He sees actors as using knowledge to engage in practical action. Thus society is consciously reproduced (or transformed) in every social encounter.
- However – ‘the realm of human agency is bounded’ for the ‘constitution of society is a skilled accomplishment of its members, but one that does not take place under conditions that are wholly intended or wholly comprehended by them’. (1976). For Giddens – people make society but with resources and ‘practices’ inherited from the past.
Structure for Giddens is not something that exists outside of the individual but just patterns of practices. As practices change, so does the structure and vice-versa.
- Most of our practices take place at the level of practical consciousness, where we just act without thinking about it; however, sometimes we operate at the level of ‘discursive consciousness’ – where we reflect on how we did things, but sometimes we find it difficult to talk about – here the example is given of footballers finding it difficult to describe how to play a game of football, they just know how to do it, when they are doing it.
- Practical consciousness is informed by ‘Mutual knowledge’ – taken for granted knowledge about how to act, which is based on ‘rules’ about the right and wrong way to do things. Rules persist among large groups of people and are lodged in agents’ heads in ‘memory traces’ (similar to Bourdieu’s ideas on socialization and the habitus).
- When agents are engaged in practices, they draw on resources – there are two kinds – authoritative ones (status) and allocative ones (basically money and stuff) – an agent’s capacity to carry out their practices is influenced by their access to resources (similar to Bourdieu’s ideas about ‘skilled’ players of the game).
- Giddens understands social institutions (such as family and economic arrangements) as practices that have become routinized, carried out by a majority of agents across time and space. A social institution only exists because several individuals constantly make it over and over again.
- Social structure is also only ever the outcomes of practices that have previously happened, and it makes practices possible (the duality of structure), and it is not separate from action.
For Giddens, social structures do not reproduce themselves… it is always agents and their practices that reproduce structures, depending on circumstances. After all, ‘structure’ is simply made up of rules (in agents’ heads) and resources, which make action possible (Bourdieu claims it is the habitus that makes this possible). Simultaneously, practices create and recreate rules and resources. Therefore structure only exists in practices and in the memory traces in agents’ practical consciousness and has no existence external to these.
- From a structurationist’s perspective, a social theory must explain both social reproduction (social order being reproduced over time by people continuing to act in ways inherited from the past) and social transformation (how social order is changed by people, intentionally or unintentionally, through their interactions.
- Structuration theory seeks to overcome what it sees as the failings of earlier social theory, avoiding both its ‘objectivist’ and ‘subjectivist’ extremes by forging new terminology to describe how people both create and are created by social reproduction and transformation.
- The very word structuration attempts to show that social structure and individual action are elements of one single process, the ‘constitution of society’ as Giddens (1984) puts it.
Main ideas:
- Action and agens
- Repetitive practice of dailylife
- Routine of everyday life
- It helps to manage
- Competent mindfull actor
- Capability – ability to act
- Power – who acts gets power (by default)
- Dominance – autonomy vs dependency between actors
How do Bourdieu and Giddens differ?
The two most crucial contemporary structuration theorists are Giddens and Bourdieu. What they both have in common is that they focus on social ‘practices’ rather than ‘actions’. Practices are routine activities, and social structure is simply routinized practices and the memories in people’s heads that allow them to keep doing those practices in those ways over time.
Thus ‘social structure’ and ‘society’ are not ‘things’ outside of individuals and their practices. They are those practices. The focus on practices draws from phenomenology the idea of ‘practical consciousness’, the idea that what most people do most of the time is semi-conscious. Practical consciousness or practices are informed by a stock of taken-for-granted knowledge that makes up and makes possible our everyday lifeworlds. It is these practices that we generally do not reflect upon
Bourdieu’s and Giddens’ structuration theories differ because they have been developed for different purposes.
- Bourdieu, drawing mainly on Marx (especially), Weber and Durkheim, regarded his sociology as one aimed at revealing the nature and operation of forms of domination (which Bourdieu calls forms of ‘symbolic violence’), especially by the higher classes over the lower classes, and in his later life, Bourdieu was an outspoken intellectual, critical of neo-liberal policies.
- In contrast, Giddens, drawing mainly on ethnomethodology, put his structuration theory at the service of the ‘third way’ politics associated with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair which endeavoured to recast ‘soft left’ social democratic policies into an age of global capitalism. Structuration theory was also used by Giddens to diagnose contemporary social and cultural change, including transformations in self-identity and intimacy. (Giddens 1991).
- Bourdieu tended to focus on the harm that symbolic violence did to the marginalized, while Giddens tended to focus on new opportunities for liberation which existed for all social classes.
- Criticisms of these two are that Bourdieu ends up being too objectivist, Giddens too subjectivist.
Author: Ondrej Pekacek
Social structure
Three epistemological positions
- Positivist empiricism
- concrete phenomenon
- Intuitionist empiricim
- intuition and aspiration
- Particularistic empiricism
- objectivity
Paradigm
- Interpretivism (social science)
- roots in hermeneutics
- expressions of thoughts in authors’ perspective
- the subjective way how to interpret data
- roots in hermeneutics
- Positivism (exact sciences)
Interpretative paradigm
- “verstehende sociologie” – Max Weber – orig.
- Structural functionalism (Talcot Parsons)
- Critical rationalism (Karl Popper)
- Phenomenology sociology (Alfred Schutz)
- Frankfurt school (Max Horkheimer)
- Theory of communication (Jurgen Habermas)
Theory of social action
- The main question of social order
- Originally Hobbes’ topic of social order
- What keeps the society together
- Two approaches:
- Positivist (Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim)
- Idealist (Max Weber)
- Two approaches:
Talcott Parsons
Action Frame of Reference
- Crucial to understand the structure of social action that entails a system of action
- He tries to propose an explanation of the action
- The intentionality of action (theme)
Bricks of the theory
- Unit act – the smallest part of the action
- Actor
- Goal (Zweck)
- Situation – analyzed by conditions
- Normative orientation (regulations)
Approach to Systems
- Holistic theory – the whole is not reducible to a simple total of elements
- Autonomic regard to the surrounding
- Tend to self-preservation – also stability, persistence
- Interdependence of single elements
System is
- Tendence of durability, permanency
- A system is created by the interaction of at least two units
- Inner differentiate structured whole. The structure is marked by repeatability and homogeneity
Situation analyzable by
- “goals”
- “conditions” (podmínky)
- An actor can’t choose them
- “means” (prostředky)
- An actor can pick up some of the limited selection
- “norms” – limitations
Theory of social systems
- Four function paradigm
- Functional imperatives maintaining self-preservation
- AGIL
- Adaptation – (on external environment)
- Goal attainment – (mobilization of sources and energy)
- Integration – (co-ordination relationships of actors inside)
- Latent pattern maintenance – (persistence of structure)
AGIL in social system
- Adaptation – “the economy”
- Adjustment to natural sources
- Goal attainment – “the polity”
- Integration – “the societal community”
- Latent pattern maintenance – “the fiduciary system”
Parson’s theory of social action is based on his concept of society. Parsons is known in the field of sociology mostly for his theory of social action.
The Structure of Social Action (1937)
This work was supposed to merge
He takes away the individual choice and
“Do you make decisions on your own or are these decisions guided just by the structures of the society?”
Action is a process in the actor-situation system which has motivational significance to the individual actor or in the case of collectively, its component individuals
On the basis of this definition it may be said that the processes of action are related to and influenced by the attainment of the gratification or the avoidance of deprivations of the correlative actor, whatever they concretely be in the light of the relative personal structures that there may be. All social actions proceed from mechanism which is their ultimate source. It does not mean that these actions are solely connected with organism. They are also connected with actor’s relations with other persons‘ social situations and culture.
Systems of social action
Social actions are guided by the following three systems which may also be called as three aspects of the systems of social action Personality system: This aspect of the system of social action is responsible for the needs for fulfilment of which the man makes effort and performs certain actions. But once man makes efforts he has to meet certain conditions. These situations have definite meaning and they are distinguished by various symbols and symptoms. Various elements of the situation come to have several meanings for ego as signs or symbols which become relevant to the organization of his expectation system.
Cultural system: Once the process of the social action develops the symbols and the signs acquire general meaning. They also develop as a result of systematised system and ultimately when different actors under a particular cultural system perform various social interactions, special situation develops
Social System: A social system consists in a plurity of individual actor’s interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspect actors are motivated in terms of tendency to the optimization of gratification and whose relations to the situation including each other is defined and motivated in terms of system of culturally structured and shaped symbols.
In Parson’s view each of the three main type of social action systems-culture, personality and social systems has a distinctive coordinative role in the action process and therefore has some degree of causal autonomy. Thus personalities organize the total set of learned needs, demands and action choices of individual actors, no two of whom are alike.
Every social system is confronted with 4 functional problems. These problems are those of pattern maintenance, integration, goal attainment and adaptation. Pattern maintenance refers to the need to maintain and reinforce the basic values of the social system and to resolve tensions that emerge from continuous commitment to these values. Integration refers to the allocation of rights and obligations, rewards and facilities to ensure the harmony of relations between members of the social system. Goal attainment involves the necessity of mobilizing actors and resources in organized ways for the attainment of specific goals. Adaptation refers to the need for the production or acquisition of generalized facilities or resources that can be employed in the attainment of various specific goals. Social systems tend to differentiate these problems so as to increase the functional capabilities of the system. Such differentiation whether through the temporal specialization of a structurally undifferentiated unit or through the emergence of two or more structurally distinct units from one undifferentiated unit is held to constitute a major verification of the fourfold functionalist schema. It also provides the framework within which are examined the plural interchanges that occur between structurally differentiated units to provide them with the inputs they require in the performance of their functions and to enable them to dispose of the outputs they produce.
Pattern Variables
Affectivity vs affectivity neutrality: The pattern is affective when an organized action system emphasizes gratification that is when an actor tries to avoid pain and to maximize pleasure; the pattern is affectively neutral when it imposes discipline and renouncement or deferment of some gratifications in favour of other interests.
Self-orientation vs collectivity orientation: This dichotomy depends on social norms or shared expectations which define as legitimate the pursuit of the actor’s private interests or obligate him to act in the interests of the group.
Particularism vs universalism: The former refers to standards determined by an actor’s particular relations with particular relations with a particular object; the latter refers to value standards that are highly generalized.
Quality vs performance: The choice between modalities of the social object. This is the dilemma of according primary treatment to an object on the basis of what it is in itself an inborn quality or what it does and quality of its performance. The former involves defining people on the basis of certain attributes such as age, sex, color, nationality etc; the latter defines people on the basis of their abilities.
Diffusion vs specificity: This is the dilemma of defining the relations borne by object to actor as indefinitely wide in scope, infinitely broad in involvement morally obligating and significant in pluralistic situations or specifically limited in scope and involvement.
Author: sociologyguide.com
Theory of social systems
Four function paradigm
Functional imperatives maintaining self-preservation
AGIL
- Adaptation – on external environment
- Goal attainment – mobilization of sources and energy
- Integration – co-ordination relationships of actors inside
- Latent pattern maintenance – persistence of structure
Jurgen Habermas
The theory of communicative action
Frankfurt School,
Born 1929,
Recently German politician.
Critical theory: (Institut fur Sozialforschung, IFS 1923)
Representatives: Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse
Their statement – derived from “osvícenství”
The goal of science is the idea of emancipation of humankind – freedom, equality and brotherhood
“The goal of Frankfurt school was to find what restrains humankind to reach this goal”
Goals of FS:
- Social engineering,
- Modern sociological theories
- Non-assessing or non-evaluative approach
- Were actual but not critical
- Frankfurt school
- Engaged approach
- Only criticism can move the society forward
Engaged approach
Only criticism can move the society forward
Engaged Sociology
- The essence of science is always interest (personal)
- The science without interests and values is only fiction
- Never happens reminds the “ideal conditions” in physics
- Also plurality of interests
Imperfection of a man
- leads to development of technical instruments
- positivism – natural sciences
- Acceptable – an only way to progress
- positivism – natural sciences
- Positivism – social sciences
- Leads to control and manipulation with people
- Hermeneutic science – Understanding sociology
Theory of communication action
- Purposive rationality, action with purpose
- work – monologic egocentric orientation
- Interaction, with no purpose
- Communication act – dialogic agreement with others
Environment – two dimensional
Lebenswelt – Lifeworld vs. System
Created by three structures
- Culture
- Society
- Individualities
Two-degrees model of society
System area
and
Lifeworld area
System and social integration are in conflict
System overlaps its field
- Interferes to lifeworld
- Pentrates communication mechanism in lifeworld
- Threatens symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld
- Colonialism of lifeworld area-forced asimilation
Pierre Bourdieu
Structural constructivism
Pierre Bourdieu (1930 – 2002)
A bridge between micro + macro
Social world has two parts:
- Objective
- Subjective
Sociological knowledge should result in –
Analysis of process where “objectivity” is anchored in “subjective” experience
HABITUS
- Personal image – affected by environment
- A bridge between objectivity a subjectivity
- A scheme of human
- Perception
- Thinking
- Action
Habitual system consists of
- Schemas of perception
- Structures of daily perception of the social world
- Schemas of reflection
- Theory of a “everyday life”, ethical norms and measures
- Schemas of action
- Purpose: orientation in the social world
- Habitus results in “praxis”
Social Field
- The praxis is realized in a frame named “Field”
- Structure of fields represents a force for “actors”
- “Rules of the game” – two options for actors
- Keep up with rules (inevitable)
- Leave the frame (game) – social field
- “Rules of the game” – two options for actors
- Limitations: rules, sources, skills
- Actors vs institutions in a permanent battle
- of keeping sources and profits
Capital
- Economy of symbolic estates
- Criticism of an economic approach – reductionism
- Four types of capital:
- Economic
- Cultural
- Social
- Symbolic
Economic capital
- Not only money or ownership of “instruments of production”
- Any material ownership
- It is not powerful on itself – it must be combined
- With other types of capital – then it can lead to “real power”
Cultural capital
- “objective”
- Books, paintings, technical equipment tied to the economic form
- “incorporated”
- Aquired personal skills and competence
- “institutional”
- Diplomas of education, convential value
Social capital
- Relationships – participation of an actor
- Possibility to ask for support
- Using a permanent network
- The bigger network – the bigger chance for increasing profit of using economic and cultural capital
Symbolic capital
- Power and personal prestige
- Use symbols of status
- Magic power – collective magic
- Symbolic and social capital is often used
- To cloud over the economic power
Classes
- Dividing power : economic vs intellectual
- Class of governing
- Intellectuals are a governed part of governing
- Middle class
- Third class – “classe populaire”
Delimitation of classes
- Differentiation of social space
- Regarding lifestyle – specific taste of each class
- Analyze of empirical data of the lifestyle research
- Eating habits, friendsthips, design of interior – important
- Typical practices of symbolic lifestyle
- Preferred food, music, literature, sport, housing
- His research and analysis removes our illusion about our lifestyle that it is our personal choice – it is not!
System of Education
- The importance of the school while entering
- Institution – which contributes to reproduction the recent social order
- The right to use the name of the school or title
- Magic
- Institution of education which should have been preference Against inherited rights
- But we see the hidden relationship between formal education and inherited culture – creates “state aristocracy”
- Magic
Function of Education
- The claimed technical function guises
- Social function
- The certificate does not prove skills
- But social competence
- == the right to govern
- The system produces a big pressure to actors
- The same as the rules on the king’s court