Typology of Social Actions Based on the Living System Theory (original) (raw)
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Typology of Social Actions based on the Living Systems Theory
2017
It is impossible to make progress in social theory without inquiring about social actions; therefore, many leading sociologists refer to this notion in their work. Max Weber, Talcott Parsons and many other sociologists attempted to ground not only their works but also the science of sociology as a whole on a theory of social actions. Max Weber defined sociology as "the science which attempts the interpretative understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a casual explanation of its course and effects". Moreover, he explicitly singled out social action as the “ central subject matter” of his sociology. Hence, comprehensive typology of social actions can be very helpful in sociological analysis. Usually, social actions are classified by actors’ intentions. In this paper, types of social actions are categorized both by actors’ intentions and by the actions ’ results, including both the intentional and unintentional outcomes. This was achieved through considera...
Social Dimensions of Action in Classical Sociological Theory
One of the central problems of sociological theory has always been to demarcate the social domain of reality and to thereby provide sociological research with its own distinctive topic. Because the social domain is created and sustained by human actions, sociology’s classical theorists have naturally been at pains to understand how action can come to acquire a social character. But sharing the question “what is action?” does not mean that we should force their different answers into an artificial unity in the mode of standard philosophies of action. Though one often speaks of the action-theoretical approach in sociology, clearly the notion of action in the sociological classics is not as homogeneous as it may seem. Far from being unsystematic or contingent, the meaning of action is nevertheless too widespread and “polyphonic” to be restricted to one distinct and consistent approach. Current and contemporary theories would provide further evidence. Even theorists who do not call themselves “action theorists” at all, like Bourdieu or Luhmann, cannot avoid considering different notions of action, whether for apologetic or critical reasons. Thus, talk of the “action- theory”-approach in general and its alleged counterparts (like “systems theory” or “structuralism”) has to be treated cautiously. Nevertheless, we think that the classical social theorists share much in common that sets them apart from most philosophers of action and allows for a systematic comparison of the action- theoretical alternatives they offer. First, they do not confine the matter of action to the more or less metaphysical distinction between what is action and what is not; nor do they reduce action to an “exercise of reason” in the Kantian mode. Instead, they treat action and its sociality as practical problems that emerge in the course of life, such as when actors find it difficult to understand one another or experience resistances and constraints. In other words: rather than deal with the question, “what ontological criteria must a behavior meet to count as ‘an action’?” they instead elaborate on the fact that acting and/or activity in daily life takes place under “imperfect” conditions of time pressure, sympathy, dependency, power, role-taking, drives, interests, solidarity. “Action” and “actor” are results, often contested, of dealing with these imperfect conditions. The “idealized rational actor” forecloses analysis of these conditions from the start; furthermore, breaking down these complex social entanglements to a handy difference between “reason” or “instinct” – as we come across in e.g. Korsgaard – is also not an option the sociological “classics” took into consideration. What is more, the classical sociologists articulated “thick” historic examples to show that “action” and “agency” are interweaved with social institutions, habits, values and forms. The analyses of this interpenetration of action and sociality they undertook go much deeper than simply taking note that some, mostly self-evident, process of socialization shapes the conditions of agency and identity. For our protagonists, the social dimension of action stands for more than the social dependency of children or a “deficient” mode of individual autonomy. Their theories are meant to enable systematic analyses and observations of the world of sociable action, in all of its types, objects, and forms. Our discussion of some of these theoretical efforts is organized as follows. We begin with the two uncontested classics of sociology, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, and highlight crucial divergences between their methodological statements and their material investigations. In the case of Weber, his theoretical statements about the methodological priority of instrumentally rational individual actions are belied by his research into the origins of the capitalist work ethic, which stresses instead customs and common values. In the case of Durkheim, his theoretical statements about the “thing-like” and coercive character of society are belied by his research into religious rites, which stresses instead how ritual action generates a meaningful and attractive social world. The remainder of our essay turns to Talcott Parsons and Georg Simmel as representatives of two classical approaches to theorizing the implicit connections between action and sociality never fully addressed by Weber and Durkheim. Simmel’s formal sociology focuses on forms rather than objects of social action and situates the social form of experience as one among many. Parsons’ general theory of action treats systems of social roles as one sub-system of action alongside personality systems and cultural systems, all of which emerge from the problems and contingencies inherent to acting in situations.
Knowledge and Action in Sociological Theory
1967
Soc action & soc change are related to tensions arising out of: (a) incongruities among various forms of knowledge, (b) antagonistic cooperation between individual &. collectivity: (c) the dialectical relationship between knowledge & action. All forms of human knowledge are considered legitimate objects for sociol'al inquiry since they may be needed to explain conduct. Knowledge as the conceptual basis for action is divided into 3 forms referring to values, norms, & empirical facts. Values state what is desirable, facts state what is possible, & norms state how to do it. Interaction models involving 2 individuals (G. H. Mead) or 2 classes (K. Marx) are merged into a model of interaction between individual & collectivity. The individual is described as having primacy in action, the collectivity as having primacy in knowledge. (Soc definition, W. I. Thomas.) Knowledge not applied in action becomes false, action not related to knowledge becomes meaningless. It is concluded that the...
Sociological Review, 2006
eds), New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2005, £36.97, 349pp. Action Theory: Methodological Studies Helmut Staubmann (ed.), Lit Verlag, Wien, 2006, €14.90, 228pp.
The Network Synthesis of Social Action I: Towards a Sociological Theory of Next Society
Sociological theory has always been a theory on the network synthesis of social action. In this age of society intrigued by the introduction of computers, this has to become explicit. To know about the form of the network synthesis of social action means to know how the society, which will cease to be modern and become, instead, the next one, a knowledge society, deals with its inherent dynamics by generating specific structures able to sustain social action. This paper attempts to look more closely at the network synthesis of social action from two perspectives. Firstly it goes back to Niklas Luhmann's conjecture about the structures of society depending mainly on culture forms able to deal with the surplus meaning, or overflow, produced by the introduction of new media for the dissemination of communication. This is a conjecture about the structures of society being the outcome of it having to find a solution to new kinds of overflow by switching from one culture form, and the concomitant social structure, order, and understanding , to another. The morphogenesis of society depends on these dissemination media eclipsing one another, while all however persisting, even if changed in scope, scale, and range. The paper, then, tries to develop a model of social action which takes into account the culture form possibly able to deal with the surplus meaning brought about by the introduction of the computer as a medium for the dissemination of communication. This model proposes a form integrating ideas from sociological systems theory and sociological network theory. It tries to be simple enough to accommodate the complexity of social action. The paper begins by presenting some general ideas on a sociological theory of social action. And it concludes by proposing a shift from objects and subjects of social action to what we will call the catjects of social action. Such a shift actually proposes looking at categories which are able to describe and explain what kind of underlying reality is produced and reproduced by the eigen-values of social action. These catjects combine reference with self-reference, and further incorporates some means of accounting for the unknowable by unfolding, exploring, and synthesizing a network of variables, whose values social action brings about, exploits, and subverts.
The Present State of Sociological Systems Theory 2005
communication theory in contrast to action theory is very much an interdisciplinary venture. Whereas the concept of action is mainly of interest to sociologists and jurists, the prominence of the concept of communication arises from information theory which was an undertaking of mathematicians and engineers first of all and then inspired many communication concepts, since Gregory Bateson and Juergen Ruesch introduced the insights of information theory into psychiatry and social theory 7 . Since then many disciplines from mass communication research to animal ethology have made a productive use of the concept of communication as a conceptual key to the social structure of heterogeneous social systems 8 . The second advantage of the concept of communication consists in it being clearly related to the distinction of local contexts and global systems, differences between the local and the global being able to be analyzed as different forms and effects of communication. Therefore, the most eminent change in contemporary society, the penetration of world society into the most distant regions and most local contexts in the world, can be well articulated and understood in terms of communication theory.
The relationship between action and sociality is one of the fundamental prob-lems in social theory and philosophy. In this paper I strive to contribute to an action theo-retical approach that conceives of individual action and sociality as intrinsically related. I will do so by drawing on two distinct strands of cultural and social theory: the sociologi-cal pragmatism of Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead, and the cognitive cultural psychology of Michael Tomasello. Since the work of Tomasello is – at least in detail – relatively unknown to philosophers or social scientists, the primary focus will be on his seminal studies in comparative and developmental cognitive psychology. By means of a detailed analysis I will delineate a cognitive, motivational and cultural dimension of the sociality of action in Tomasello. The results of this discussion will then be compared with the central tenets of sociological pragmatism. In the end, it will become clear why cognitive scientists like Tomasello can help us to reformulate pragmatist social theory against the background of recent findings in the human sciences. By doing this, we can remain true to the transdisciplinary approach of pragmatist thought that has long been ne-glected in social theory. Conversely, such a comparison may reveal some of the limits of Tomasello‘s account with regard to social theory.