socialisation is an active process of social interaction
Symbolic Interactionists see socialisation as an active process in which social interaction between children with adults and other children play a crucial role.
Gerald Handel drew on the work of George Herbert Mead to develop a symbolic interactionist perspective on socialisation and the development of the self, and he is the main theorist considered below.
Social Interaction and biological development
Social interaction is a crucial part of the biological development of the child.
The common sense view of child development is that biology comes first and once the child has the physical and brain capacities to walk and talk, then they walk and talk, but for Handel biological development and social interaction work and develop together.
A newborn child is unable to co-operate with others and take part in society because they are physically undeveloped and are unsocialised.
As the child gets older they mature physically and become socialised, both of which gradually allow them to function as a member of society.
A young child is dependent on its carers for its survival, but even this requires interaction between the child and the caregivers (crying is a basic form of communication), and social interaction is a vital part of a child’s intellectual and emotional development.
Intellectual capacities are developed through a child interacting with others in the same way in which muscles are developed through their physical usage.
Take the development of language for example: social interaction is absolutely essential for a child to develop the capacity to think in words and to speak and communicate. Without social interaction, language remains undeveloped as does the part of the brain which processes language.
Empathy, Communication and the Self
The process of socialisation allows the child to develop three key capacities:
The development of a self-concept. Following Mead, the development one’s self-concept is inherently social. It involves considering how other people see my own actions, and through this process the child learns to self-regulate by avoiding actions others don’t approve of and vice-versa for approved-of actions. In this way, by reflecting on the ‘looking glass self’ the individual comes to develop a sense of their own self as distinct from others.
The ability to empathise. Developing empathy is an integral part of developing a self-concept since it involves putting yourself in the shoes of others and considering how one’s actions make other people. Through doing this the child learns empathy.
The ability to communicate. Socialisation is inherently communicative, from the very early stages of non-verbal communication to the later development of language with its more complex grammatical forms and nuances of meaning.
So for Handel the process of socialisation simultaneously involves the individual developing a unique sense of self, but also a sense of their social self, and through socialisation they learn to regulate their behaviour so that they take account of the reactions of others, rather than just individuals doing whatever they want all the time.
Agencies of socialisation and peer groups
In order to fully understand the process of how a child is socialised we need to take a close, in-depth look at the perspectives of both the adult agents of socialisation such as parents and teachers and child’s peer group, or the other children they are socialised with.
Agents of socialisation
From an interactionist perspective adult agents of socialisation have a lot of freedom to socialise their children in different ways. There are many different styles of parenting practice for example, and most parents are, for the most part, left alone with their children for MOST of the time to socialise them as they see fit. Thus we should not expect all children in a society to be socialised in the same way.
Granted, there are laws and guidelines outlining how parents and teachers should interact with children, but these set very broad limits and the State rarely intervenes in any major ways in the socialisation of most children, and within the broad limits set there is a lot of room for variations in socialisation depending on the parents and teachers educational background, religion, politics, ethnicity, or just their personalities.
Peer groups
Children play a more active role in their own social interaction with other children compared to adults, and the opinions of other children are often perceived as important by children themselves.
Thus socialisation within the peer, or reference group is an important aspect of the child’s development.
Socialisation within the peer group operates differently to socialisation with adult agents.
Children take part in making up the rules of engagement rather than just being expected to follow rules laid down by adults.
Peer groups tend to seek more immediate gratification while adults try to stress deferred gratification.
Peer groups provide an alternative to adult standards of normative behaviour, which may come into conflict with those standards!
Peer groups are not just important for child socialisation, they also play a role in adult socialisation and adults go through changes, such as taking on a new job, for example.
Socialisation and conflicting norms
Handel sees conflict over appropriate norms of behaviour as a normal part of socialisation.
There will be conflict over what the child wants, possibly reinforced by the peer group (‘more cake now’) and what the parents expect, for example.
There will also likely be conflict when children and adults who have different histories of socialisation come into contact in certain social contexts, because of the wide variety of social norms in a society.
However there is also a sense of ‘societal demand’ – society as a whole has broad norms which nearly everyone understands they need to abide by and so for the most part we can settle our differences peacefully.
Evaluation
This is a more nuanced and complex theory of socialisation than that offered by Functionlists and Marxists which recognises that children play an active role in their own socialisation and are not just passive sponges.
Handel’s account is both too general (not in-depth enough) and takes too little account of structural features of society such as social class.
Signposting
This material is mainly relevant to the Culture and Identity option, which is sometimes taught within first year A-level Sociology.
meaning emerges from interaction and society only seems stable!
Herber Blumer (1900 to 1997) was a symbolic interactionist who argued that society consisted of individuals temporarily agreeing on shared meanings to the extent that they could act together. However, meanings and social situations were constantly being weighed up and negotiated by individuals in different ways and thus society itself was something unstable, and which was contingent upon social interactions.
Bluemer’s main contribution to sociology is that he developed Mead’s Symbolic interactionism in a more sociological direction. He theorised more about how society emerges out of social interaction.
Meaning emerges from social interaction
For Blumer, meaning is a social product which emerges out of individuals actively interpreting the social and natural world.
There are three main aspects to Blumer’s social action theory…
Human beings act on the meanings they give to people, objects and situations, rather than just reacting to external stimuli.
Meanings emerge through the process of interaction rather than being present from the outset. Meanings are created and modified within interaction situations rather than being fixed. Actors do not just slavishly follow pre-existing norms or roles.
Meanings are the result of interpretations by individuals within interaction contexts and meanings develop over time, thus social norms and institutions can change.
Society emerges from groups of people committing to classifying a situations along particular lines to the extent that there is shared meaning, but these shared meanings and interpretations are always potentially open to change.
Blumer’s theory of society
Society is the sum total of all joint actions or social acts taking place at a given moment. Society happens when individuals co-ordinate their interpretations of the social situation and what Blumer calls ‘joint action’ occurs.
The main acting units within society can range from individuals to small groups to large scale institutions.
Every individual in an acting unit has a different interpretation of the situation, but sufficient agreement with others for collective action to take place.
We tend to take meaning for granted when social situations run smoothly, but even when those situations run smoothly, there is still a complex and active process of every actor interpreting the situation – a process of individuals checking meaning, weighing up their options and considering alternatives. Thus at any moment there is the potential that the entire social situation may break down.
Social ‘structures’ only seem stable
Blumer acknowledged for that most part that social reality is experienced as taken for granted, and predictable. Over time individuals learn accepted and legitimate ways of acting associated with specific contexts and roles and so social reality often seems stable to individuals.
Nonetheless situations are continuously being weighed up and are potentially alterable, and thus in reality society is fluid and more unstable than it appears.
Social institutions similarly place restrictions on individuals but even when there are clearly established rules and long standing traditions, individuals still have room for interpretation and creativity.
In Blumer’s own words…
“The common repetitive behaviour of people… should not mislead the student into believing that no process of interpretation is in play…. even though fixed, the actions of the participating people are constructed by them through a process of interpretation.” (Blumer, 1969).
Especially in our global society where people regularly encounter other groups of people with different symbolic systems of meaning it is hard to maintain a position that there is just one set way of seeing the world. The more diversity is, the more it becomes apparent that there are multiple interpretations and thus that society is fluid.
Social action and research methods
Blumer was very involved with developing appropriate social research methods, arguing that research should be empirical and small scale.
Because social reality was constructed by individuals, each of whom had their own slightly different interpretations of social situations, the only appropriate methodologies were those that could get the complexities of these multiple interpretations, namely qualitative research methods such as unstructured interviews and participant observation.
Signposting and relevance to A-level sociology
This material is primarily relevant to the Theory and Methods aspect of second year sociology.
Self identity is an active process through which ‘I’ reflect on how i think others see me and adapt my social self accordingly.
George Herbert Mead (1863 – 1931) believed that human experience, thought and action were inherently social because humans interact on the basis of symbols, the most important of which was language.
He saw the self as something active and dynamic which emerged through social action and interaction and was thus critical of structuralist theories such as Functionalism and Marxism which saw the self as something passive and determined by simply soaking up norms and values.
Mead emphasised the centrality of language as a shared system of symbols and signs which allows for the development of selfhood and social interaction.
Three key ideas of Mead’s social psychological theory of self are:
Individuals acquire language (symbolic meaning) through their attachment and interaction within social groups
Language (symbols) is the primary medium through which the concept of selfhood emerges
Individual selfhood is realised through social interaction which is mediated through language (symbols) and develops throughout the life course.
Mead was a philosopher and social psychologist whose most important work was Mind, Self and Society published posthumously from his ‘student notes’ in 1967.
The social self
The central idea of Mead’s work is that the individual self is inherently social. He didn’t see the self as something innate or fixed, but thought that it emerged through action and interaction with others.
He went as far as to say that the self could not be introspected because it only existed in interaction, outside of interaction the self ceases to exist.
It is only through language that we develop a sense of self and become self aware through an ongoing process of self-monitoring and reflection.
When the individual engages in such processes they are actively considering possible courses of action, possible ways of being in the world and actively excluding others, they are engaged in the process of ‘making themselves’ which is dependent on social interactions.
Language: the basis for human interaction
Mead emphasises the importance of language throughout his work.
Language comprises a system of symbols and signs that enable human beings to generated and signify meanings.
It is language which makes culture possible and separates humans from animals. Animals can make gestures related to objects and events in their immediate context, but their communication is always limited to those contexts.
Language allows human beings to refer to people and events that are divorced from the contexts in which they first occurred. Thus it is through language that the temporal and spatial dimensions of human existence are opened up and we are no longer trapped in the immediacy of. the present.
Language is also the basis of dialogue which is beyond mere one off exchanges between individuals, it allows for complex systems of classification and rational arguments to occur, both of which are again abstract in the sense that they are not dependent on immediate context.
The I and the Me
Language also allows for dialogue with one’s self and it is through language that one’s self-concept is developed.
For Mead, language does not only describe the world, it makes makes objectification possible, it enables us to objectify or ‘create’ the self.
Mead’s theory of language and the self rests on his distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’.
The ‘I’ is reality as we experience it from the inside and the source from which all consciously directed action springs. The I is the idiosyncratic and created aspect of the individual.
The ‘me’ is the object of self-awareness, one’s own physical body perceived by others. The Me represents the social component born out of the internationalisation of social roles, norms and values
The Me does not act as a constraining force on the I but is both enabling and regulating because it allows the individual to review and adapt their actions in light of the perceived reactions of others.
The self is thus a process, not fixed or static.
The generalised other
The generalised other refers to the complex of social attitudes, norms, regulations and ways of seeing the world internalised by an individual. It is the link between the individual and the social groups to which one belongs.
The notion of the generalised other is crucial to Mead’s theory of self-development.It explains how individuals learn to regulate and monitor their own conduct by assuming the perspective of a generalised and impersonal other.
it is only through thinking of how others see ‘me’ that the ‘I’ can realise its own autonomy.
In short we need this social interaction to be able to be conscious of ourselves and develop ourselves, without interaction the individual self does not exist!
The development of the self
Mead also theorised about how individuals come to develop a sense of self through different stages of childhood. He distinguished between the play stage and the game stage.
The play stage
Children first start to develop a sense of self by playing roles that are not their own, such as playing doctors, spacemen, or superheroes for example.
In doing so they become aware that there is a difference between themselves and the role they are playing, hence the idea of the objectified ‘Me’ starts to become apparent as different to the ‘I’.
The game stage
Mead provides the example of game playing as a situation in which children learn to see the world (or the game) from the general situation of all other players and the different view points of particular players.
A fundamental part of a game is knowing other people’s roles. Take as an example the game of football, where there are several different roles: attacking players, defensive players, the goalkeeper and the referee, to name a few, and to be able. to play football any individual needs an idea of the role of each of these, and this is already a complex process that involves thinking how other people will be seeing, and playing the game.
An individual also needs a concept of the generalised other to play a game of football – or an overall picture of the field of play and how all the parts work together in general.
Later on in life
The ability to empathise with and see oneself through the eyes of the ‘generalised other’ is essential to successful interpersonal communication because the reactions of others are tied to and shape the parameters of social situations. It is ultimately what makes co-operative action at the social level possible.
Role taking
An important aspect of the development of self identity is role-taking. People interact on the basis of taking on the role of the other: for example if someone is waving at you across the street, you think that they want to attract your attention, and this ‘taking on their position’ is crucial to the basis of your interaction with them. (Of course you may use other signs, stereotypes)
There are also range of professional roles associated with various jobs such as teaches and doctors, which have expected patterns of behaviour associated with them, and in order to take on one of these roles any individual will have to conform to these.
Culture, social roles and institutions
Mead recognised that social institutions existed, but only in so far as there were social roles attached to them.
For example, the nuclear family exists as long men and women accept the concept of mother and father, the school exists as long as teachers and pupils accept their relative roles to each others.
He did not believe that social roles determined the individual because…
Many cultural expectations were not specific. Clothes
Individuals have a choice over what roles they enter
Some roles encourage diversity
Society does not have an all embracing culture
Many cultural meanings suggest possibilies rather than requirments
At times it may not be possible to fulfil cultural expectations of social roles, innovation may be required.
Social Order
Despite the fact that Mead didn’t believe institutions existed in any modernist solid sense of the word, he still recognised that there was a sense of social order and stability, but these were only actively accomplished through interactions, which are dynamic.
It follows that social order is dependent on the actions and interactions of individuals and thus is fluid, and liable to change at a moment’s notice.
Evaluations
Mead offers us a social psychological account of human interaction which is relevant to social theory because it challenges the modernist, static theories of Functionalism and Marxism which view individuals as passive and lacking agency.
However, Mead’s symbolic interactionism may be too focused on the micro small scale, just interactions, there is no consideration of history and power structures.
Signposting
This material is mainly relevant to the Theory and Methods module taught as part of the AQA’s A-level sociology second year.
The Advance Information for the 2022 Sociology A-levels specifies that students WILL be assessed on the area of consensus, conflict, structural and/ or action theories.
The easiest way to revise these topics at A2 level is to briefly cover the key ideas of each theory AND ALSO revise how each of these theories applies to the topic areas you have studied – usually families, education, crime and deviance and research methods, and then to evaluate.
This post is a summary revision post of the key ideas of social action theory. Before reviewing it you might like to look at these posts:
We need Verstehen to understand human action, because the same actions can mean different things to different people. Statistical methods and observation alone are not enough to understand human action (Weber)
We need to understand action in terms of shared meanings within a group (Mead) and how the members of that group see themselves (their identity) and how the individuals and the group understand society.
We need to understand whether an individual is just putting on an act (manipulating props and just managing an impression)
We need to understand whether a person has been labelled by agents of social control, whether they have been stigmatised by society.
Research Methods Implications
Getting to people’s own motives for action requires in-depth qualitative methods
In order to understand shared meanings we need at the very least to use unstructured interviews.
In order to assess whether the extent to which people are ‘acting out’ identities we need to use Participant Observation, which in many cases will not be possible.
How Social Action Theorists understand family life
The Personal Life Perspective argues that we need to start by abandoning standard definitions of the family and focus instead on what ‘family’ means to them – when we do this, we find that many people see a whole load of unusual relationships as being more significant to their intimate lives (pets and dead relatives for example) than their actual ‘family members’. This critics the Functionalist idea that families are necessary parts of society – families are much more fluid than ever before, and friends can perform many of the functions as formal family members.
How they understand achievement in education
(Following Mead) – In depth research of anti-school subcultures has revealed a wide variety of meanings and identities which different students bring to the school…which conflict with the school’s value system. For example, Paul Willis’ study found that the lads saw school work as irrelevant to their future lives, while Tony Sewel argues that being a ‘swot’ may compromise young black boys’ ideas about masculinity. We thus cannot truly understand underachievement without understanding these boys’ identities and why school doesn’t fit in with their identities.
Labelling theory however explains underachievement in terms of middle class white teachers labelling students not like them as problem students, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Goffman’s dramaturgical theory is useful – ‘good’ students may just be better at putting on an act – better at ‘impression manageme
How Social Action Theorists understand Crime and Deviance
Following Mead – Research on gangs has shown that being in a gang doesn’t necessarily mean ‘being bad” – gang membership is typically casual and fluid, it does not mean that much at all to many members, and is about protection for many, rather than criminality. There are several different types of gang, several different meanings. This criticise structural subcultural theories of deviance.
Following Becker’s labelling theory – The Police act in terms of stereotypes when it comes to stop and search, as do the courts, this goes some way to explaining why there are more EM’s in jail.
Following Goffman’s dramaturgical theory – elites may be just as criminal as non-elites, they are just better at acting in ways which mean they avoid attention from the police.
Key Studies
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
The ‘action’ bit of Paul Willis’ study of the lads.
John Heale’s One blood – gangs as self-defence, gangs as fluid;
Gok Wan – People dressing up
Facebook;
Howard Becker – The Ideal Pupil
RJ SFP
David Gilborn – Teachers labelling African Caribbean boys
Social Action Theory: Evaluations
It doesn’t pay sufficient attention to how social structures constrain action – for example, material deprivation can have a real, objective impact on your ability to well at school, thus failure is not just all about labelling.
It tends to ignore power-distribution in society – it can’t explain patterns in class, gender, ethnicity.
If people are so active, then why do so many people choose to be so normal?
Labelling theory can also be criticised for being deterministic
The small-scale methods associated with this theory can equally be criticised for lacking reliability and representativeness
The Interactionist Perspective– Introduces the topic area, make sure you can explain the difference between Interactionism and Structural Theories
School Ethos and The Hidden Curriculum
The School Ethos
The Hidden Curriculum
Teacher Stereotyping and the halo effect
The ideal pupil
Labelling and the Self Fulfilling Prophecy
Banding, streaming and setting
Definitions of banding/ streaming setting
Summaries of evidence on the effects of banding etc
Unequal access to classroom knowledge
Educational triage
Gilborn and Youdell’s work focusing on the significance of league tables and ‘writing off students who have no chance of passing
Student responses to the experience of schooling: school subcultures
Differentiation and Polarisation
Pro-School subcultures
Anti-school (or counter-school) subcultures =
Between pro and anti-school subcultures: a range of responses
Evaluations of in-school processes
Determinism (labelling)
Evidence based on micro processes (generaliseablity?)
Out of school more important (90% of the difference)
Selected concepts and research studies you need to know
· Labelling theory and the self-fulfilling prophecy
· Banding and Streaming
· Subcultures
· The Hidden Curriculum
· School Ethos
· Educational Triage
· Deterministic
· Gilborn and Youdell
· However Becker
· Stephen Ball
· Rosenthal and Jacobson
· Paul Willis
Selected short answer questions
Outline three ways in which the curriculum might be ethnocentric (6)
Outline two criticisms of labelling theory (4)
Using material from item A, analyse two ways in which the hidden curriculum may disadvantage working class students (10)
Selected Essay Questions
Evaluate the view that it is mainly in-school processes which explain differential education achievement across different groups in society (30)
Research Studies on In-School Processes
You are expected to be able to cite named research when looking at ‘in school processes’ in an essay – below are some studies we’ve looked at already, you should know these….
Research on Teacher Labelling and pupil responses
1. Howard Becker – Labelling and the Ideal Pupil
2. Rosenthal and Jacobsen – The Self Fulfilling Prophecy (p104)
3. David Gilborn and Cecile Wright – Found that teachers had ‘racialised expectations’ (in ethnicity hand-out
4. Heidi Mirza (p119) – found that there were’ three types’ of teacher racism…. And that black girls had to adopt particular strategies for dealing with this
5. Research has also shown that teachers label boys and girls differently…. (in gender hand-out)
6. NB – Margaret Fuller (p118) – found that not all pupils accept their labels
Research on Peer Pressure and Pupil Subcultures
7. Paul Willis – The Counter School Culture
8. Mac an Ghail – found there were a variety of ‘class based subcultures’… (in class hand-out)
9. Becky Francis – found that boys were more likely to adopt ‘laddish subcultures’ (in gender hand-out)
10. Louis Archer also found that working class girls’ ‘style subcultures’ can come into conflict with the school….(in gender hand-out)
11. Tony Sewell – notes that although there is a distinct ‘anti-school culture’ amongst some African- Caribbean boys, but there are also a wider variety of African- Caribbean subcultures (p119)
Research on Banding and Streaming
1. Stephen Ball’s 1960s work on banding in beachside comprehensive showed that…. (class hand-out
2. Gilborn and Youdell Found that there is an ‘A-C Economy’…. (ethnicity hand-out)
Research on School Ethos and the Hidden Curriculum
1. Feminists argue that Gender Regimes still exist…(this and below both in gender hand-out
2. School Ethos can have an effect on how boys express their masculinity – independent schools tend to have fewer problems with laddish subcultures than schools in poorer areas…
3. Stephen Strand argued that ‘institutional racism’ exists in schools
Verstehen and the Protestant Ethic are two things Weber is well-known for
Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the founding fathers of Sociology. Weber saw both structural and action approaches as necessary to developing a full understanding of society and social change.
For the purposes of A level Sociology we can reduce Weber’s extensive contribution to Sociology to three things:
Max Weber: Three Key Points
Firstly he argued that ‘Verstehen’ or empathatic understanding is crucial to understanding human action and social change, a point which he emphasised in his classic study ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’;
secondly, he believed we could make generalisations about the basic types of motivation for human action (there are four basic types) and
thirdly, he still argued that structure shaped human action, because certain societies or groups encourage certain general types of motivation (but within these general types, there is a lot of variation possible).
This final point can be illustrated by a quote from one of his most important works ‘Economy and Society’, first published in the 1920s, in which he said ‘Sociology is a science concerning itself with interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences.’
Max Weber – NOT a happy bunny
Social Action and Verstehen
Weber argued that before the cause of an action could be ascertained you had to understand the meaning attached to it by the individual. He distinguished between two types of understanding.
First he referred to Aktuelles Verstehen – or direct observational understanding, where you just observe what people are doing. For example, it is possible to observe what people are doing – for example, you can observe someone chopping wood, or you can even ascertain (with reasonable certainty) someone’s emotional state from their body language or facial expression. However, observational understanding alone is not sufficient to explain social action.
The second type of understanding is Eklarendes Verstehen – or Empathetic Understanding – in which sociologists must try to understand the meaning of an act in terms of the motives that have given rise to it. This type of understanding would require you to find out why someone is chopping wood – Are they doing it because they need the firewood, are they just clearing a forest as part of their job, are they working off anger, just doing it because they enjoy it? To achieve this Weber argued that you had to get into the shoes of people doing the activity.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
In this famous work, Weber argued that a set of religious ideas were responsible for the emergence of Capitalism in Northern Europe in the 16-17th century. Weber argued that we need to understand these ideas and how they made people think about themselves in order to understand the emergence of Capitalism. (NB The emergence of Capitalism is one the most significant social changes in human history)
The video below, from the School of Life, offers a useful summary of Max Weber’s ideas about the emergence of Capitalism
Weber’s Four Types of Action (and types of society)
Max Weber didn’t just believe that individuals shape society – societies encourage certain types of motive for action – for example, the religion of Calvinism encouraged people to save money, which eventually led to capitalism
Weber believes that there are four ideal types of social actions. Ideal types are used as a tool to look at real cases and compare them to the ideal types to see where they fall. No social action is purely just one of the four types.
Traditional Social Action: actions controlled by traditions, “the way it has always been done”
Affective Social Action: actions determined by one’s specific affections and emotional state, you do not think about the consequences
Value Rational Social Action: actions that are determined by a conscious belief in the inherent value of a type of behavior (ex: religion)
Instrumental-Rational Social Action: actions that are carried out to achieve a certain goal, you do something because it leads to a result
To illustrate these different types of action consider someone “going to school” in terms of these four ideal types: Traditionally, one may attend college because her grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles have as well. They wish to continue the family tradition and continue with college as well. When relating to affective, one may go to school just because they enjoy learning. They love going to college whether or not it will make them broke. With value rational, one may attend college because it’s a part of his/her religion that everyone must receive the proper education. Therefore, this person attends college for that reason only. Finally, one may go to college because he/she may want an amazing job in the future and in order to get that job, he/she needs a college degree.
Max Weber was particularly interested in the later of these – he believed that modern societies encouraged ‘Instrumental-Action’ – that is we are encouraged to do things in the most efficient way (e.g. driving to work) rather than thinking about whether driving to work is the right thing to do (which would be value-rational action.
Weber believed that modern societies were obsessed with efficiency – modernizing and getting things done, such that questions of ethics, affection and tradition were brushed to one side – this has the consequence of making people miserable and leading to enormous social problems. Weber was actually very depressed about this and had a mental breakdown towards the end of his life.
Evaluations of Max Weber’s Social Action Theory
Positive – He recognized that we need to understand individual meanings to understand how societies change (unlike Marxism)
Positive – The idea that individual motives can lead to huge structural level changes such as the emergence of Capitalism is especially interesting!
Negative – Still too much focus on society shaping the individual – symbolic interactionism argues that individuals have more freedom to shape their identities.
Negative – there might well be more types of motivation than just four types
Negative – his theory of the emergence of capitalism has been criticized as there is evidence of some forms of capitalism existing BEFORE Protestantism.
Sign Posting
Max Weber’s Action Theory is a key social theory usually studies as part of the theory and methods topic for second year sociology.
For an overview of Action theories more generally, including interactionism and labelling theory please see this post which summarises social action theories.
We can divide sociological theories into two broad types: structural and action theories.
Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism are all structural theories, are interested in ‘society as a whole’ and ask ‘societal level questions’ such as ‘what functions does education perform for society and the individual’? (Functionalism) or ‘why does injustice exist’ (Marxism and Feminism)? They seek to understand the actions of individuals by looking at the structure of wider society and generally believe that ‘society shapes the individual’.
Sociologists who adopt social action perspectives usually reject the view that society has a clear structure that directs individuals to behave in certain ways. Some social action theorists do not deny the existence of a social structure, but see this structure as rising out of the action of individual; others argue that there is no such thing as a social structure. For the purposes of Second Year sociology you need to know about four Action Theories – all of which have slightly different views on the relationship between social structure and social actions.
Max Weber is generally regarded as the founder of social action theory – he believed that we need to develop an empathetic understanding to uncover the personal meanings and motives individuals give to their own actions, and that this was crucial to understanding how social structures changed over time. However, he also believed that we could make generalisations about types of motive people had and that these general motivations were influenced by the wider society – thus he is half way between structure and action theory, rather than a pure ‘social action’ theorist.
George Herbert Mead developed ‘Symbolic Interactionism’, and he put more emphasis on the role of the active individual than Weber.
For Mead, there is still a society ‘out there’ which constrains human action, in the sense that there are a number of pre-existing social roles which people have to take on in order to get by in society. However, individuals have considerable freedom to shape their identities within and between these social roles.
Mead also argued that everything about society is open to multiple interpretations and meanings – the same institutions, social roles and individual-actions can mean very different things to different people. For Mead, individuals are constantly interpreting and re-interpreting each other’s ‘symbolic actions’ – and this is an ongoing, complex process – if we want to understand human action we need to understand the micro-details of how people interpret other people’s actions, and how their re-actions are in turn re-interpreted and so on.
In order to truly understand why people act in the way that they do, we need to understand people’s ‘self-concept’ – their identities, there ideas about the ‘generalised other’ (society) and micro-interpretations.
Erving Goffman’s developed Mead’s work in his Dramaturgical theory of social action – he argued that the most appropriate way to understand people is to view them as if they are actors on a stage – people use props (such as clothes and body-language) to project idealised images of themselves to a social audience – people have multiple identities which change according to the social setting and the audience they find themselves performing in front of. As well as the social world, the front stage, we all have backstage areas (mostly the home) where we prepare for our social performances, and reflect on how good or bad our performances have been, and plan to change them accordingly. For Goffman, individuals are very active and manipulative, and we may never actually get to see people’s real identities unless we spend considerable time with them during their day to day lives.
Labelling Theory focuses on how the definitions (meanings) people impose on situations or on other people can have real consequences (even if those definitions are not based in reality) – and argues that people in power generally have more ability to impose their definitions on situations than the powerless. For example, parents, teachers and the police generally have more power to make labels stick and make these labels have consequences compared to working class youths. Labelling theory criticises both Mead and Goffman, arguing that while we need to look at micro-level interactions and meanings to examine labelling, we still need to understand where people are located in the power-structure of society to fully understand the process of labeling and identity construction.
Sources
Most posts are adapted from standard degree and ‘A’ Level text books such as Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives
People do not become criminals because of their social background, crime emerges because of labelling by authorities. Crime is the product of interactions between certain individuals and the police, rather than social background.
There is no such thing as an inherently deviance act
Howard Becker (1963) “Deviancy is not a quality of the act a person commits, but rather a consequences of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’.”
Becker – The Outsiders – Malinowski – Incest example
Applies to drugs – compare illegal ‘legal’ highs UK to legal weed in Colorado
Not everyone who is deviant gets labelled as such
Whether an actor is labelled as deviant depends on: their interactions with the police, their background/ appearance, the circumstances of the offence.
negative labels (deviant/ criminal) are generally given to the powerless by the powerful.
Cicourel – first stage – working class kids more likely to be labelled as deviant by police; second stage – more likely to be prosecuted by courts, most of this is based on appearance and language, not the deviant act.
Labelling has real consequences – it can lead to deviancy amplification, the self-fulfilling prophecy and deviant careers
Lemert – primary and secondary deviance
Becker – labelling, the deviant career and the master status
Labelling theory applied to education – the self-fulfilling prophecy
Moral panics, folk devils and deviancy amplification
Labelling theory should promote policies that prevent labelling minor acts as deviant
Decriminalisation (of drugs for example)
Reintegrative shaming to label the act, not the criminal.
Evaluations
Positive
Negative
Labelling theory emphasises the following:
– That the law is not ‘set in stone’ – it is actively constructed and changes over time
– That law enforcement is often discriminatory
– That we cannot trust crime statistics
– That attempts to control crime can backfire and may make the situation worse
– That agents of social control may actually be one of the major causes of crime, so we should think twice about giving them more power.
– It tends to be determinstic, not everyone accepts their labels
– It assumes offenders are just passive – it doesn’t recognise the role of personal choice in committing crime
– It gives the offender a ‘victim status’ – Realists argue that this perspective actually ignores the actual victims of crime.
– It tends to emphasise the negativesides of labelling rather than the positive side
– It fails to explain why acts of primary deviance exist, focussing mainly on secondary deviance.
– Structural sociologists argue that there are deeper, structural explanations of crime, it isn’t all just a product of labelling and interactions.
Labelling theory argues that criminal and deviant acts are a result of labelling by authorities – and the powerless are more likely to be negatively labelled.
The labelling Theory of Crime is associated with Interactionism – the Key ideas are that crime is socially constructed, agents of social control label the powerless as deviant and criminal based on stereotypical assumptions and this creates effects such as the self-fulfilling prophecy, the criminal career and deviancy amplification.
Interactionists argue that people do not become criminals because of their social background, but rather argue that crime emerges because of labelling by authorities. They see crime as the product of micro-level interactions between certain individuals and the police, rather than the result of external social forces such as socialisation or blocked opportunity structures.
Four Key concepts associated with Interactionist theories of deviance
Crime is Sociology Constructed – An act which harms an individual or society else only becomes criminal if those in power label that act as criminal.
Not everyone who is deviant gets labelled as such – negative labels are generally (deviant/ criminal) are generally given to the powerless by the powerful.
Labelling has real consequences – it can lead to deviancy amplification, the self-fulfilling prophecy and deviant careers.
Labelling theory has a clear ‘value position’ – it should aim to promote policies that prevent labelling minor acts as deviant.
Crime is Socially Constructed
Rather than taking the definition of crime for granted, labelling theorists are interested in how certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal in the first place.
Interactionists argue that there is no such thing as an inherently deviant act – in other words there is nothing which is deviant in itself in all situations and at all times, certain acts only become deviant in certain situations when others label them as deviant. Deviance is not a result of an act or an individual being ‘uniquely different’, deviance is a product of society’s reaction to actions.
As Howard Becker* (1963) puts it – “Deviancy is not a quality of the act a person commits, but rather a consequences of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.”
Howard Becker – One of the main theorists within Interactionism.
Howard Becker illustrates how crime is the product of social interactions by using the example of a fight between young people. In a low-income neighbourhood, a fight is more likely to be defined by the police as evidence of delinquency, but in a wealthy area as evidence of high spirits. The acts are the same, but the meanings given to them by the audience (in this case the public and the police) differ. Those who have the power to make the label stick thus create deviants or criminals.
Becker provides a more extreme example in his book The Outsiders (1963) – in this he draws on a simple illustration of a study by anthropologist Malinowski who describes how a youth killed himself because he hand been publicly accused of incest. When Malinowski had first inquired about the case, the islanders expressed their horror and disgust. But, on further investigation, it turned out that incest was not uncommon on the island, nor was it really frowned upon provided those involved were discrete. However, if an incestuous affair became too obvious and public, the islanders reacted with abuse and the offenders were ostracised and often driven to suicide.
To be clear – in the above example, everyone knows that incest goes on, but if people are too public about it (and possibly if they are just disliked for whatever reason) they get publicly shamed for being in an incestuous relationship.
You could apply the same thinking to criminal behaviour more generally in Britain – According to a recent 2015 survey of 2000 people, the average person in Britain breaks the law 17 ties per year, with 63% admitting speeding, 33% steeling and 25% taking illegal drugs – clearly the general public is tolerant of ‘ordinary’ deviance – but every now and then someone will get spotted doing ‘ordinary’ criminal activities and publicly shamed.
All of this has led labelling theorists to look at how and why rules and laws get made – especially the role of what Becker calls ‘moral entrepreneurs’, people who lead a moral crusade to change the law in the belief that it will benefit those to whom it is applied. However, according to Interactionists, when new laws are created, they simply create new groups of outsiders and lead to the expansion of social control agencies such as the police, and such campaigns may do little to change the underlying amount of ‘deviant activity’ taking place.
In summary – deviance is not a quality that lies in behaviour itself, but in the interaction between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it. From this point of view, deviance is produced by a process of interaction between the potential deviant and the wider public (both ordinary people and agencies of social control).
Application of the concept of ‘social constructionism’ to drug crime –
Looking at how drug laws have changed over time, and how they vary from country to country to country is a very good way of looking at how the deviant act of drug-taking is socially constructed…
In the United Kingdom, a new law was recently passed which outlawed all legal highs, meaning that many ‘head-shops’ which sold them literally went from doing something legal to illegal over night (obviously they had plenty of notice!)
Meanwhile – in some states in America, such as Colorado, things seem to be moving in the other direction – it is now legal to grow, sell and smoke Weed – meaning that a whole new generation of weed entrepreneurs have suddenly gone from doing something illegal to something legal, and profitable too!
NB – There’s a lot more information about the social construction of drug use out there – think about the difference between coffee, nicotine, alcohol (all legal) and cannabis.
Discussion Question
Do you agree with the idea that there is no such thing as an inherently deviance act? Work your way through the list of deviance acts below and try to think of contexts in which they would not be regarded as deviant.
Violence
Theft
Fraud
Drug taking
Public nudity
Paedophilia
Vandalism
Not Everyone Who is Deviant Gets Labelled
Those in Power are just as deviant/ criminal as actual ‘criminals’ but they are more able to negotiate themselves out of being labelled as criminals.
NB to my mind the classic song by NWA ‘Fuck Tha Police’ is basically highlighting the fact that it’s young black males in the US that typically get labelled as criminals (while young white kids generally don’t)
Back to Labelling theory proper – the key idea here is that not everyone who commits an offence is punished for it. Whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted depends on factors such as:
Their interactions with agencies of social control such as the police and the courts
Their appearance, background and personal biography
The situation and circumstances of the offence.
This leads labelling theorists to look at how laws are applied and enforced. Their studies show that agencies of social control are more likely to label certain groups of people as deviant or criminal.
Aaron Cicourel – Power and the negotiation of justice
The process of defining a young person as a delinquent is complex, and it involves a series of interactions based on sets of meanings held by the participants. Cicourel argues that it is the meanings held by police officers and juvenile officers that explain why most delinquents come from working class backgrounds.
The first stage is the decision by the police to stop and interrogate an individual. This decision is based on meanings held by the police of what is ‘strange’, ‘unusual’ and ‘wrong’. Whether or not the police stop and interrogate an individual depends on where the behaviour is taking place and on how the police perceive the individual(s). Whether behaviour is deemed to be ‘suspicious’ will depend on where the behaviour is taking place, for example an inner city, a park, a suburb. If a young person has a demeanour like that of a ‘typical delinquent’ then the police are more likely to both interrogate and arrest that person.
The second stage is that the young person is handed over to a juvenile delinquent officer. This officer will have a picture of a ‘typical delinquent’ in his mind. Factors associated with a typical delinquent include being of dishevelled appearance, having poor posture, speaking in slang etc. It follows that Cicourel found that most delinquents come from working class backgrounds.
When middle class delinquents are arrested they are less likely to be charged with the offence as they do not fit the picture of a ‘typical delinquent’. Also, their parents are more able to present themselves as respectable and reasonable people from a nice neighbourhood and co-operate fully with the juvenile officers, assuring them that their child is truly remorseful.
As a result, the middle class delinquent is more likely to be defined as ill rather than criminal, as having accidentally strayed from the path of righteousness just the once and having a real chance of reforming.
Cicourel based his research on two Californian cities, each with a population of about 100, 000. both had similar social characteristics yet there was a significant difference in the amount of delinquents in each city. Cicourel argued that this difference can only be accounted for by the size, organisation, policies and practices of the juvenile and police bureaus. It is the societal reaction that affects the rate of delinquency. It is the agencies of social control that produce delinquents.
Discussion Questions
Q1 – Do you agree that the whole criminal justice system is basically biased against the working classes, and towards to middle classes?
Q2 – From a research methods point of view, what research methods could you use to test this theory?
The Consequences of Labelling
Labelling theorists are interested in the effects of labelling on those labelled. They claim that by labelling certain people as criminal or deviant society actually encourages them to become more so.
In this section I cover:
Primary and Secondary Deviance (Edwin Lemert)
The Deviant Career, the Master Status and Subcultures (Howard Becker)
Labelling and the Self-Fulling Prophecy applied to education (Howard Becker and Rosenthal and Jacobson)
Labelling theory applied to the Media – Moral Panics, Folk Devils and Deviancy Amplification (Stan Cohen)
If the material below seems a little samely – that’s because it’s all subtle variations on the same theme!
Primary and Secondary Deviance
Edwin Lemert (1972) developed the concepts of primary and secondary deviance to emphasise the fact that everyone engages in deviant acts, but only some people are caught being deviant and labelled as deviant.
Primary deviance refers to acts which have not been publicly labelled, and are thus of little consequence, while secondary deviance refers to deviance which is the consequence of the response of others, which is significant.
To illustrate this, Lemert studied the the coastal Inuit of Canada, who had a long-rooted problem of chronic stuttering or stammering. Lemert suggested that the problem was ’caused’ by the great importance attached to ceremonial speech-making. Failure to speak well was a great humiliation. Children with the slightest speech difficulty were so conscious of their parents’ desire to have well-speaking children that they became over anxious about their own abilities. It was this anxiety which lead to chronic stuttering.
Lemert compared the coastal Inuit which emphasised the importance of public speaking to other similar cultures in the area which did not attach status to public-speaking, and found that in such culture, stuttering was largely non-existence, thus Lemert concluded that it was the social pressure to speak well (societal reaction) which led to some people developing problems with stuttering
In this example, chronic stuttering (secondary deviance) is a response to parents’ reaction to initial minor speech defects (primary deviance).
Labelling, The Deviant Career and the Master Status
This is Howard Becker’s classic statement of how labelling theory can be applied across the whole criminal justice system to demonstrated how criminals emerge, possibly over the course of many years. Basically the public, the police and the courts selectively label the already marginalised as deviant, which the then labelled deviant responds to by being more deviant.
Howard Becker argued that the deviant label can become a ‘master status’ in which the individual’s deviant identity overrules all other identities. Becker argues that there are 5 stages in this process:
The Individual is publicly labelled as a deviant, which may lead to rejection from several social groups. For example, if someone is labelled a junkie they may be rejected by their family.
This may encourage further deviance. For example, drug addicts may turn to crime to finance their habit.
The official treatment of deviance may have similar effects. EG convicted criminals find it difficult to find jobs.
A deviant career may emerge. The deviant career is completed when individuals join an organised deviant group. This is the stage when an individual confirms and accepts their deviant identity.
This is the stage at which the label may become a master status, overriding all other forms of relationship outside the deviant group.
Labelling Theory Applied to Education
Labelling theory has been applied to the context of the school to explain differences in educational achievement (this should sound familiar from year 1!)
Within Schools, Howard Becker (1970) argued that middle class teachers have an idea of an ‘ideal pupil’ that is middle class. This pupil speaks in elaborated speech code, is polite, and smartly dressed, He argued that middle class teachers are likely view middle class pupils more positively than working class pupils irrespective of their intelligence. Thus teachers positively label the students most like them.
There is also evidence of a similar process happening with African Caribbean children. Sociologists such as David Gilborn argue that teachers hold negative stereotypes of young black boys, believing them to be more threatening and aggressive than White and Asian children. They are thus more likely to interpret minor rule breaking by black children in a more serious manner than when White and Asian children break minor rules.
Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) argued that positive teacher labelling can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the student believes the label given to them and the label becomes true in practise. They concluded this on the basis of a classic ‘Field Experiment’ to test the effects of teacher labels, which consisted of the following:
Stage one – tested the IQ (intelligence) of all pupils in the school
Stage two – gave teachers a list of the top 20% most intelligent pupils. However, this list was actually just a random selection of student names
Stage three –One year later those students who teachers believed to be the most intelligent had improved the most.
Stage four –Concluded that high teacher expectation had resulted in improvement (= the self-fulfilling prophecy)
Key Terms: Moral Panics, Folk Devils and The Deviancy Amplification Spiral
Labelling theory has been applied to the representation of certain groups in the mainstream media – Interactionists argue that the media has a long history of exaggerating the deviance of youth subcultures in particular, making them seem more deviant than they actually are, which creates a ‘moral panic’ among the general public, which in turn leads to the authorities clamping down on the activities of those subcultures, and finally to the individuals within those subcultures responding with more deviance.
A moral panic is “an exaggerated outburst of public concern over the morality or behaviour of a group in society.” Deviant subcultures have often been the focus of moral panics. According to Interactionists, the Mass Media has a crucial role to play in creating moral panics through exaggerating the extent to which certain groups and turning them into ‘Folk Devils’ – people who are threatening to public order.
In order for a moral panic to break out, the public need to believe what they see in the media, and respond disproportionately, which could be expressed in heightened levels of concern in opinion polls or pressure groups springing up that campaign for action against the deviants. The fact that the public are concerned about ‘youth crime’ suggest they are more than willing to subscribe to the media view that young people are a threat to social order.
The final part of a moral panic is when the authorities respond to the public’s fear, which will normally involve tougher laws, initiatives and sentencing designed to prevent and punish the deviant group question.
The term ‘moral panic’ was first used in Britain by Stan Cohen in a classic study of two youth subcultures of the 1960s – ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’. Cohen showed how the media, for lack of other stories exaggerated the violence which sometimes took place between them. The effect of the media coverage was to make the young people categorise themselves as either mods or rockers which actually helped to create the violence that took place between them, which further helped to confirm them as violent in the eyes of the general public.
Labelling theory believes that deviance is made worse by labelling and punishment by the authorities, and it follows that in order to reduce deviance we should make fewer rules for people to break, and have less-serious punishments for those that do break the rules.An example of an Interactionist inspired policy would be the decriminalisation of drugs.
According to Interactionist theory, decriminalisation should reduce the number of people with criminal convictions and hence the risk of secondary deviance, an argument which might make particular sense for many drugs offences because these are often linked to addiction, which may be more effectively treated medically rather than criminally. (The logic here is that drug-related crime isn’t intentionally nasty, drug-addicts do it because they are addicted, hence better to treat the addiction rather than further stigmatise the addict with a criminal label).
Similarly, labelling theory implies that we should avoid ‘naming and shaming’ offenders since this is likely to create a perception of them as evil outsiders and, by excluding them from mainstream society, push them into further deviance.
Reintegrative Shaming
Most interactionist theory focuses on the negative consequences of labelling, but John Braithwaite (1989) identifies a more positive role for the labelling process. He distinguishes between two types of shaming:
Disintegrative shaming where not only the crime, but also the criminal, is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society.
Reintegrative shaming by contrast labels the act, but not the actor – as if to say ‘he has done a bad thing’ – rather an ‘he is a bad person’.
A policy of reintegrative shaming avoids stigmatising the offender as evil while at the same time making them aware of the negative impact of their actions on others. Victims are encouraged to forgive the person, but not the act, and the offender is welcomed back into the community, thus avoiding the negative consequences associated with secondary deviance.
Braithwaite argues that crime rates are lower where policies of reintegrative shaming are employed.
Evaluation of Labelling Theory
Labelling theory emphasises the following
That the law is not ‘set in stone’ – it is actively constructed and changes over time
That law enforcement is often discriminatory
That we cannot trust crime statistics
That attempts to control crime can backfire and may make the situation worse
That agents of social control may actually be one of the major causes of crime, so we should think twice about giving them more power.
Criticisms of Labelling Theory
It tends to be deterministic, not everyone accepts their labels
It assumes offenders are just passive – it doesn’t recognise the role of personal choice in committing crime
It gives the offender a ‘victim status’ – Realists argue that this perspective actually ignores the actual victims of crime.
It tends to emphasise the negative sides of labelling rather than the positive side
It fails to explain why acts of primary deviance exist, focussing mainly on secondary deviance.
Structural sociologists argue that there are deeper, structural explanations of crime, it isn’t all just a product of labelling and interactions.
A summary of Webers’ Verstehen Goffman’s Dramaturgical Theory, Symbolic Interactionism and and Labellling.
Unlike structural theorists, social action theorists argue that people’s behaviour and life-chances are not determined by their social background. Instead, social action theorists 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.
This post provides a summary of the key ideas of Social Action Theory for A-level sociology students studying the theory and methods topic in their second year of study, AQA focus.
Max Weber: Verstehen, and Social Change
Observation alone is not enough to understand human action, we need empathetic understanding. Gaining Verstehen is the main point of Sociology.
Understanding individual motives is crucial for understanding changes to the social structure (as illustrated in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism).
Weber still attempted to make generalisations about types of motive for action – there are four main types of motive for action – Instrumentally rational, value rational, traditional action and affectual action
Different societies and different groups emphasise the importance of different types of ‘general motive’ for action’ – so society still affects individual motives, but in a general way.
Symbolic Interactionism
People’s self-concepts are based on their understanding of how others perceive them (the looking glass self).
We act towards others on the basis of how we interpret their symbolic action, the same action can be interpreted differently by different people – we need to understand these specific meanings to understanding people’s actions.
We ‘are constantly ‘taking on the role of the other’ – thinking about how people see us and reacting accordingly, this is very much an active, conscious process.
Each of us has an idea in the back of our minds of ‘the generalised other’ – which is basically society – what society expects of us, which consists of different norms and values associated with different roles in society.
These social roles are not specific or fixed; they can be interpreted in various different ways.
Goffman’s Dramaturgical Theory
People are actors on a ‘social stage’ who actively create an impression of themselves
When we act in the social world, we put on a ‘front’ in order to project a certain image of ourselves (call this part of our ‘social identity’
To create this front we manipulate the setting in which we perform (e.g. our living room), our appearance (e.g. our clothes) and our manner (our emotional demeanour).
Impression management involves projecting an ‘idealised image’ of ourselves,
We must be constantly on our guard to practice ‘expressive control’ when on the social stage.
Acting out social roles is quite demanding and so in addition to the front-stage aspect of our lives, we also have back-stage areas where we can drop our front and be more relaxed, closer to our ‘true-selves’
Most acting is neither fully ‘sincere’ nor fully ‘contrived’ and most people oscillate between sincerity and cynicism throughout the day and throughout the role they are playing.
Labelling Theory
Focuses on how the definitions (meanings) people impose on situations or on other people can have real consequences (even if those definitions are not based in reality)
People in power generally have more ability to impose their definitions on situations than the powerless and make these labels have consequences compared to working class youths. Labelling theory
We still need to understand where people are located in the power-structure of society to fully understand the process of labelling and identity construction.
Positive Evaluations of Social Action Theory
Recognises that people are complex and active and have their own diverse meanings and motives for acting
Overcomes the determinism found in structural theories such as Marxism which tend to see individuals as passive
Goffman’s dramaturgical theory seems especially useful today in the age of Social Media
Labelling Theory recognises the importance of micro-level interactions in shaping people’s identities, and the fact that people in power are often more able to ‘define the situation’.
In-depth research methods associated with social action theory often have high valid
Criticisms of Social Action Theory
It doesn’t pay sufficient attention to how social structures constrain action – for example, material deprivation can have a real, objective impact on your ability to well at school, thus failure is not just all about labelling.
Tends to ignore power-distribution in society – it can’t explain patterns in class, gender, ethnicity.
If people are so active, then why do so many people choose to be so normal?
Labelling theory can also be criticised for being deterministic
The small-scale methods associated with this theory can equally be criticised for lacking reliability and
Signposting and Related Posts
Social Action theory is usually taught as part of the social theory aspect of the second year A-level sociology module in theory and methods, typically in contrast to the two structural theories Functionalism and Marxism, and is followed by (and in some ways is a pre-cursor of ) Postmodernism.
This post on teacher labelling and the self fulfilling prophecy, taught as part of the first year Education module provides a lot more depth on the micro-interactions which make up the whole process of labelling.
You might also like the following two posts which expand on other aspects of the notes above:
