Social Action Perspective

Social Action

Social action is an individual or group behaviour that involves interaction with other individuals or groups, especially organized action toward social reform. Some definition is to be given below that help to better understand the social action. According to Max Weber, “An Action is ‘social’ if the acting individual takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course.”

Max Weber –SOCIAL ACTION

Max Weber observes that social action is that action of an individual which is somehow influenced by the action and behaviour of other individuals and by which it is modified and its direction is determined. Weber writes, “A correct causal interpretation of concrete course of action, is arrived at when the overt action and the motives have both been correctly apprehended and at the same time their relation has become meaningfully comprehensible.”

Types of Social Action

Weber classified social action into four types as follows:

1. Zweckrational Action (Rationally Purposeful Action): This is purely rational action. It means that the actor is fully conscious of this end and selects the appropriate means towards the attainment of his goal. Economic behaviour is purely rational in the sense that a producer chooses the most cheap and efficient means in the production of goods. Every entrepreneur aims at optimum level of production using the best, efficient means to achieve this end. Hence, he chooses between the innumerable alternatives open to him to achieve this goal and exercise rationality principle. His decision is purely rational in economic terms. This is referred to as “Zweckrational action” by Weber.
2. Wertrational Action (Value Rational Action): The second kind is Wertrational action, in which values govern the actor. Here logicality refers more to the means than to the end because the ends may or may not be true. Religious behaviour, in which people engage in a number of activities to achieve certain things, is typically an example of this kind of social action. Whether a devotee does achieve his ends through a particular religious means cannot be known, but the fact that he engages in prayer and other related activities denotes that he is influenced by religion as a value.
3. Affectual Social Action: Affective action fuses means and ends together so that action becomes emotional and impulsive. Such action is the antithesis of rationality because the actor concerned cannot make a calm, dispassionate assessment of the relationship between the ends of action and the means that supposedly exist to serve these ends. Rather the means themselves are emotionally fulfilling and become ends in themselves. Thus, the feelings of the people are considered here. It's an action unplanned, resulting from the actor's emotional state of mind. A mother patting her child on his back affectionately is the best example of this action.
4. Traditional Social action: Traditional social action is performed merely because it has always been done. All customs, folkways, and mores belong to this category. A particular way of dressing, for instance, is followed because that is what people before have been following, observance of several rites and performance of ceremonies is a matter more of custom than rationality.

Weber broadly classifies the above four kinds into rational and irrational typologies. However, this classification is not mutually exclusive because a particular action may fall into the above categories. Marginal causes are not uncommon in sociological knowledge. However, the typologies of social action propounded by Weber have been the banes of not only “social action” as such but that of the ‘ideal type’ analysis, Ideal types, referred to as standards for comparative methods, are based on the Zweckrational classification of social action and these formulations in modern sociological theory are indeed immense.

Criticisms

Weber’s theory of social action, especially his typology of social action has encountered severe criticisms.

1. Talcott Parsons criticizes Weber for stressing too much the element of voluntary subjective meaning of the actor. For Parsons, the action of an actor is involuntary; it is behaviour directed by the meanings attached by actors to things and people.
2. A. Schultz criticizes Weber for not providing a satisfactory account of meaningful action since if meaning is too much divorced from the actor it becomes an objective category imposed by the sociologists.
3. According to P.S. Cohen, Weber’s typology of social action is confusing due to Weber’s emphasis on subjective meaning of the actor. Cohen explains with an example of traditional action whereby a commoner pays tribute to his chief because it is customary.

If the commoner can give no other reason for making the payment other than that it has always been so then the conduct may be treated as non-rational. It may be called rational if he gives as his reason for payment that the chief is the father of the people and hence entitled to tribute.

It may be value-rational the goal of pleasing the chief is a valued end and the means adopted to produce the desired result. It may be goal-rational the tribute has always been paid because it pleases the chief and enables one to obtain the favour from him and the failure to pay may displease the chief and induce him to punish the offender.

To this Weber might reply that whether the commoner can give reason for payment or not, he will make it because he has considered no alternative. Despite the above shortcomings, Weber’s theory of social action has inspired sociologists of subsequent generations.