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Within this essay I am going to discuss social action theory and symbolic interactionism and evaluate the two theories separately. Max Weber believed that individuals were the key to society. He developed social action theory, the purpose of which was to find out why individuals function in certain ways. He thought that every social action performed by an individual had a meaning attached to it. Social actions are the result of conscious thought processes that take into consideration the reactions of other individuals. Weber identified four types of social action which include, reason (an instrumentally rational or calculated action), value or rational action (determined by belief), emotion or effectual action (dependent upon the feelings of the individual), and traditional action (determined by habit). In order to investigate society and the role of the individual within it, Weber developed a method of understanding called Verstehen. There are two types of Verstehen. Aktuelles...

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