Theories of social action

It is impossible to go very far in any direction within the world of social theory without having to confront serious questions thrown up by one or other dimension of social action. Weber explicitly singled out social action as the "central subject matter" of his sociology (Weber 1968: 24), and whilst Marx is often crudely characterized as the master of structure and determinism, any serious engagement with his work will soon come across long passages and telling statements which convey sustained and complex refl ections on the role of social action both in itself and in its relationship to social structures. Two of the telling statements I refer to will provide core themes for this chapter: the fi rst is his famous saying that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness" (Marx 1962: 363; see Avineri 1968: 75–6); the second is the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it" (Marx, quoted in McLellan 1977: 158). By thematizing these statements I want to allow a closer scrutiny of their substance and implications, but also to provide a frame within which to acknowledge both the various refinements and advances in conceptualization and approach accrued by subsequent theoretical developments and the continuing influence of classical thinkers.