Non-routine Action And Social Change

The core of this dissertation is the concept non-routine action and a proposition of social action and social change which is just stretched from this concept. Among the legacy of western sociological thoughts, there are three classic sorts of action based on distinct dimensions. One sort is Durheim and Merton's normative action and anomic action, another is Weber and Harbermas' non-rational action and rational action, and the third is Giddens' routine action. These concepts hold great significance to the theory's construction, with which they all uphold their respective theory. However, as I clarified in my dissertation, theories based on those concepts of social action also have some blemishes. Then the concept non-routine action is the very imagination based on their thoughts.The distinction and theoretical premise of normative action and anomic action suggest that the former are those normal phenomena which conform to the society's requirements, while the latter is not. This has determined the anomic action's destiny of being suppressed, transformed and even eliminated. And its latent social meanings and legitimacy to the individual have been deprived. What Durheim provides us is the plan that brings anomic action back into normal conditions, and letting the individual' desire, motives and values been covered by social requirements of publicity. Obviously, this distinction of normative action and anomic action is of collectivism methodology, which is characterized by discussing actions from the angle of the society. In the relationship between the individual and society, this suggests that society and collectivity is the criterion and always holds priority and determines which the individual can only obey and couldn't escape. Durheim shows great hatred and dread to the individual' desires and he suggests the corporate body should also restrict but not satisfy the individual' desire in his thought. So in Durheim's theory, concern for the individual should give place to the concern for the society. However, for the two themes of social order and social change, normative action functions as reproducing, maintaining and intensifying social structure and social order. Therefore, the normative action doesn't contain integrant for social change, and the anomic action is right the action that would be excluded, transformed and eliminated, then its wallop and requirements to the social structure, social institutions and social norms are eradicated. Consequently, the structure is right the customary structure and institutions are still those pristine ones. In sum, this category of actions is provided with much more value in explaining social order than explaining social change. Yet Merton's rebuilding of Durheim' theory doesn't solve this problem essentially.Non-rational action and rational action are distinguished by the agent's motive and meaning inthe individualism methodology. The agen t' subjective meaning is supposed to be the start-point of the social order. It is right the subjective meaning and its other-orientation that combine all kinds of social relationship and then walk toward a larger system. With this approach, Weber draws causality between the action's meaning of and the society. Then he constructs two basic propositions based on that causality: one is social constitution and the other is rationalization. However, a pivotal problem arise right from here, i.e., is the source of the action' meaning from a pure immanent psychic and mental impulse or from the society? Weber's illustration has been riddled with contradictions. As for the proposition of social constitution, the action's meaning is purely subjective, and the social constitution and order are all constructed according to the individual's subjective meaning, while as for the rationalization proposition, the source of action's meaning surpasses the individual dimension. More importantly, Weber's rationalization itself is a paradox: the actor's rationalization process hastens the dramatic progress of modernization, and meanwhile produces much modernity dilemma such as meaning losing, freedom losing and bureaucracy iron cage. This rationalization brings social progress and social change, and at the same time itself is a power of end-all. In sum, although non-rational action and rational action synchronously can interpret social order and social change, they are not so satisfactory. While Harbermas uses inter-rationality to re-interpret the action's rationality and non-rationality, yet he fails to succeed, either.Routine action is defined by the action's practical condition. In order to solve the opposition of the individual and the society, Giddens makes an important a turning from epistemology to ontology. In his point of view, rather than disputing about the individualism and collectivism, studying the realistic being and searching for the transfixion of the individual and the society is the best policy. With the concept of routine action, he constructs the structuriation theory of duality. "Routine" means all kinds of routine actions, which are deposited in the time-space with an unexpected result, and which is called the reproduction of structure. And this structure reproduced in turn becomes condition and medium of subsequently actions. Meanwhile, social integration and system integration are based on the routine action, too. Giddens has avoided what Durheim and Weber's flaw of opposing logic, and he argues that the individual and the society are not opposing but dual and inter-constructed. However, this kind of systemization encounters two major problems. One is that routine action cannot interpret social change, either. It interprets why actions maintain stable, but cannot interpret the changes of actions. If actions are always routine, new actions wouldn't be produced. And without new actions, no changes of social structure would occur. The other is that the concept of duality doesn't solve the problem of two-pole opposing problem essentially, but just use duality to cover dualism.With retrospection for the three sorts of social action, this thesis proposes a pair of new socialaction—routine action and non-routine action—on the theoretical basis of social mutual-constructiontheory. The concept of routine action comes from Giddens' structuriation theory, which embodies theinter-construction of the individual and the society, with the iterative reproduction of the socialstructure and daily life as a result. Non-routine action is imagination from the unilateralism ofstructuriatioh theory and a discovery from the actual life. Non-routine action is produced when theactor changes his familiar and practical routine action path as the principles of social organization andstructure arrangements cannot satisfy the individual's independent desire. Non-routine action is quitea daily concept. And just because of the daily language's aspect of no-thinking process, people alwaysignore its profound social meaning. Requirements and meanings of the routine action and non-routineaction are completely different as the former is the outcome of the fusion of the individual and thesociety which embodies duality while the latter is the conflict of the individual and the society whichembodies dualism. Therefore, the advancement of non-routine action is of much importance since itbrings Giddens' duality theory back in to the sociological theoretical perspective of dualism. Moreimportantly, non-routine actions' existence and its social consequences contain important opportunityfor the social change, therefore offsets Giddens' concept of action. Studying under the normativedimension, non-routine actions could be divided into four sorts, i.e., normative routine action, anomicroutine action, normative non-routine action and anomic non-routine action, with distinct socialmeanings. Non-routine action is neither Weber's so called goal-rationality action nor Harbermas'inter-rationality but rationality of choice process or limited rationality, namely non-routine actionbears rationality in the choice process which cannot guarantee reasonable results. In the respect of theconditions and path, non-routine actions are characterized by non-routinization, uncertainty andanti-localization. Its beginning shape is non-universal, covert and non-organized.Regarding to the characteristics of non-routine action' formation, it doesn't seem not to be power and variables to the social change. However, if non-routine actions are imitated, diffused and then developed into a universal and popular action style, these will stimulate actual changes of the principles and styles of social organizations or induces reactions of the social structure. This is right the non-routine actions' universalization and routinization process, which holds much importance for the changes of social life and social organization. The non-routine actions' universalization and routinization contains two states, one is atomization and the other is organization. No matter which kinds of formation, the non-routine action' universalization and routinization should possesses two conditions, one is demonstrating non-routine actions' practicability and the other the individual dilemma's universality and continuality. Meanwhile, for the latent imitators, choice would be made only through an abundant trade-off for costs versus benefits, safety versus risk and time versus space.The consequences of non-routine actions' universalization and routinization are four distinct rules of social life, i.e., anti-rule, latent rule, beneficial rule and harmful rule. Then the social change process manifests as the formation of new rules and relay of old rules. After drawing this new understanding of social change, we could find that social change is not a slow, accumulated and lasting differentiation and integration process as in the view of evolutionalism and functionism, nor is a periodic circulation as Toynbee said, yet not a fissile process as Giddens claims. By contrary, social change represents as a duetto of accelerating relay and slow transformation, i.e., the formation and relay of anti-rule and beneficial rule to the old rule is a accelerating process, and the latent rule and harmful rule's transformations to the old rules is a chronic and slow formation process.