Types of Social Action

1. Instrumentally rational action - action which are determined by expectations about the properties of objects and the behavior of human beings that the actor encounters in his/her environment. In other words, actions where things and people are treated or used as conditions or means to attain the actor's rationally pursued and calculated ends.

Examples?

2. Value-rational action - action determined by the conscious belief in the value, for its own sake (i.e., not as a means towards an ulterior goal), of some ethical, religious, political, aesthetic or other form of behavior, regardless of the probabilities of ultimate success.

Examples?

3. Affectual action - action determined by the actor's feelings, emotions, attachments etc.

Examples?

4. Traditional action - action determined by habit, unthinking, almost automatic behavior in response to everyday stimuli.

Examples?

Formal Rationality of Economic Action: "the extent of quantitative calculation or accounting which is technically possible and which is actually applied." p. 85

Examples? Do you think that most people in contemporary societies engage in this type of social action? Why?

Formally Rational System of Economic Activity: "the degree to which the provision for needs, which is essential to every rational economy, is capable of being expressed in numerical, calculable terms." p. 85

Is the capitalist system a system of this kind? Why?

Substantive Rationality of Economic Action: "the degree to which the provisioning of given groups of persons with goods is shaped by economically oriented action under some criterion (past, present or potential) of ultimate values, regardless of the nature of these ends." p. 85

Examples? Would this kind of social action be possible under capitalist conditions?

Weber indicates, unambiguously, that "the provision for needs" (which I understand to be the satisfaction, to an unspecified degree, of the economic or survival needs of the population) is "essential to every rational economy." What matters, to a "formally rational" economic system, is the possibility of expressing that provision in "numerical, calculable terms;" i.e., what matters is that production is efficiently, rationally undertaken so that it is possible to have a clear idea of the balance of accounts at the beginning and the end of each productive cycle without any consideration of the characteristics of the actual process of provisioning.

Weber does not offer a definition of the Substantively Rational System of Economic Activity which, given his comparisons between capitalism and socialism later on in this work, we can safely assume that it is socialism but there is no reason to exclude other values, because Weber's definitions are formal, in the sense of lacking an specific historical context or significance. I will construct a definition paraphrasing Weber's definition of the formally rational system:

Substantively Rational System of Economic Activity: the degree to which the provision for needs, which is essential to every rational economy, is capable of being expressed in calculable terms designed to fulfill or satisfy ultimate values, regardless of the nature of those ends.

A substantively rational economic system, then, would be one where economic efficiency and calculation is oriented towards the satisfaction of ultimate values without prejudging the nature of those values; socialist, fascist, racist, catholic, egalitarian and other values could orient different kinds of provisioning of basic needs.

Formal Rationality in General or Formally Rational Action:

It is synonimous with instrumentally rational action; i.e., action based on rational calculation of the effectivity of the means chosen to atain a predetermined, rationally pursued and calculated end. The content of formal rationality remains indeterminate; the form of formally rational action is that of a general purposive action where actors pursue their objectives using the most efficient, adequate or productive means. Individuals act rationally when their actions are means driven, self-interested, utilitarian; when their decision to attain a given goal is predicated on their ultimate benefit for themselves, when they value people or things only because of their usefulness rather than because their intrinsec qualitities.

For example, when students pursue doctoral studies becase a Ph.D. yields higher social and economic rewards than an M.A., or choose a specialty because of its market value, they are acting in a formally rational way. When couples decide to have a child because it will provide the bone marrow needed to save their older child, or because they want to have someone to care for them in their old age, they are acting in a formally rational way.

Substantive Rationality in General:

It is synonimous with value rationality; it goes beyond the rational selection of appropriate means towards an end because the end is chosen on the basis of ethical, political, utilitarian, religious, etc. standards and, consequently, the results of substantive rationality are not measured in terms of the formally rational nature of the action but against the scales of 'value rationality" or "substantive goal rationality." p. 85

For example, when professionals donate their services regardless of their lost income (e.g., providing legal aid to the poor, or joining Physicians without Borders), their actions are instances of substantive rationality. When policy makers,together with President Roosevelt, designed and implemented Social Security as a universal entitlement, linking it to the Consumer Price Index regardless of cost, theirs was a substantively rational action. When Hitler and his followers organized the camps rationally to exterminate Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, any group deemed inferior to the Aryan race and a threat to racial purity, their actions are instances of substantive rationality.

To sum up:

Formal Rationality: decision making based on calculation, efficiency, predictability, technical appropriateness, oriented towards personal or institutional utility.

Substantive Rationality: decision making based on ultimate values whose significance and worth transcends personal or institutional utility.

In practice, both types of rationality are likely to inform a given course of action; substantive values can be pursued in a formally rational manner while calculation and efficiency can become the ultimate value orienting formally rational action. Adam Smith's notion of the "invisible hand," according to which the (rational) pursuit of individual profits results in the common good is an instance of the transformation of means into ends. Today, while most people don't even know who Adam Smith is, nevertheless they celebrate the virtues of the free market as the source of prosperity and foundation of democracy.

The key to differentiate the two types of social action is the degree to which, in formally rational action, the means become the ends as well; e.g., the pursuit of wealth, efficiency, calculability, or economic growth as ends in themselves regardless of the consequences for others.

A focus on the types of social action or individual processes of decision making leaves unspecified the social context within which these actions make sense. Weber does not give us a theory of the social system where individuals' actions could be identified as instrumentally rational, value rational, traditional or affectual. Logically, it is possible to identify these ideal types of social action in ALL social contexts which could, then, be classified on the basis of the relative preponderance of one or more of these types. Weber does not give us a theory of the economic system either, only a taxonomy of rational economic actions together with a taxonomy of their substantive conditions. But inherent in Weber's view of the "spirit of capitalism" as the culmination of the rationalization process, latent in his understanding of historical change is the change from traditional to modern societies. For Weber, and for his contemporary followers, pre-capitalist and poor societies are less rational than advanced capitalist societies.

The word substantive, then, indicates several different phenomena:

1. the content or substantive goal of formally rational actions; for example, couples planning to have a small family (e.g., only one child) better to provide and care for the child, or to avoid contribution to population growth, may behave in formally rational ways to achieve that goal.

2. the objective or material conditions or context which formally rational actions presuppose; for couples living in traditional societies, in the Weberian sense, where reproduction is tightly regulated by traditional, patriarchal values and religion, family planning as a form of formally rational behavior or as an instance of substantive rationality or value-rational action would be out of the question.

3. a set of values or system of values actors select to orient their actions. Actions could be oriented towards the attainment of political, ethical, religious, aesthetic or cultural values, to name a few.

The issues that in Weber's theory remains untheorized are, precisely, those of a) the relationship between formally rational actions and their substantive (i.e., material, objective, structural) conditions of possibility; b) the relationship between value systems and their own substantive (i.e., material, objective, structural) conditions, and c) the relationship between individuals and the various value systems which could be the grounds of their substantively rational actions.

With respect to a: is it possible to understand a given action as rational without linking it or placing it within a specific context or substantive set of conditions? If so, do those conditions determine what counts or does not count as formally rational action?

With respect to b: What are the substantive conditions of value systems? If they are not simply "floating signifiers" but the cultural and institutional embodiment of past historical processes, how do they inform our understanding of the substantive conditions of formally rational actions?

With respect to c: We may say that it is through "elective affinity" that individuals choose one value system rather than another but, if the relationship between individuals' actions and values is tenuous and relatively contingent (for even if elective affinity reflects individuals' interests, there is no guarantee that individuals will be in fact aware of their objective interests), then values lose their social, collective and constraining properties as "social facts" (a la Durkheim) to be reduced to individuals' "taste."