Weber was writing in an age of revolution, and he devoted his life to the study of capitalism and what what made it possible. He based much of his analysis on the concept of rationalization, whereby he believed that modern social and economic life was being ordered according to the principles of efficiency and on the basis on technical knowledge, as apposed to upon morality or tradition. He summarised the distinctions between the traditional and modern, capitalist world through distinction of four ideal types of social action; Traditional (controlled by conditions), affective (determined by emotions), Value Rational (conscious belief in value of behaviour) and Instrumental Rational (carried out to achieve a specific goal). Weber was most interested in instrumental Rational behaviour, as he believed that the modern, industrialising world encouraged individuals to obsess with efficiency and disregard to notion of ethics, leading people to misery and hence, social conflict. In terms of action, Weber was primarily focuses on action that clearly involved the intervention of thought process between stimulus and response; in his own words, he believed that sociological analysis involved “the interpretation of action in terms of its subjective meaning”. (1921/1968:8). Weber believed that Instrumental Reaction was much easier to understand by sociologists compared to the action dominated by affect and tradition. The weight that he gave to meaning meant that Weber gave his sociological analysis of social action carry more relation to theories such as social interactionism, as although himself not completely concerned with these mental processes, his ideas behind this allowed for social interactionism to develop this focus upon micro-sociology.
Weber focussed heavily on ‘ideal types’ additionally; conceptual or analytical models that are used to understand the world. These serve as a fixed point of reference, and he used these in order to conceptualise the ideas of bureaucracy and economic markets, as Weber believed that the emergence of modern society was accompanied by important shifts in social action which led to increasing engagement in relational, instrumental calculations, rather than sentimentality as it had been in the past. He used the word ‘disenchantment’ to summarise this idea. Weber often linked the ideas of capitalist development to The Protestant Ethic, which focused upon the idea that calvinism made capitalism possible. He suggested through this work that the fact that Protestant beliefs are not focussed upon transgression and confession as Catholicism is, this leads to lifelong guilt and subsequent desire to work, contributing to the Protestant Work Ethic. Any work, hence, for Protestants is done in the name of God, leading to increased moral energy and earnestness to all professions, hence leading to the capitalist economic system. Although the weight of Protestantism was not as prevalent in Weber’s time, the system of capitalism and its subsequent social structure and bureaucracy had become central to social life. Prosperity was no longer seen as something given by God, but rather results of thinking methodically and scientifically, contributing to disenchantment. The technological and economic relationships that grew out of capitalist production became themselves fundamental forces in society. This contributed to Weber’s idea of the iron cage; if you are born into a society fundamentally organised by capitalism, you are hence bound to live within this system and thus be shaped by it as a result. This leads to individuals continuously reproducing the cage, and thus Weber saw this ‘cage’ as a massive hindrance to individual freedom. Capitalism, to Weber, was not wholly economic, but equally conceptual — to spread capitalism there must be a focus on culture, rather than materialism.
Symbolic Interactionism is based on Weber’s early idea, emphasising the view of the individual and their role within a society. The perspective originates from the work of George Herbert Mead (1863-1931), who focussed on communication as an active way in which people could understand social world, shaping it rather than it acting upon them. The symbolic interaction perspective is ‘a theoretical framework that envisages society as the product of the everyday interactions of people doing things together’. Mead focussed on a realistic perception of a world in which was understood by the individual, rather than abstract sociological perspectves, to understand the way in which people interact. The self in symbolic interactionism is inseparable from society, and hence it is developed over time. By interacting with society, humans develop meanings to ascribe to things solely resulting from iterations with others. A key element of this interaction is the exchange of symbols, whether these be verbal or non-verbal, and Mead argued that to interact with each other, humans rely almost completely on an exchange of symbols and details within interpersonal interaction. In relation to economics, Mead believed that this exchange of symbols was influential in the development of capitalism. In Arlie Hochchild’s book The Managed Heart, she conducts a study of customer service training and the ‘emotional labour it induces’. Focussing on air hostesses, she researched the way in which companies lay claim not only to physical movement, but also to emotional development through the use of symbols. In her specific example, she found that smiling was something that air hostesses were continuously made to do. She points out how ‘the value of a personal smile is groomed to reflect the company's disposition – its confidence that its planes will not crash, its reassurance that departures and arrivals will be on time, its welcome and its invitation to return’. By using physicality and social interaction to convey a company’s message, we see the impact of capitalism on social interaction, as this appears to become insincere. As a result of this forced symbol, there inherently becomes a sense of distance from emotion for workers, an interesting phenomenon as we consider a smile to be a symbol of a personal part of ourselves. Nevertheless, this example is indicative of the manipulation of symbols and their negative impact in some situations. In an increasingly commercialising world, Mead saw true reality as an abstract concept, and emphasised the way in which our perceived reality controls individual mental processes, making us actors and agents controlled by the larger community.
The focus on symbolism in symbolic interactionism led to Erving Goffman (1922-1982) developing a technique called dramaturgical analysis, whereby he used the theatre as an analogy for social interaction, using people’s individual exchanges to demonstrate patterns of cultural ‘scripts’, thereby analysing the interaction order (what we do in the presence of others) (Goffman, 1982:2). Through this, everyday social action becomes a theatrical performance, where people play parts and scripts supplement dialogue between these. This extension of symbolic interactionism focusses on the idea that people are fundamentally focussed on the overt and covert aspects of human action. The presentation of the self through this inherently links to Mead’s idea of ‘the act’ where ‘all the separated categories of the traditional, orthodox psychologies find a place… the act, then, encompasses the total process involved in human activity’ (Meltzer, 1964/1978:23).
The ideas of Weber and symbolic interactionists overlap in many regards, as symbolic interactionism is fundamentally based upon the early premises of Weber, focussing on the idea that individuals act according to the meaning of their own personal world. The forms of social action emphasise the idea of conscious thought as a mediating factor. Both theories base themselves upon the idea of humanity ordering society; Weber through the idea that our own moral indications have been surpassed by a need for efficiency, and symbolic interactionism through the ideas of communication dictating action. The inherent focus on humanitarian order dictating society puts both theories into a similar fundamental viewpoint, even though the differ in terms of their actual content. However, the symbolic interactionist viewpoint is often criticised for its microsociological perspective, where study is focussed on everyday social life, as apposed to larger issues of power and social structures, and their interactions with individual actions. Weber, by contrast, scales up his analysis fully and translates his concepts of rationalisation and ideals into wide spread sociological ideas. By doing this, it allows branches of Weber such as symbolic interactionism to become a possibilty, as it enables the macro ideas to be constrained to micro situations. Nevertheless, Weber was not dismissive of these micr ideas and was suspicious of assuming that collectives could be studied without looking as least in part at the social action of individuals. Thus, whilst branching into different forms of sociology, both Weber and the symbolic interactionists had a value for social action of individuals, even if Weber did scale this analysis up to look at macro ideas.
Since Weber defined the social world as that of social action to understand individual actions, he thought that each individual acted in association with meaning. He believed that whilst some acts are conditioned, there is a large part of social interaction that is carefully considered in association with goals, actions of others, and possible impacts. By contrast, symbolic interactionism believed that human interaction was, to an extent, conditioned, as the exchange of symbols can become wholly mechanical, even to the extent that physical labourers for an example feel a sense of distance from the particular aspect of themselves given into work, for example an arm may begin to feel simply like a piece of machinery. Rather than being dictated by these symbols, Weber saw physical labour as a conscious process, whereby sociology must evaluate each situation through the eyes of the workers themselves to determine meanings behind the act, as well as if they decide to act themselves. Nevertheless, there still remains similarities between the two aproaches, as they both attempt to relate attitudes to values in a seemingly ‘scientific manner’, which is similar to the link between meaning and causes in weber’s work