SOCI 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Transactionalism, Instrumentalism, Swat District
Document Summary
Frederik barth: combine weberian and durheimian models into one single system. Every decision we make as social actors has a cost and a benefit. If you choose one, you sacrifice the other. Thus, our choices are channeled in particular streams/regularities/patterns. Doesn"t deny our ability to choose, but we are conscious and acting upon the relative cost and benefit: instrumentalism: Implies that our identities, sense of self, features as if they are tools with utility/purpose behind. Implies that in different circumstances, we will make different choices. Choices available to us changes with different circumstances. Identities are not fixed: especially in terms of weberian thought. People are active agents, but action is constrained by various factors, which combined, form a kind of operating principle upon which social action is based: people have choices, but to some extent these choices are constrained by these.
