Religion and Theories of Action
KOCKU VON STUCKRAD
INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING “ACTION”
“Action” is one of those categories that seem simple at first glance but that become more and more difficult and complex the more we try to figure out what exactly we mean by it. If a person’s legs are moving, does this mean that this person moved her legs? And if she indeed moved her legs, was this an intentional action or did it simply happen? And if she indeed performed an intentional action, was the reason for the action conscious to herself or can her intention only be reconstructed from outside? Simple cases such as this one have triggered theoretical thinking in various disciplines, from philosophy to behavioral science, to sociology and psychology. In all these disciplines, there is a tendency to differentiate “action” from “doing something,” “happening,” or “behavior”—differentiations usually made with reference to intentionality, reason, or agency. A certain behavior becomes “action” as soon as the actor is performing an intentional act that can be interpreted in a situational structure.
For instance, the philosopher Donald Davidson notes that an action ultimately is “intentional under some description.”1 But even then, further clarification is necessary, because otherwise a spider that moves its legs to crawl across a table can also be called an “agent.” Intentionality must therefore be conceptualized in relation to knowledge and consciousness. This is what Harry Frankfurt suggests when he argues that volition and freedom of action presuppose that we need to have a concept of “acting on a desire with which the agent identifies.”2 But is the conscious identification of an agent really a necessary precondition to call something an action? Particularly in sociological theory, there are attempts at establishing clearly defined structural reasons for intentional (or meaningful) behavior the agent himself does not need to be aware of.
Although there are numerous resonances between general theories of action that have been developed in philosophy and sociology,3 in what follows I will focus primarily on the categorization and interpretation of religious action. This does not mean that religious action is fundamentally different from nonreligious action or that we thus need a special theory for religious action. What is at stake here is the usefulness of theories of action for an analysis of religious behavior.
INFLUENTIAL APPROACHES TO (RELIGIOUS) ACTION: WEBER, PARSONS, LUHMANN
It is reasonable to start our overview with Max Weber (1864–1920). Interested in the impact of religious worldviews on the genealogy of modern Western culture, Weber developed a terminology that became highly important in subsequent scholarship.4 Against approaches to religion—common in his day—that conceptualized religion as an inner experience and that looked for the “essence” of religion (Wesen der Religion), early on Weber insisted on the fact that the object of sociological inquiry can never be a person’s internal processes. Already in 1913 he claimed that the object of verstehende Soziologie is not every kind of “inner disposition” or “outward habit” but: “action.”5 In Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Weber notes that the sociology of religion is not dealing with “the ‘essence’ of religion but with the conditions and the impact of a certain kind of communal action [Gemeinschaftshandeln], the understanding of which … can only be gained when we start with the subjective experiences, ideas, and intentions of the individual—with the ‘meaning’ [‘Sinn’]—because the outward order of things is extremely variable.”6 This “meaning” of religious action is something different than the “essence” of religion. It is a meaning that an individual attributes to social action. The sociology of religion identifies this meaning and thus is able to interpret and understand religious action. Consistently, Weber defines action (Handeln) as “an understandable response to ‘objects’ that is specified by some (subjective) meaning that a person ‘has’ or ‘intends,’ even if this meaning is more or less unnoticed.”7 With such a definition, Weber can subsume even Buddhist contemplation or Christian asceticism under the rubric of action because in both cases the actor refers to the subjective meaning of inner “objects.”8 Every form of action or habit (Verhalten), be it internal or external, be it active or passive, is subsumed under the sociological category of action. As noted already, this is true even if a person fails to do something at all, because the actor still demonstrates an “inner response,” or inneres Sichverhalten. Action can be called religious action when the subjective meaning of the action is based on religious motives and ideas.
We can see that for Weber the category “action” is intrinsic to his very concept of religion. And because his concept of religion is broader than that of interpretative models of his time, he often uses the term “religiosity” instead of “religion,” thus making clear that the attribution of religious meaning to action can easily transgress the borders of institutionalized religion. In the light of Weber’s methodological framework, it is important to note that he conceptualizes sociology as an “empiric science of action,” contrasting the “dogmatic sciences” such as logic, aesthetics, or ethics.9 Sociological interpretation reconstructs the “subjectively intended meaning” of an action; it is not interested in establishing an “objectively ‘correct’ or a metaphysically established ‘true’ meaning.”10 Religion is only interesting insofar as it influences social action, that is, in its capacity to form a certain response to and positioning vis-à-vis the world. This positioning and response to the world (Sichverhalten zu “Objekten”) is what Weber conceptualizes as religiosity.
For the sociology of religion in general and the sociology of religious action in particular, the work of Talcott Parsons (1902–79) is the second major pillar, next to Weber’s. In critical dialogue with Weber and other theorists, Parsons developed a complex theory of action and integrated it—combined with a systems theory—into a general sociological theory. It is impossible to review the development of his work, usually divided into several phases, and its high level of theoretical reflection in detail here.11 But let us have a brief look at his major model of a general theory of action, which Parsons introduced between 1935 and 1939 in his important studies “The Place of Ultimate Values in Sociological Theory,” The Structure of Social Action, and “Actor, Situation, and Normative Pattern.”12 Underlying his theory of action is a critique of two methodological tendencies in contemporary social sciences. On the one hand, Parsons argues against the dominance of interpretational patterns that try to reduce social phenomena to empirically testable categories. Over against this reduction to causal relations, taken over from the natural sciences, he notes that there are forms of behavior that are not subject to simple, empirically demonstrable causalities; religious action but also actions of art or emotional affection belong to such a category of behavior that transgresses causal patterns of the natural sciences. On the other hand, Parson critiques a social-scientific interpretation that—opposing the paradigm of natural sciences—intends to explain action entirely as a self-referential manifestation of ideas and values, or as a Hegelian “self-realization of the spirit.”
Consequently, in his early work Parsons tries to establish a theory of action that is able, first, to demonstrate the causal patterns of action, as long as they are empirically verifiable, second, to include interpretational schemes for forms of action that transgress causal contexts, and finally, to integrate both parts into one theory of action without giving preference to one of them. On a most basic level, Parson notes: “For the purposes of the theory of action the smallest conceivable concrete unit is the unit act.”13 While the unit acts cannot be further divided, they can still be analyzed in their complexity. Parsons differentiates several “concrete elements” that form the referential pattern of his theory of action: (1) Every unit act presupposes the existence of an actor. (2) Every unit act refers to a future state that is different from the initial state of the act; it therefore has an end. (3) The unit act is taking place within an identifiable situation. The situation can further be analytically divided into several components: those that the actor can manipulate, control, and instrumentalize, and those that cannot be changed by the actor. The former Parsons calls the means of the unit act; the latter are its conditions. (4) Among the elements of the unit act there is a relation of arbitrariness and nonarbitrariness at the same time.14 For instance, regarding the selection of means we can speak of a certain level of choice between alternatives, but this choice is also dependent on normative orientations that are intrinsically forced upon the actor by the situational context of the unit act.
Already in his early versions of this model, Parsons introduced several subschemes and categories. His theory became much more complex in his subsequent work, when he developed what has become known as his structural functionalism and his theory of functionalist systems. These influential contributions were picked up directly by important theorists such as Clifford Geertz, Anthony Giddens, Robert N. Bellah, and Niklas Luhmann.15
For sociological theory, the work of Niklas Luhmann (1927–98) is of special importance.16 Like Jürgen Habermas and others, Luhmann extrapolated Parsons’s social theory, trying to bridge the gap between action theory and social systems theory. While for Parsons the unit of the system’s operation was action, Luhmann’s social systems theory is analogously construed to Parsons’s “structural functionalism.” According to this approach, the analysis of social structure should be based not on (the aggregate of) action, but on the interactions between actions. Put differently, whereas Parsons (and Giddens after him) had attributed actions to actors and to aggregates of actors performing via institutions, Luhmann’s theory referred to “symbolic interactionism”: Luhmann defines human action in terms of its interactive meaning at the network level.17 This brought Luhmann to a theory of communication that is broader than action. With regard to religion he notes:
We can, … in the context of a sociological theory, think of religion exclusively as a communicative happening [kommunikatives Geschehen].… In contrast to statements religions make about themselves, we therefore are not dealing with religious entities (godheads, for instance) that are described as existing. The only thing that interests us is the fact that this is said. (Because if it would not have been said, there would be no reason to mull over the question whether it is true or not.) … Hence, religious belief always is confession. But the happening’s unity is generated as communication and not as (unavoidably precarious) state of mind of the people involved.18
THE IMPACT OF THEORIES OF ACTION IN RECENT METHODOLOGICAL DEBATES
Classic theories of action, both from philosophy and from sociology, have had an enormous impact on the development of recent theoretical approaches in the study of religion, even if this influence often remains unacknowledged. Let me briefly illustrate this with two examples.
The development of the so-called rational choice theory of religion is directly influenced by the theories of action discussed above. The basic idea that is operative in this approach is that (a) human action necessitates a decision between alternatives and that (b) this decision is made in a rational way. While the reduction to rational choices of actors allows us to interpret and analyze much of religious action, doubts have been raised about this theory.19 For instance, it can be argued that the theory is not open to falsification because according to the theory the benefits of an action (and thus the “rational” reasons) can be unknown to or even unintended by the actors; hence, it is up to the observing scholar to make up the “rational” reasons of specific actions. Making use of theoretical suggestions by Weber, Parsons, and others, more elaborated versions of rational choice theory respond to this problem by establishing a referential framework of individual action that allows for an objective interpretation of social action. Hartmut Esser’s concept of situational logic (Situationslogik) is such an elaborated theory.20 Following Karl R. Popper’s theoretical considerations, Esser makes it clear that this model is not interested in the individual’s inner experience or opinion but in the situational context that provides an objective framework for (rational) behavior. What is of interest here is action that is in accordance with the situation (situationsgerechtes Handeln). This is reminiscent of Weber’s terminology, as well as of Parsons’s notions of the “means” and “conditions” of a situation in which a unit act takes place. But now the analytical focus is moved even more into the direction of situational contexts.
Another recent application of classic theories of action is the field of performance and ritual studies. James Laidlaw and Caroline Humphrey note: “Not much about ritual is incontrovertible, but that rituals are composed of actions is surely not open to doubt. To view ritual as action might therefore seem to be an obvious and a reasonably promising starting point for analysis, but it has been a comparatively rare one.”21 Interestingly enough, even Laidlaw and Humphrey are referring only to anthropological approaches to action and performance (Émile Durkheim, Victor Turner, and the like), as well as to cognitive theories that have recently entered the stage (Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley, in particular). The benefit of applying sociological and philosophical models of action to our understanding of ritual dynamics remains more or less unexplored.
As a conclusion, we can argue that large areas of contemporary discussion regarding method and theory in the study of religion are directly or indirectly linked to theories of action that have been developed earlier. When it comes to explaining and understanding human behavior—be it religious or not—the category “action” is the basic component of all interpretational models. Actions of individuals and of groups follow an identifiable pattern, which the academic study of religion has to establish. An explicit response to and application of theories of action in our attempt to interpret religious behavior and its situational structure would be a step forward in many debates that occupy scholars of religion today.
NOTES
Please note that this article contains material also explored by the author in Kocku von Stuckrad, “Action,” in Vocabulary for the Study of Religion, ed. Robert A. Segal and Kocku von Stuckrad (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
1. Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
2. Harry Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Harry Frankfurt, Volition, Necessity, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
3. On philosophical theories of action, see George Wilson, “Action,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/action/; an overview of sociological theories of action is provided in Ghita Holmström-Hintika and Raimo Tuomela, eds., Contemporary Action Theory (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997); see also Hans Haferkamp, Soziologie als Handlungstheorie: P. L. Berger und T. Luckmann, G. C. Homans, N. Luhmann, G. H. Mead, T. Parsons, A. Schütz, M. Weber in vergleichender Analyse und Kritik, 3rd ed. (Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1976).
4. On the usefulness of Weber’s theory of action for subsequent philosophical discussion, particularly in Donald Davidson, see Stephen P. Turner, “Weber on Action,” American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 506–19; see also Wolfgang Schluchter, Handlung, Ordnung und Kultur: Studien zu einem Forschungsprogramm im Anschluss an Max Weber (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).
5. Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann, 3rd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1968), 429, italics in original. All translations of quotations from German are mine.
6. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. Johannes Winckelmann, 5th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1976), 245.
7. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze, 429, italics in original.
8. Ibid.; Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 11.
9. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1–2.
10. Ibid., 1.
11. An excellent analysis is Sigrid Brandt, Religiöses Handeln in moderner Welt: Talcott Parsons’ Religionssoziologie im Rahmen seiner allgemeinen Handlungs- und Systemtheorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993). On the reception of Parsons’s theories, see Renée C. Fox et al., eds., After Parsons: A Theory of Social Action for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005); Helmut Staubmann, ed., Action Theory: Methodological Studies (Hamburg: LIT, 2006); On Parsons’s response to Weber see Brandt, Religiöses Handeln in moderner Welt, 317–52; Thomas Schwinn, “Wieviel Subjekt benötigt die Handlungstheorie? Zur Weber-Rezeption von Alfred Schütz und Talcott Parsons,” Revue internationale de philosophie 49 (1995): 187–220; Keith Tribe, “Talcott Parsons as Translator of Max Weber’s Basic Sociological Categories,” History of European Ideas 33 (2007): 212–33.
12. Talcott Parsons and Edward A. Shils, eds., Toward a General Theory of Action, 5th ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), 3–29; Talcott Parsons, “The Place of Ultimate Values in Sociological Theory,” International Journal of Ethics 45 (1935): 282–316; Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937); Talcott Parsons, Actor, Situation, and Normative Pattern: An Essay in the Theory of Social Action (1939; Münster: LIT, 2010).
13. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, 48.
14. Ibid., 44.
15. For Bellah’s own response to Parsons, see Robert C. Bellah, “God, Nation, and Self in America: Some Tensions Between Parsons and Bellah,” in After Parsons: A Theory of Social Action for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Renée C. Fox, Victor M. Lidz, and Harold J. Bershady (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), 137–47.
16. See Niklas Luhmann, Die Religion der Gesellschaft, ed. André Kieserling (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000); Niklas Luhmann, Funktion der Religion (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977); Rudi Laermans and Gert Verschraegen, “ ‘The Late Niklas Luhmann’ on Religion: An Overview,” Social Compass 48 (2001): 7–20. Laermans and Verschraegen discuss his later theory of religion.
17. Loet Leydesdorff, “Luhmann, Habermas, and the Theory of Communication,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 17 (2000): 273–88.
18. Ibid., 40–42, italics in original.
19. Lawrence A. Young, ed., Rational Choice Theory and Religion: Summary and Assessment (New York: Routledge, 1997); Steve Bruce, Choice and Religion: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, Sociological Theory, Religion and Collective Action (Belfast: Queen’s University of Belfast, 1986).
20. Hartmut Esser, Soziologie: Spezielle Grundlagen, band 1, Situationslogik und Handeln (Frankfurt: Campus, 1999), 387–403.
21. James Laidlaw and Caroline Humphrey, “Action,” in Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, ed. Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek, and Michael Stausberg (Boston: Brill, 2006), 265.