The American Creed in Sociological Theory Exchange, Negotiated Order, Accommodated Individualism, and Contingency

Abstract

This is an essay in the sociology of knowledge and in the construction of theory. I want to point out the common cultural pattern and the scope and limits in the interpretation and explanation of social interaction, of the emergence and maintenance of social order, of the interrelationship between individuality and sociality, and of the basic patterns of social life of six different theoretical paradigms in American sociology: Parsonian social systems theory, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, conflict theory, dramaturgical theory, and exchange theory. I will do that with the aim of approaching a new synthesis out of the contemporary paradigm pluralism. In order to achieve this goal, I try to locate the specific interpretive and explanatory contributions of the different paradigms in the frame of reference of a theory of action which I construct out of a revision of Parsonian action theory. This procedure allows me to determine precisely what the different theories do and what they do not understand and explain in social action (see figures 1 and 2). I begin with a brief outline of the frame of reference of a comprehensive theory of action (Munch 1981, 1982a, 1982b). Human action takes place in a space of action which can be constructed out of the two fundamental variables of the complexity (number and interdependence) of symbols to which action is oriented and of the contingency (number of alternatives) left open by the symbols for the interpretation and execution of the symbols in action. If we construct a system of coordinates out of the combination of the degree of symbolic complexity and contingency of action, we get four extreme points of the constructed action space and revised AGIL-scheme (see figures 1 and 2):