Oxford Dictionary of Sociology

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actionalism

actionalism
A term generally associated with the name of French sociologist Alain Touraine, and not to be confused with the ‘action frame of reference’ (see action theory) proposed by Talcott Parsons. Beginning in the 1960s, Touraine developed a radical new theoretical framework, most fully described in The Self-Production of Society (1973). In his own words, Touraine aimed to ‘replace a sociology of society with a sociology of actors’. His purpose has been to overcome what he sees as a false division in sociology between objective and subjective, or system and action approaches. Actionalism places the social actor at the centre of theoretical attention, including theories of structural and historical phenomena. Actors are not simply the components of social systems, but the agents of those systems.

Touraine's analysis does not exclude groups and collectivities such as social classes. However, these are...

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