Voluntary Acts, Sociology Of

Sociologists frame voluntary acts within the relation of individual action and social structure. They have studied this relation for variables such as social class, ethnicity, and gender, as well as with respect to topics such as socialization processes, interaction contexts, and culture. In general, the approaches vary between social determinism and mediating positions, balancing the relative strength of social determinism and individual volition.

Most classical sociologists emphasized the importance of structure over agency. Karl Marx (1818–1883), [Page 1568]for example, stressed man's alienation from work and society, causing his alienation to himself. On a different note, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) argued for the centrality of social facts over individual volition: sentiments, moralities, and behaviors could be explained as social facts linked to objective features such as social organization, societal differentiation, and social change. Georg Simmel (1858–1918), however, highlighted both the connections and tensions between the individual and society: The socialized individual is incorporated within society and yet stands against it.

Symbolic interactionism held that a person's self grows out of a person's commerce with others. Voluntary acts, according to Charles Cooley (1864–1929), arise in social processes of communicative interchange reflected in a person's consciousness. From these processes, following George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), emerge voluntarily acting selves composed of three elements: a “me,” who consists of those attitudes of others incorporated into the self, and an “I,” who organizes the attitudes of others, selects objects on which the individual will act, and chooses or commits itself to respond in a certain way. A third element is the “generalized other,” incorporating overarching group values into the individual's appreciation of self.

Phenomenologists posit that typified action and interaction become “habitualized.” As meaning-striving beings, humans create theoretical explanations and moral justifications to legitimate their conduct. When internalized by succeeding generations, the conduct is institutionalized and exerts compelling constraints over individual volition.

Recently, (post)structuralist and postmodernist accounts prevail. According to Michel Foucault (1926–1984), volition is based on discourses embedded in the activities, social relations, and expertise of specific communities, whether these are scientific, political, or virtual. Voluntary acts are inseparable from action, environment, access, and empowerment. Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) emphasized the negative side effects of the structure-agency link: just as some social groups lack economic capital in which to invest for the future, so others lack the “cultural capital” to take advantage of learning opportunities, for instance, by willing something beyond one's socioeconomic position. In theories of structure and agency, such as Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration, both variables influence each other equally. In the postmodern understanding, however, as advanced by Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998), voluntary acts are symbolically determined, for the most part: they emerge from culturally available narrative forms, discourses, practices, representations, stories, and images.

Today, so-called governmentality studies restate the role of structure and agency anew: in power decentered neoliberal societies, its members play an increasingly active role in their own self-governance. Each societal domain (politics, economy, science, and so on), while having its own logic, is highly dependent on voluntarily acting selves. Volition here emphasizes both sensemaking—commitment to stick to decisions that one has made—and change, if external conditions so require.

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