The Rationality and Agency of the Explanations of Conduct - Essay Example

?Sociology is a discipline concerned with understanding the relationships or interactions between individuals and with its environment. It usually involves the manner in which social activities are done and the organizations or categories of person which are assembled and sustained to analyze the importance of these actions to a particular situation. This is very important to clearly define the relationship between the individual and the social and necessarily assemble the elements which affect this interaction. Social interactions are very dynamic. Social interactions refer particularly to forms of externalities in which the actions of a group affect an individual’s preferences. In these social interactions, we usually have the concept of “conduct” wherein we do activities in a manner that is acceptable to the surrounding environment where we are and these activities should be understandable considering the individuals who will be affected by the action. “Conduct” is greatly influenced by agency. In this paper, we will critically discuss the key concepts in conduct that explain our agency in social worlds. Agency, in the social sciences, refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. For example, given a situation wherein there is a rape victim and a doctor. A decision of the doctor is needed whether the raped victim is allowed to have an abortion or not. We all know that abortion is not universally accepted because of difference in the concept of morality. We must all consider that one's agency is one's independent capability or ability to act on one's will. Although independent, this ability is greatly influenced by the cognitive belief structure of the individual. This cognitive belief has been assembled through one’s personal experiences through time, the academic and social learning that the individual have acquired, the perceptions brought about by the society to the individual and the structures or moral standards that the society, where he lives, has set. Usually there are conflicts with one’s agency and the situations where morality became a confusing paradigm. In the case exemplified, doing what is right for an individual, which is to allow the abortion for the rape victim to take place might be morally wrong to other and is even considered illegal. Disagreement on the extent of one's agency with others and even the society often causes conflict between parties. Conduct can be defined in many ways. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) even has considered several definitions for the word “conduct”. It can refer to the action or manner of conducting, directing, managing or carrying on any actions or activities like business, performance, process and course. It is related to the ways in which an organization, social activity or process is assembles, carried out, managed and regulated. For example, the manner in which a speech for the declaration of independence of a colonized country is done. For this social activity to be successfully done, we should consider a lot of things. First of all, the person who will do the speech should be a reliable speaker. That person should be known as an advocate of freedom, since it is an independence speech. The content of the speech should be concise yet fruitful. Every word should have a great impact to its audience. In relation to this, the audience should also be taken into consideration. The speech should be appropriate to the audience or else it will only produce conflicts and the message of the speech would not be efficiently conveyed. Hence, there are many considerations to look into for a certain social activity to be “conducted”. The individual’s agency should also be considered whenever “conducting” a certain social activity or process. The agency should be suitable to the objective of the conduct. The word “conduct” can also be seen in the perspective of behavior wherein it refers as the manner of conducting oneself or one’s life usually with influence of moral quality. So it means that conducts is related to the manner in which people behave in particular circumstances, occasions or contexts. For example, in a social gathering wherein an individual suddenly fainted, a doctor present in that party is expected to attend urgently to the fainted individual to address the needs of that person. The point here is that certain individuals, having a recognized role in the society where they live in, is expected to behave in a specified way. These individuals should also take the responsibility for managing their own behavior in line with those expectations. Failing to behave appropriately would potentially or really put them in some form of moral or legal prejudice. In the case above, failure of the doctor to attend immediately to the fainted individual would bring about thoughts of irresponsibility, unprofessionalism and violation to the oath of physicians of doing no harm or negligence of moral duty. Lastly, the word “conduct” can be defined as conveyance or carriage. It refers to a channel, passage or any means of communication. It is related to a process of transmission and conveyance. The etymology of the word conduct is closely related to the word conduit which both means a channel, passageway, and means of communication. In sociology, this definition of conduct is applied fully on how social activity, process, or organization will be done. An example would be the conduct of a conversation. A conversation is a mixture of induced interaction and spontaneous event. It is induced in a sense that a conversation wouldn’t start if neither of the person involved in it would initiate the talk. A person would not say hi to another person if he or she does not know that person well, or if that individual has no interest in having conversation with the other person. One’s agency should also apply to this definition of conduct since there should be independent choices of the strategy of how to initiate the conversation. There should also be establishment of connection and effectiveness in the manner of conduct of the conversations for it to be spontaneous. This definition of conduct as related to conveyance, transmission, and mediation applies equally to the concept of human conduct. The determination of bodily can be seen as a way of transmitting or communicating certain meanings in distinctive social worlds. For example, in a formal meeting with a government official such as the president, we should conduct ourselves suitably based on the conditions of formality. We should talk fluently and appropriately to the president. While we are talking, we should look them straight. While in the meeting, we should behave properly. The respect to the president that is expected from us should be conducted properly to prevent conflicts. Certain sociological theories have aimed to determine the social order by looking to the hypothesis which stated that social order emerges from the internalization of social norms by individuals, which is later on referred as the concept of “socialization”. This concept has modified the perspective of conduct which is simply to express the internalization of particular social norms by individual human beings. However, this hypothesis depends on the assumption that social orderliness is somehow entirely external to the activity of human beings. In reality, this is not the case. The activity of human beings has a great influence to the social orderliness with respect to conduct and agency. For example, the advent of the internet today has advanced the way of interaction of many individuals. Before, the way of reaching out your friends is either through sending letters or visiting them directly to their whereabouts. I think that there is a high level of social orderliness here because interaction is efficiently done and most of the things that each individual do with each other must be of high value because of the limit of time of their interaction. Usually, they have planned properly the social activities that would be elicited. Conduct of the interaction is organized, usually in proper behavior and conveyed clearly. However, with the fast advancement of technology today, we already have social networking sites wherein we can socially interact with our friends instantly even when they are very far away. This has provided us with greater ease in communication with them. We can now update them regularly without the worry of waiting. One’s agency is easily practiced. We are also provided with many options, like whether we talk using mobile phones, chat in the internet and even use the webcam to see the present appearance of each other as if you have really met in real. These advances in technology have really provided us with ease of access to conduct our agency in communication. However, the drawbacks of this advances is that there is a threat for the maintenance of social order. This manner of conduct of communication provides greater risk of destabilization of social order in interaction. Too much time in communication is prone to miscommunication and misunderstanding. The quality of the conversation has the tendency to wither because of too much interaction. In the social networking sites for example, too much freedom in communication (agency) might already offend others. This agency of one person might exceed its limit according to moral standards and might be uncontrolled because of deficiency in social orders. In other words, social order is a process that somehow backfires to human beings. To prevent this, I think that being responsible and respectful, even with the granted independence, is necessary in any kind of situation. The idea that an individual and the society are separate entities cannot be completely established to oppose structural sociological approaches with theories of action and agency because these two aspects in social interaction are not entirely independent of each other. All kinds of conduct that do not aim to comply with agency fail to meet the value of the social interaction, hence it is considered to be superficial. With the question on the relationship of conduct and agency, we should focus on the conduct itself rather than looking at our modern self and societal aspects as the basis for the rationality and agency of the explanations of conduct. It is because we might begin to discover later that this modern identity that we have established based on our agency is not really conventional but in reality, is a contingent and fragile outcome of a particular assemblage of conduct. As we have already suggested, the sociological aspects of conduct consequently expresses certain concerns on the mode of which individuals are allowed to elicit behavior in certain perspective depending on a particular social situations or worlds which considerations of independent choices or agency. Conduct is a natural concept of any individual in any social interaction or process. This actually provides a guideline to achieve the proper way of dealing with the social context of agency and efficiently elicit social interaction. References: Barker, C., 2005. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage. McFall, L., Gay, P.D., & Carter, S., eds. 2008. Conduct: Sociology and Social Worlds. Manchester University Press: Oxford Road. Read More