INSTRUMENTAL ACTIONS: WHAT THEY ARE, EXAMPLES AND CRITICISM - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2024

The instrumental actions are any of those daily actions done by one person, where the important thing is to achieve an "external" result. They are executed considering their consequences and the various means to achieve the end.

From a sociological point of view, instrumental actions enable the social interaction of the individual inasmuch as it turns him into a rational actor within his environment. These are rational actions that are taken after considering costs, means and consequences. Economic transactions often fall into this category.

Instrumental actions can be communicative, designed to influence opinion or express an idea; and concrete, designed to have a tangible impact on a goal. It is said that they are oriented to success because they seek to: increase productivity, minimize costs and maximize profits.

Generally, an instrumental type action requires that the following elements be present: workforce, technical means, knowledge and skills. They start from an instrumental reasoning that answers the question of «how is this done? «.

They also refer to acts that want to influence the political and social environment at a given time. They can be strategic, as they are based on reasoning about the most effective means of achieving a goal. They are also called "instrumentally rational" actions.

Theoretical basis of instrumental actions

To better understand this point, it is convenient to review Max Weber's sociological approaches, according to which there are four main types of social action: proposed or instrumental rational action, rational value action, affective action and traditional action.

In the first, the ends of the action are taken as means for the fulfillment of other ends. It is instrumental. In the second case, it is an action determined by the belief of its ethical, moral, aesthetic or religious value.

The affective action obeys an emotional reaction of someone who is facing certain circumstances. For its part, traditional action refers to social acts or rituals that are transmitted from generation to generation and are performed out of habit without any very deep reasoning about their purposes.

For Weber, in instrumental actions, various degrees of rationality and their relevance can be distinguished depending on whether or not it is aimed at achieving objectives; the engineer who is building a bridge or the general who wants to win a victory, are clear about their objective and combine means with a view to achieving it.

Ultimately, Max Weber's central point is that this type of reasoning characterizes the interactions that occur most commonly in society. Interactions with no greater consideration than that of the most effective means to achieve one's goal.

The instrumental actions are contrasted with the communicative actions proposed by Jünger Habermas, which allow a communicative understanding between the actors in interaction. According to Habermas, they are intended to achieve common definitions of the situation in order, within such definitions, to pursue individual goals.

In the case of an organization or company, the instrumental reason would assume that increasing performance would become the only objective. A different objective supposes taking communicative actions or, at least, not purely instrumental ones.

Examples of instrumental actions

Although since the discovery of fire and the development of tools for hunting prehistoric man, examples of instrumental actions abound, it is with the industrial revolution that technique is massified and institutionalized and a process of economic, social and technological transformation begins.

With this phenomenon the door was opened to the possibility of obtaining greater benefits using techniques and tools that saved time and effort.

Today, professions or technical occupations are normal in which an action of rational value is seldom expected. Instead, instrumental actions appear to be the norm.

In this order of ideas, the examples of instrumental actions can be very dissimilar:

• Build a bridge.
• Develop a drug.
• Participate in an activity of political, environmental or other activism. In this case, there are differences in that the objective may be self-expression or properly instrumental.
• Write a book.
• Build a house.
• Prepare a cooking recipe.
• Give a political speech.
• Manage a company.
• Take a photo.
• Practice surgery.
• Prune some trees.
• Make a textile piece.
• Make a bank transaction
• Buy or sell something.
• Manage a means of transport.
• Design a political campaign.
• Develop a management strategy.

The list can go on, but it seems to be enough to reveal the diversity of levels and fields in which an instrumental action can take place as well as to warn in its mentioned characteristics: they are usually mediated by techniques and tools, they are usually an end that leads to another, require certain specific skills of the person who executes it and respond to how something is done.

Criticisms of instrumental reasoning

There are critical positions according to which instrumental rationality has resulted in a science that grows with the objective of increasing capital in a society of passive consumers.

In fact Habermas accused a selfish tendency in this type of actions in which the individual, he said, only pursued his end and considered the best means to achieve it.

According to this position, with the globalization of capital, a universal model related to consumption and culture also emerges. For example, today they are considered basic needs, things that were not in other times of history.

However, there are those who defend this type of reasoning because of its impact on the evolution of civilizations.

References

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