Intelligibility, already mentioned in the previous section, is one of the most influential concepts that have arisen out of the social approaches to investigating the phenomenon of human action. Crudely put, intelligibility is the ability of others to understand and correctly interpret one’s actions, so that the intent or purpose behind the action is meaningfully understood by the audience witnessing the action. Furthermore, it has been suggested that “there is no such thing as a purely individual action”. What is meant by this assertion is that, beginning with learning, an individual is not innately born with the ability to act. While a human is born with certain behavioural abilities, such as the ability to sleep or suckle, this view maintains the dichotomous separation of mere behaviour compared to human action. Also, you learn from others around you, such as your parents, in the beginning, then your friends and peers and colleagues later in life. This social aspect of learning is made even more important by the very close association between language and actions. Some authors have stated that people “use language to do things, and not simply say things”.
Consequently, using language and finding it intelligible also requires a myriad of non-verbal skills which themselves have to be learned through careful observation and monitoring of other individuals, and practicing what they observe. For example, regardless of how well one can utter the language of car mechanics in its complete vocabulary, one will still not be able to repair their car until they learn to apply this language in practice. Therefore, the language you learn to use in specific contexts is closely connected with you learning how to perform activities that are socially acceptable and intelligible.
While positivism concentrated greatly on generating causal laws of human action, the more socially orientated approaches to human action is determined in finding out the social rules in play in a society which makes certain actions acceptable and intelligible. One can describe these types of social rules as “socially accepted conventions or norms which give meaning and expression to different types of social activity … they dictate what to do in specific situations and how to do it”. The reasoning behind these social conventions and norms is, however, not always known to the actors who perform them.
Some theorists have argued that individuals are not always aware of their own desires or beliefs – or what they think they believe may not even derive from the source they thought. Take, for example, Freud’s use of psychotherapy to reveal ‘hidden meanings’ and ‘deeper’ layers of thought which the patient did not know even exited in their mind – such as suppressed memories which influence one’s behaviour unconsciously. Human action, it is argued, can be thought of as having many of these deeper, hidden meanings. The social institutions of marriage, police, and religion, for example, often play a role in shaping an individual’s action, making it possible to an extent, even though they might not be aware of them.
Thus, to summarize all points thus far, three primary aspects of the nature of individual action were looked at, which, theorists who argue that human action is, at the very least partially social, suggest this to be so: Firstly, individuals must learn to act from others; secondly, people learn to act through learning to follow rules that are essentially social in nature; and finally, that social institutions must be understood first in order to understand and investigate human action.
In conclusion, it seems then that what human action is understood to be is highly dependent on which approach one follows: staunch followers of the positivistic philosophy still believe that empirical observation and causal laws is the way to understand human action, while those who places emphasis on the social sphere believe human action is extremely complex and is understood by means of cultural and linguistic symbolism; those who are not so academically inclined, the common, the lay person’s view human action as something which is understandable when using commonsense.
Whilst these arguments are crucial to the development of what participatory research is, it is also important to highlight and discuss the type of approach used in relation to the research done. In other words, the next series of posts will look at a more detailed discussion on the participatory approach in relation to conducting research and how this approach is conceptualized within research.
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