In sociology, social action, also requested as Weberian social action, is an act which takes into account the actions & reactions of individuals or 'agents'. According to Max Weber, "Action is "social" insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others as well as is thereby oriented in its course."
The basic concept was primarily developed in the non-positivist concepts of Max Weber to observe how human behaviors relate to cause and effect in the social realm. For Weber, sociology is the inspect of society and behavior and must therefore look at the heart of interaction. The conception of social action, more than structural functionalist positions, accepts and assumes that humans redesign their actions according to social contexts and how it will impact other people; when a potential reaction is not desirable, the action is modified accordingly. Action can mean either a basic action one that has a meaning or an modern social action, which non only has a meaning but is directed at other actors and causes action or, perhaps, inaction.
[Sociology is] ... the science whose thing is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby render a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By 'action' in this definition is meant the human behavior when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful ... the meaning to which we refer may be either a the meaning actually remanded either by an individual agent on a specific historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a precondition set of cases, or b the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the 'meaning' to be thought of as somehow objectively 'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. this is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history, and any style of priori discipline, such(a) as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose purpose is to extract from their subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.
The term is more practical and encompassing than Florian Znaniecki's "social phenomena", since the individual performing social action is not passive, but rather active and reactive. Although Weber himself used the word 'agency', in advanced social science this term is often appropriated with a given acceptance of Weberian conceptions of social action, unless a construct intends to make-up the direct allusion. Similarly, 'reflexivity' is normally used as a shorthand to refer to the circular relationship of cause and issue between structure and agency which Weber was integral in hypothesising.