Ritzer spends much of his time explaining the importance of Weber's concept of Verstehen. He used Verstehen to try and understand the reason behind a persons interaction that may seem to have more motives behind them than just action. Stated simply Verstehen means understanding of social phenomena or social interactions. Not all social interactions are significant to Verstehen in Weber's article on social action he makes a great emphasis in the difference between action and social action. The significant difference between these two terms is so important that he spends a great deal of time trying to explain it. Action is the something that a person may do because it is reasonable or common to do. Actions are those that we do with out thinking they are rational because we learn to do them instantaneously. Social action is an action that partakes in a relation with another person or persons, yet, it is not just any sort of action. Social action does not include actions that happen between people that are imitations, common, or rational. The action has to be between relationship. Weber makes a distinction between social action and action because even if there is an interaction between persons that interaction is not always social action. An action is more of a means to an end and that is the distinction, Weber calls is “external behavior”and the opposite would be “internal behaviour counts as 'social action' only when it has some relation to the behaviour of other people”(26). A social action cannot be an expected behavior, the link between Verstehen and social action is that you want to be able to question the action, why do we do it?
If we begin to observe our surrounding and analyze the interactions that take place we can see that actions and social actions are very distinct. If we take for example the lines that form when we are all waiting for coffee in the morning we can notice that whether or not there is a sign that is telling us to line up we do it, it’s a rule of thumb we know that if we form a line we will be next to receive what we came to get, a means-end situation. This is an example of an action. If we take this same scenario of forming a line to receive something like groceries what can make this into a social action is if a person who has been standing in line lets an elderly person in front of them. If we look at this from the process of Verstehen then we can ask why this person let the elderly go first. They were in line it is common sense that if you stand in a line then you should be the next person to go up. Verstehen is the understanding of a social action, they motives behind an action is not always clear when an interaction occurs like the one mention were a person changes the norm of an action like standing in line by letting someone else take their place.
If we begin to observe our surrounding and analyze the interactions that take place we can see that actions and social actions are very distinct. If we take for example the lines that form when we are all waiting for coffee in the morning we can notice that whether or not there is a sign that is telling us to line up we do it, it’s a rule of thumb we know that if we form a line we will be next to receive what we came to get, a means-end situation. This is an example of an action. If we take this same scenario of forming a line to receive something like groceries what can make this into a social action is if a person who has been standing in line lets an elderly person in front of them. If we look at this from the process of Verstehen then we can ask why this person let the elderly go first. They were in line it is common sense that if you stand in a line then you should be the next person to go up. Verstehen is the understanding of a social action, they motives behind an action is not always clear when an interaction occurs like the one mention were a person changes the norm of an action like standing in line by letting someone else take their place.