Actor
An actor ( French acteur “doer”) is the author of an action .
Colloquial language
In everyday use, an actor (on stage ) is usually referred to as an "actor". The outdated female form Aktrice is sometimes used to denote an actress whose ability is questioned. In sports jargon , actor is used for a player or competitor .
Social and Economic Sciences
sociology
In sociology (and political science ) the term “actor” (also anglicised as “ actor ”) is primarily used for socially active people . A distinction can be made between individual actors and so-called supra - individual actors .
Individual and supra-individual actors
Individual people are seen as individual actors; as supra-individual actors, associations of several individual actors (for example: states , corporations , NGOs ), although a distinction is sometimes made between “ collective ” and “ corporate actors ” (for the distinction see the respective articles).
The tracing back of all social actions to individual people ("actors") was already laid out in 1887 in the sociological classic Ferdinand Tönnies , whose theory of the will the acting and "community" wanting people as " self ", on the other hand the "society" wanting as " Person ”( community and society , 3rd book, §§ 1, 2, 7). Today, actor-centered theories of sociology differ from e.g. B. systemic or structuralist theories based on the importance attached to the will or the decisions of the respective actors for social change .
In the case of the representatives of a strictly understood microsociological term of " action ", "supra-individual" actors represent conceptual fictions, since with them the "action" of a supra-individual actor (e.g. an IPO of a stock corporation) always depends on the resultant of the individual actions of the individual actors within this corporation can be returned. 'Super-individual actors' can therefore only be imagined for the purpose of better observability and description, and thus also in the sense of reducing complexity. (If one imagines a large corporation, it would hardly be empirically feasible to analyze the thousands and thousands of actions of the employees that led to a certain legally effective action by the supra-individual actor).
However, as soon as one conceives collectives directly with personal characteristics using a macro-sociological approach, as is e.g. If, for example, jurisprudence does with legal persons , one can attribute to them an ability to be an “actor” that cannot be further reduced to the individual. An example of this would be a social class that could act directly by virtue of its own class consciousness .
Extension to things
In the context of an actor-network theory (ANT), the technology sociologist Bruno Latour also understands things as acting actors who act together with human actors in network-like contexts of action and thus merge with them to become actors . A simple example of this is the actant “human-pistol”, which arises from the interaction of the two individual actors, pistol and human , and cannot be reduced to one of these two actors.
Business administration
Even closer economic meaning of "actor" exists: In the modeling of business processes , the concept is used as an actor modeling element . An actor abstracts from real users of an information technology system by standing for a role that can be assumed by different users in the context of a business process.
Information technology
The concept of actor (English actor ) is also in the requirements management in modeling applications used ( Unified Modeling Language ).
Planning science
Spatial planning
In spatial planning, actor is often used synonymously for decision-makers involved in an action . In addition, those affected by planning and those not formally involved in the planning process are also named. This is where the particular attraction lies, but also the particular danger in using this term. The danger lies in the vagueness inherent in the term, which leads to imprecise formulations. This blurring is at the same time the attraction of the expression “actor”.
Development policy
In development cooperation , individuals or groups who are involved in the conception and implementation of development projects are called “actors”. The so-called actor analysis offers one way of considering these relationships .
See also
literature
- Manfred Gabriel (Ed.): Paradigms of Actor-Centered Sociology , Wiesbaden: VS 2004, ISBN 3-531-13895-2
- Nico Lüdtke, Hironori Matsuzaki (Ed.): Actor - Individual - Subject: Questions about 'personality' and 'sociality' , Wiesbaden: VS 2011, ISBN 978-3-531-17854-7
