ABSTRACT
Given this position, it is important to assemble a number of categories to describe the components of action at the social level. This is our task in this chapter. The result will be a kind of "map" or "flow chart" of paths along which social action moves. In the chapters which follow we shall investigate what happens to these components of action when established ways of acting fail in the face of unstructured situations. One major set of reactions to this failure constitutes the major types of collective behavior. Such behavior is an attempt to reconstruct a disturbed social order, or at least a part of it.
