Description
1. A theory describing social actions or events as the resultant of a dynamic interplay among sociocultural, biomechanical, and motivational forces. Behaviour is therefore the consequence of the total social situation which forms a field consisting of social characteristics or attributes which stand in definite relation to each other. Any behaviour is relative to other behaviour, namely to a context, as well as to the relative similarities and differences of social units (whether individuals, groups, or nations) or their attributes. These attributes and the interactions between social units constituting behaviour form bounded systems which define the total situation within which social units can be located. Such systems have persistence in time, while the position of social units within them may change quite rapidly.
2. A method of analysing causal relations in society and building scientific constructs of which the most fundamental is the concept of a field. All behaviour (including action, thinking, wishing, etc.) is conceived of as a change of some state of a field in a given unit of time. Thus individuals, groups, or societies each have a field or life space in which they exist. Behaviour has to be derived from a totality of coexisting facts which have the character of a dynamic field insofar as the state of any part of this field depends on every other part of the field.