Following Mills, several prominent sociologists have encouraged researchers to analyze actors’ motive talk not as data on the subjective desires that move them to pursue particular ends but as post hoc accounts oriented toward justifying actions already undertaken. Combining insights from hermeneutic theories of the self and pragmatist theories of action, we develop a theoretical position that challenges dichotomous assumptions about whether motive accounts reflect either justifications or motivations for action, instead illustrating how they can migrate from one status to the other over time. We develop this perspective through a comparative analysis of actors’ involvements in two quite different careers of social action—religion and mixed martial arts—documenting both how and when justificatory talk about actors’ motives for initiating a course of action at one point in time became formative of their subjective motivations for sustaining these same courses of action at another.

中文翻译：

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自我介绍：帐户如何以及何时形成行动动机

继米尔斯之后，几位杰出的社会学家鼓励研究人员分析演员的动机言论，而不是将其促使他们追求特定目标的主观欲望的数据，而是作为旨在证明已经采取的行动的事后解释。结合自我的诠释学理论和实用主义的行动理论的见解，我们形成了一个理论立场，挑战了关于动机说明是否反映行动的正当性或动机的二元假设，而不是说明它们如何随着时间从一种状态迁移到另一种状态。