I do know what you mean, it's all a bit wordy and over-complicated. But think of it chronologically, with the differences lying on how much is given to structure/action, and how we construct/create meaning in the social world:
Social action theory (
Weber) - balances structure and action as dependent on each other, e.g Calvinism (level of cause and meaning), and also showed four possible ways humans create meanings (instrumentally rational, value-rational, traditional and affectual).
Symbolic interactionism rejects this to a certain degree - giving all weight to action through symbols and taking role of the other (
Mead), labelling influences meanings (
Becker) and (
Goffman) illustrates how interaction with others through either 'presentaton of self + impression management' or 'roles', can also potentially create meanings.
Try and categories these as primary social action theories. Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology criticise symbolic interactionism for focusing too much on the 'how', but not the 'why.
Phenomenology (
Schutz) says this is due to 'typifications' - which is a shared meaning based on how the world appears to us, i.e. our senses, although,
Ethnomethodologists (
Garfinkel) agree with action, like Schutz but say the world is not an objective reality, like structural perspectives assume (Marxism, Functionalism etc), instead the world is very unstable, as the meanings we attach to interaction and the world constantly change, so to control this we are 'reflexive' were we construct a fixed/wordly meaning, which could be classed as 'commonsense', thus preventing instability (indexicality).
Generall with them all, although they differ on the 'how' and 'why' in constructing meanings, they all fall under the category of 'bottum-up' explanations, providing critisicms for structural theories.
Hope that wasn't too long, and I hope that made some sort of sense!