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Talcott Parsons: Social Structure
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Talcott Parsons is an American sociologist who attempted to integrate all the social sciences into a science of human action. He was converted to functionalism under the influence of the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski.
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With the publication in 1937 of his first book, The Structure of Social Action, Talcott Parsons (1902-79) established himself as one of America's most important social theorists. Yet Parsons's essays from the decade preceding 1937 are virtually unknown to theorists and historians of sociology. By gathering the majority of Parsons's articles and book reviews published between 1923 and 1937, Charles Camic supplies the first comprehensive selection of the writings of the "early Parsons."
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Esteemed 20th century sociologist Talcott Parsons sought to develop a comprehensive and coherent scheme for sociology that could be applied to every society and historical epoch, and address every aspect of human social organization and culture. His theory of social action has exerted enormous influence across a wide range of social science disciplines. Renée Fox, Victor Lidz, and Harold Bershady have received support from the Foundation to edit After Parsons: A Theory of Social Action for the Twenty-first Century,a critical reexamination of Parsons’ theory in light of historical changes in the world and advances in sociological thought since his death.
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Talcott Parsons attempted to develop and perfect a general analytic model suitable for analyzing all types of collectivities. Unlike the Marxists, who focused on the occurance of radical change, Parsons explored why societies are stable and functioning. His model is AGIL, which represents the four basic functions that all social systems must perform if they are to persist. It was one of the first open systems theories of organizations.
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Researchers in the functionalist perspective, such as Talcott Parsons examine the relationship between the whole of a social system (the society, a group) and its parts (area of activity, members of a group). Parsons and other structural functionalists were influenced by Vilfredo Pareto's view that societies could be analyzed as systems with self-equilibriating properties. Four functional imperatives must be solved in order to continue existence -- adaptation, goal-attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance.
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Uta Gerhardt's edition of Parsons' essays is very revealing both about Talcott Parsons and about American attitudes during and immediately before World War II, and she is to be congratulated on her insightful introduction. It should ... be added that despite his peculiar aversion to the use of specific concrete examples, these particular essays of Parsons are very clearly written and easy to follow. What emerges is a portrait of Parson's 'ideal' American as being a medical doctor with a sound scientific training which has given him rational detachment, yet who manages to be sympathetic towards psycho-analysis, (e.g. Parsons pp.254-67) and a member of one of the liberal Protestant denominations (e.g. Parsons see p. 106) whose attenuated but universalistic Calvinism is expressed through the 'Social Gospel' (see Parsons p.63). This 'ideal' American is an essentially decent man (or just possibly a woman) of the centre-left who dislikes both his radical colleagues' attacks on religion, (even on other people's religion in the case of Roman Catholicism, (e.g.
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Social Structure