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Parsons was especially compelled by Emerson's idea that, in the sociocultural world, the functional equivalent of the gene was that of the "symbol". Parsons also participated in two of the meetings of the famous Macy Conferences on systems theory and on issues that are now classified as cognitive science, which took place in New York from 1946 to 1953 and included scientists like John von Neumann. Parsons read widely on systems theory at the time, especially works of Norbert Wiener and William Ross Ashby, who were also among the core participants in the conferences. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Around the same time, Parsons also benefited from conversations with political scientist Karl Deutsch on systems theory. In one conference, the Fourth Conference of the problems of consciousness in March 1953 at Princeton and sponsored by the Macy Foundation, Parsons would give a presentation on "Conscious and Symbolic Processes" and embark on an intensive group discussion which included exchange with child psychologist Jean Piaget.Among the other participants were Mary A.B. Brazier, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Nathaniel Kleitman, Margaret Mead and Gregory Zilboorg. Parsons would defend the thesis that consciousness is essentially a social action phenomenon, not primarily a "biological" one. During the conference, Parsons criticized Piaget for not sufficiently separating cultural factors from a physiologistic concept of "energy". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
During the McCarthy era, on April 1, 1952, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, received a personal letter from an informant who reported on communist activities at Harvard. During a later interview, the informant claimed that "Parsons... was probably the leader of an inner group" of communist sympathizers at Harvard. The informant reported that the old department under Sorokin had been conservative and had "loyal Americans of good character" but that the new Department of Social Relations had turned into a decisive left-wing place as a result of "Parsons's manipulations and machinations". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
On October 27, 1952, Hoover authorized the Boston FBI to initiate a security-type investigation on Parsons. In February 1954, a colleague, Stouffer, wrote to Parsons in England to inform him that Stouffer had been denied access to classified documents and that part of the stated reason was that Stouffer knew communists, including Parsons, "who was a member of the Communist Party".Parsons immediately wrote an affidavit in defense of Stouffer, and he also defended himself against the charges that were in the affidavit: "This allegation is so preposterous that I cannot understand how any reasonable person could come to the conclusion that I was a member of the Communist Party or ever had been." In a personal letter to Stouffer, Parsons wrote, "I will fight for you against this evil with everything there is in me: I am in it with you to the death." The charges against Parsons resulted in Parsons being unable to participate in a UNESCO conference, and it was not until January 1955 that he was acquitted of the charges. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Since the late 1930s, Parsons had continued to show great interest in psychology and in psychoanalysis. In the academic year of 1955–1956, he taught a seminar at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute entitled "Sociology and Psychoanalysis". In 1956, he published a major work, Family, Socialization and Interaction Process, which explored the way in which psychology and psychoanalysis bounce into the theories of motivation and socialization, as well into the question of kinship, which for Parsons established the fundamental axis for that subsystem he later would call "the social community". It contained articles written by Parsons and articles written in collaboration with Robert F. Bales, James Olds, Morris Zelditch Jr., and Philip E. Slater. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The work included a theory of personality as well as studies of role differentiation. The strongest intellectual stimulus that Parsons most likely got then was from brain researcher James Olds, one of the founders of neuroscience and whose 1955 book on learning and motivation was strongly influenced from his conversations with Parsons. Some of the ideas in the book had been submitted by Parsons in an intellectual brainstorm in an informal "work group" which he had organized with Joseph Berger, William Caudill, Frank E. Jones, Kaspar D. Naegele, Theodore M. Mills, Bengt G. Rundblad, and others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Albert J. Reiss from Vanderbilt University had submitted his critical commentary. In the mid-1950s, Parsons also had extensive discussions with Olds about the motivational structure of psychosomatic problems, and at this time Parsons' concept of psychosomatic problems was strongly influenced by readings and direct conversations with Franz Alexander (a psychoanalyst, originally associated with the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, who was a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine), Grinker and John Spiegel.In 1955, François Bourricaud was preparing a reader of some of Parsons' work for a French audience, and Parsons wrote a preface for the book Au lecteur français (To the French Reader); it also went over Bourricaud's introduction very carefully. In his correspondence with Bourricaud, Parsons insisted that he did not necessarily treat values as the only, let alone "the primary empirical reference point" of the action system since so many other factors were also involved in the actual historical pattern of an action situation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons spent 1957 to 1958 at the Center of Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California, where he met for the first time Kenneth Burke; Burke's flamboyant, explosive temperament made a great impression on Parsons, and the two men became close friends. Parsons explained in a letter the impression Burke had left on him: "The big thing to me is that Burke more than anyone else has helped me to fill a major gap in my own theoretical interests, in the field of the analysis of expressive symbolism." Another scholar whom Parsons met at the Center of Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto was Alfred L. Kroeber, the "dean of American anthropologists". Kroeber, who had received his PhD at Columbia and who had worked with the Arapaho Indians, was about 81 when Parsons met him. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons had the greatest admiration for Kroeber and called him "my favorite elder statesman". In Palo Alto, Kroeber suggested to Parsons that they write a joint statement to clarify the distinction between cultural and social systems, then the subject of endless debates. In October 1958, Parsons and Kroeber published their joint statement in a short article, "The Concept of Culture and the Social System", which became highly influential. Parsons and Kroeber declared that it is important both to keep a clear distinction between the two concepts and to avoid a methodology by which either would be reduced to the other. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In 1955 to 1956, a group of faculty members at Cornell University met regularly and discussed Parsons' writings. The next academic year, a series of seven widely attended public seminars followed and culminated in a session at which he answered his critics. The discussions in the seminars were summed up in a book edited by Max Black, The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons: A Critical Examination. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
It included an essay by Parsons, "The Point of View of the Author". The scholars included in the volume were Edward C. Devereux Jr., Robin M. Williams Jr., Chandler Morse, Alfred L. Baldwin, Urie Bronfenbrenner, Henry A. Landsberger, William Foote Whyte, Black, and Andrew Hacker. The contributions converted many angles including personality theory, organizational theory, and various methodological discussions. Parsons' essay is particularly notable because it and another essay, "Pattern Variables Revisited", both represented the most full-scale accounts of the basic elements of his theoretical strategy and the general principles behind his approach to theory-building when they were published in 1960. One essay also included, in metatheoretical terms, a criticism of the theoretical foundations for so-called conflict theory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
From the late 1950s to the student rebellion in the 1960s and its aftermath, Parsons' theory was criticized by some scholars and intellectuals of the left, who claimed that Parsons's theory was inherently conservative, if not reactionary. Alvin Gouldner even claimed that Parsons had been an opponent of the New Deal. Parsons' theory was further regarded as unable to reflect social change, human suffering, poverty, deprivation, and conflict. Theda Skocpol thought that the apartheid system in South Africa was the ultimate proof that Parsons's theory was "wrong".At the same time, Parsons' idea of the individual was seen as "oversocialized", "repressive", or subjugated in normative "conformity". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In addition, Jürgen Habermas and countless others were of the belief that Parsons' system theory and his action theory were inherently opposed and mutually hostile and that his system theory was especially "mechanical", "positivistic", "anti-individualistic", "anti-voluntaristic", and "de-humanizing" by the sheer nature of its intrinsic theoretical context. By the same token, his evolutionary theory was regarded as "uni-linear", "mechanical", "biologistic", an ode to world system status quo, or simply an ill-concealed instruction manual for "the capitalist nation-state". The first manifestations of that branch of criticism would be intellectuals like Lewis Coser, Ralf Dahrendorf, David Lockwood, John Rex, C. Wright Mills, Tom Bottomore and Gouldner. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons supported John F. Kennedy on November 8, 1960; from 1923, with one exception, Parsons voted for Democrats all his life. He discussed the Kennedy election widely in his correspondence at the time. Parsons was especially interested in the symbolic implications involved in the fact of Kennedy's Catholic background for the implications for the United States as an integral community (it was the first time that a Catholic had become President of the United States). In a letter to Robert N. Bellah, he wrote, "I am sure you have been greatly intrigued by the involvement of the religious issue in our election." Parsons, who described himself as a "Stevenson Democrat", was especially enthusiastic that his favored politician, Adlai Stevenson II, had been appointed United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Parsons had supported Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 and was greatly disappointed that Stevenson lost heavily both times. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In the early 1960s, it became obvious that his ideas had a great impact on much of the theories of modernization at the time. His influence was very extensive but at the same time, the concrete adoption of his theory was often quite selective, half-hearted, superficial, and eventually confused. Many modernization theorists never used the full power of Parsons' theory but concentrated on some formalist formula, which often was taken out of the context that had the deeper meaning with which Parsons originally introduced them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In works by Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman, Karl W. Deutsch, S. N. Eisenstadt, Seymour Martin Lipset, Samuel P. Huntington, David E. Apter, Lucian W. Pye, Sidney Verba, and Chalmers Johnson, and others, Parsons' influence is clear. Indeed, it was the intensive influence of Parsons' ideas in political sociology that originally got scholar William Buxton interested in his work. In addition, David Easton would claim that in the history of political science, the two scholars who had made any serious attempt to construct a general theory for political science on the issue of political support were Easton and Parsons. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
One of the scholars with whom he corresponded extensively with during his lifetime and whose opinion he highly valued was Robert N. Bellah. Parsons's discussion with Bellah would cover a wide range of topics, including the theology of Paul Tillich. The correspondence would continue when Bellah, in the early fall of 1960, went to Japan to study Japanese religion and ideology. In August 1960, Parsons sent Bellah a draft of his paper on "The Religious Background of the American Value System" to ask for his commentary.In a letter to Bellah of September 30, 1960, Parsons discussed his reading of Perry Miller's Errand into the Wilderness. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons wrote that Miller's discussion of the role of Calvinism "in the early New England theology... is a first rate and fit beautifully with the broad position I have taken." Miller was a literary Harvard historian whose books such as The New England Mind established new standards for the writing of American cultural and religious history. Miller remained one of Parsons' most favoured historians throughout his life. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Indeed, religion had always a special place in Parsons' heart, but his son, in an interview, maintained that he that his father was probably not really "religious." Throughout his life, Parsons interacted with a broad range of intellectuals and others who took a deep interest in religious belief systems, doctrines, and institutions. One notable person who interacted with Parsons was Marie Augusta Neal, a nun of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who sent Parsons a huge number of her manuscripts and invited him to conferences and intellectual events in her Catholic Church. Neal received her PhD from Harvard under Parsons's supervision in 1963, and she would eventually become professor and then chair of sociology at Emmanuel College in Boston. She was very enthusiastic about the Second Vatican Council and became known for the National Sisters Survey, which aimed at improving women's position in the Catholic Church. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons and Winston White cowrote an article, "The Link Between Character and Society", which was published in 1961. It was a critical discussion of David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd, which had been published a decade earlier and had turned into an unexpected bestseller, reaching 1 million sold copies in 1977. Riesman was a prominent member of the American academic left, influenced by Erich Fromm and the Frankfurt School. In reality, Riesman's book was an academic attempt to give credit to the concept of "mass society" and especially to the idea of an America suffocated in social conformity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Riesman had essentially argued that at the emerging of highly advanced capitalism, the America basic value system and its socializing roles had change from an "inner-directed" toward an "other-directed" pattern of value-orientation. Parsons and White challenged Riesman's idea and argued that there had been no change away from an inner-directed personality structure. The said that Riesman's "other-directness" looked like a caricature of Charles Cooley's looking-glass self, and they argued that the framework of "institutional individualism" as the basic code-structure of America's normative system had essentially not changed. What had happen, however, was that the industrialized process and its increased pattern of societal differentiation had changed the family's generalized symbolic function in society and had allowed for a greater permissiveness in the way the child related to its parents. Parsons and White argued that was not the prelude to greater "otherdirectness" but a more complicated way by which inner-directed pattern situated itself in the social environment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
1963 was a notable year in Parsons's theoretical development because it was the year when he published two important articles: one on political power and one on the concept of social influence. The two articles represented Parsons's first published attempt to work out the idea of Generalized Symbolic Media as an integral part of the exchange processes within the AGIL system. It was a theoretical development, which Parsons had worked on ever since the publication of Economy and Society (1956). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The prime model for the generalized symbolic media was money and Parsons was reflecting on the question whether the functional characteristics of money represented an exclusive uniqueness of the economic system or whether it was possible to identify other generalized symbolic media in other subsystems as well. Although each medium had unique characteristics, Parsons claimed that power (for the political system) and influence (for the societal community) had institutional functions, which essentially was structurally similar to the general systemic function of money. Using Roman Jakobson's idea of "code" and "message", Parsons divided the components of the media into a question of value-principle versus coordination standards for the "code-structure" and the question of factor versus product control within those social process which carried the "message" components. While "utility" could be regarded as the value-principle for the economy (medium: money), "effectiveness" was the value-principle for the political system (by political power) and social solidarity for the societal community (by social influence). Parsons would eventually choose the concept of value-commitment as the generalized symbolic medium for the fiduciary system with integrity as the value principle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In August 1963, Parsons got a new research assistant, Victor Lidz, who would become an important collaborator and colleague. In 1964, Parsons flew to Heidelberg to celebrate the 100th birthday of Weber and discuss Weber's work with Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, and others. Parsons delivered his paper "Evaluation and Objectivity in Social Science: An Interpretation of Max Weber's Contribution". The meeting became mostly a clash between pro-Weberian scholars and the Frankfurt School. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Before leaving for Germany, Parsons discussed the upcoming meeting with Reinhard Bendix and commented, "I am afraid I will be something of a Daniel in the Lion's den." Bendix wrote back and told Parsons that Marcuse sounded very much like Christoph Steding, a Nazi philosopher.Parsons conducted a persistent correspondence with noted scholar Benjamin Nelson, and they shared a common interest in the rise and the destiny of civilizations until Nelson's death in 1977. The two scholars also shared a common enthusiasm for the work of Weber and would generally agree on the main interpretative approach to the study of Weber. Nelson had participated in the Weber Centennial in Heidelberg. Parsons was opposed to the Vietnam War but was disturbed by what he considered the anti-intellectual tendency in the student rebellion: that serious debate was often substituted by handy slogans from communists Karl Marx, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Nelson got into a violent argument with Herbert Marcuse and accused him of tarnishing Weber. In reading the written version of Nelson's contribution to the Weber Centennial, Parsons wrote, "I cannot let the occasion pass without a word of congratulations which is strong enough so that if it were concert I should shout bravo." In several letters, Nelson would keep Parsons informed of the often-turbulent leftist environment of Marcuse. In the letter of September 1967, Nelson would tell Parsons how much he enjoyed reading Parsons' essay on Kinship and The Associational Aspect of Social Structure. Also, one of the scholars on whose work Parsons and Nelson would share internal commentaries was Habermas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons had for years corresponded with his former graduate student David M. Schneider, who had taught at the University of California Berkeley until the latter, in 1960, accepted a position as professor in anthropology at the University of Chicago. Schneider had received his PhD at Harvard in social anthropology in 1949 and had become a leading expert on the American kinship system. Schneider, in 1968, published American Kinship: A Cultural Account which became a classic in the field, and he had sent Parsons a copy of the copyedited manuscript before its publication. Parsons was highly appreciative of Schneider's work, which became in many ways a crucial turning point in his own attempt to understand the fundamental elements of the American kinship system, a key to understanding the factor of ethnicity and especially building the theoretical foundation of his concept of the societal community, which, by the beginning of the early 1970s, had become a strong priority in the number of theoretical projects of his own intellectual life. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons borrowed the term "diffuse enduring solidarity" from Schneider, as a major concept for his own considerations on the theoretical construction of the concept of the societal community. In the spring of 1968, Parsons and Schneider had discussed Clifford Geertz's article on religion as a cultural system on which Parsons wrote a review. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons, who was a close friend of Geertz, was puzzled over Geertz's article. In a letter to Schneider, Parsons spoke about "the rather sharp strictures on what he calls the extremely narrow intellectual tradition with special reference to Weber, but also to Durkheim. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
My basic point is in this respect, he greatly overstated his case seeming to argue that this intellectual tradition was by now irrelevant. "Schneider wrote back to Parsons, "So much, so often, as I read Cliff's stuff I cannot get a clear consistent picture of just what the religious system consist in instead only how it is said to work. "In a letter of July 1968 to Gene Tanke of the University of California Press, Parsons offered a critical note on the state of psychoanalytical theory and wrote: "The use of psychoanalytical theory in interpretation of social and historical subject matter is somewhat hazardous enterprise, and a good deal of nonsense has been written in the name of such attempts." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Around 1969, Parsons was approached by the prestigious Encyclopedia of the History of Idea about writing an entry in the encyclopedia on the topic of the "Sociology of Knowledge". Parsons accepted and wrote one of his most powerful essays, "The Sociology of Knowledge and the History of Ideas", in 1969 or 1970. Parsons discussed how the sociology of knowledge, as a modern intellectual discipline, had emerged from the dynamics of European intellectual history and had reached a kind of cutting point in the philosophy of Kant and further explored by Hegel but reached its first "classical" formulation in the writing of Mannheim, whose brilliance Parsons acknowledged but disagreed with his German historicism for its antipositivistic epistemology; that was largely rejected in the more positivistic world of American social science. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
For various reasons, the editors of the encyclopedia turned down Parsons' essay, which did not fit the general format of their volume. The essay was not published until 2006.Parsons had several conversations with Daniel Bell on a "post-industrial society", some of which were conducted over lunch at William James Hall. After reading an early version of Bell's magnum opus, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, Parsons wrote a letter to Bell, dated November 30, 1971, to offer his criticism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Among his many critical points, Parsons stressed especially that Bell's discussion of technology tended to "separate off culture" and treat the two categories "as what I would call culture minus the cognitive component". Parsons' interest in the role of ethnicity and religion in the genesis of social solidarity within the local community heavily influenced another of his early 1960s graduate students, Edward Laumann. As a student, Laumann was interested in the role of social network structure in shaping community-level solidarity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Combining Parsons' interest in the role of ethnicity in shaping local community solidarity with W. Lloyd Warner's structural approach to social class, Laumann argued that ethnicity, religion, and perceived social class all play a large role in structuring community social networks. Laumann's work found that community networks are highly partitioned along lines of ethnicity, religion, and occupational social status. It also highlighted the tension individuals experience between their preference to associate with people who are like them (homophily) and their simultaneous desire to affiliate with higher-status others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Later, at the beginning of his career at the University of Chicago, Laumann would argue that how the impulses are resolved by individuals forms the basis of corporate or competitive class consciousness within a given community. In addition to demonstrating how community solidarity can be conceptualized as a social network and the role of ethnicity, religion, and class in shaping such networks, Laumann's dissertation became one of the first examples of the use of population-based surveys in the collection of social network data, and thus a precursor to decades of egocentric social network analysis. Parsons thus played an important role in shaping the early interest of social network analysis in homophily and the use of egocentric network data to assess group- and community-level social network structures. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In his later years, Parsons became increasingly interested in working out the higher conceptual parameters of the human condition, which was in part what led him toward rethinking questions of cultural and social evolution and the "nature" of telic systems, the latter which he especially discussed with Bellah, Lidz, Fox, Willy de Craemer, and others. Parsons became increasingly interested in clarifying the relationship between biological and social theory. Parsons was the initiator of the first Daedalus conference on "Some Relations between Biological and Social Theory", sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Parsons wrote a memorandum dated September 16, 1971, in which he spelled out the intellectual framework for the conference. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
As Parsons explained in the memo, the basic goal of the conference was to establish a conceptual fundament for a theory of living systems. The first conference was held on January 7, 1972. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Among the participants beside Parsons and Lidz were Ernst Mayr, Seymour Kety, Gerald Holton, A. Hunter Dupree, and William K. Wimsatt. A second Daedalus Conference on Living Systems was held on March 1–2, 1974 and included Edward O. Wilson, who was about to publish his famous work on sociobiology. Other new participants were John T. Bonner, Karl H. Pribram, Eric Lennenberg, and Stephen J. Gould. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons began in the fall of 1972 to conduct a seminar on "Law and Sociology" with legal philosopher Lon L. Fuller, well known for his book The Morality of Law (1964). The seminar and conversations with Fuller stimulated Parsons to write one of his most influential articles, "Law as an Intellectual Stepchild". Parsons discuses Roberto Mangabeira Unger's Law in Modern Society (1976). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Another indication of Parsons' interest in law was reflected in his students, such as John Akula, who wrote his dissertation in sociology, Law and the Development of Citizenship (1973). In September 1972, Parsons participated in a conference in Salzburg on "The Social Consequences of Modernization in Socialist Countries". Among the other participants were Alex Inkeles, Ezra Vogel, and Ralf Dahrendorf. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In 1972, Parsons wrote two review articles to discuss the work of Bendix, which provide a clear statement on Parsons' approach to the study of Weber. Bendix had become well known for his interpretations of Weber. In the first review article, Parsons analyzed the immigrant Bendix's Embattled Reason, and he praised its attempt to defend the basic values of cognitive rationality, which he unconditionally shared, and he agreed with Bendix that the question of cognitive rationality was primarily a cultural issue, not a category that could be reduced from biological, economic, and social factors. However, Parsons criticized how Bendix had proceeded, who he felt especially had misrepresented the work of Freud and Durkheim. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons found that the misrepresentation was how Bendix tended to conceive the question of systematic theorizing, under the concept of "reductionism". Parsons further found that Bendix's approach suffered from a "conspicuous hostility" to the idea of evolution. Although Parsons assessed that Weber rejected the linear evolutionary approaches of Marx and Herbert Spencer, Weber might not have rejected the question of evolution as a generalized question. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In a second article, a review of Bendix and Guenther Roth's Scholarship and Partisanship: Essays on Max Weber, Parsons continued his line of criticism. Parsons was especially concerned with a statement by Bendix that claimed Weber believed Marx's notion that ideas were "the epiphenomena of the organization of production". Parsons strongly rejected that interpretation: "I should contend that certainly the intellectual 'mature' Weber never was an 'hypothetical' Marxist." Somewhere behind the attitudes of Bendix, Parsons detected a discomfort for the former to move out of an "idiographic" mode of theorizing. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In 1973, Parsons published The American University, which he had authored with Gerald M. Platt. The idea had originally emerged when Martin Meyerson and Stephen Graubard of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1969, asked Parsons to undertake a monographic study of the American university system. The work on the book went on for years until it was finished in June 1972. From a theoretical point of view, the book had several functions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
It substantiated Parsons' concept of the educational revolution, a crucial component in his theory of the rise of the modern world. What was equally intellectually compelling, however, was Parsons' discussion of "the cognitive complex", aimed at explaining how cognitive rationality and learning operated as an interpenetrative zone on the level of the general action-system in society. In retrospect, the categories of the cognitive complex are a theoretical foundation to understand what has been called the modern knowledge-based society. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
He officially retired from Harvard in 1973 but continued his writing, teaching, and other activities in the same rapid pace as before. Parsons also continued his extensive correspondence with a wide group of colleagues and intellectuals. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Rutgers University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California at Berkeley. At Parsons' retirement banquet, on May 18, 1973, Robert K. Merton was asked to preside, while John Riley, Bernard Barber, Jesse Pitts, Neil J. Smelser, and John Akula were asked to share their experiences of the man with the audience. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
One scholar who became important in Parsons' later years was professor Martin U. Martel, of Brown University. They had made contact in the early 1970s at a discussion of an article that Martel had written about Parsons' work. Martel arranged a series of seminars at Brown University in 1973 to 1974, and Parsons spoke about his life and work and answered questions from students and faculty. Among the participants at the seminars were Martel, Robert M. Marsh, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, C. Parker Wolf, Albert F. Wessen, A. Hunter Dupree, Philip L. Quinn, Adrian Hayes and Mark A. Shields. In February to May 1974, Parsons also gave the Culver Lectures at Brown and spoke on "The Evolution of Society". The lectures and were videotaped. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Late in life, Parsons began to work out a new level of the AGIL model, which he called "A Paradigm of the Human Condition". The new level of the AGIL model crystallized in the summer of 1974. He worked out the ideas of the new paradigm with a variety of people but especially Lidz, Fox and Harold Bershady. The new metaparadigm featured the environment of the general action system, which included the physical system, the biological system, and what Parsons called the telic system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The telic system represents the sphere of ultimate values in a sheer metaphysical sense. Parsons also worked toward a more comprehensive understanding of the code-structure of social systems and on the logic of the cybernetic pattern of control facilitating the AGIL model. He wrote a bulk of notes: two being "Thoughts on the Linking of Systems" and "Money and Time". He had also extensive discussions with Larry Brownstein and Adrian Hayes on the possibility of a mathematical formalization of Parsons' theory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons had worked intensively with questions of medical sociology, the medical profession, psychiatry, psychosomatic problems, and the questions of health and illness. Most of all Parsons had become known for his concept of "the Sick role". The last field of social research was an issue that Parsons constantly developed through elaboration and self-criticism. Parsons participated at the World Congress of Sociology in Toronto in August 1974 at which he presented a paper, "The Sick Role Revisited: A Response to Critics and an Updating in Terms of the Theory of Action", which was published under a slightly different title, "The Sick Role and the Role of the Physician Reconsidered", in 1975. In this essay, Parsons highlighted that his concept of "sick role" never was meant to be confined to "deviant behavior", but "its negative valuation should not be forgotten". It was also important to keep a certain focus on the "motivatedness" of illness, since there is always a factor of unconscious motivation in the therapeutic aspects of the sick role. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In 1975, Bellah published The Broken Covenant. Bellah referred to the sermon delivered by John Winthrop (1587–1649) to his flock on the ship Arbella on the evening of the landing in Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Winthrop declared that the Puritan colonists' emigration to the New World was part of a covenant, a special pact with God, to create a holy community and noted: "For we must consider that we shall be a city on the hill. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The eyes of all people are upon us." Parsons disagreed strongly with Bellah's analysis and insisted that the covenant was not broken. Parsons later used much of his influential article, "Law as an Intellectual Stepchild", to discuss Bellah's position. Parsons thought that Bellah trivialized the tensions of individual interests and society's interests by reducing them to "capitalism"; Bellah, in his characterization of the negative aspects of American society, was compelled by a charismatic-based optimalism moral absolutism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In 1975, Parsons responded to an article by Jonathan H. Turner, "Parsons as a Symbolic Interactionist: A Comparison of Action and Interaction Theory". Parsons acknowledged that action theory and symbolic interactionism should not be regarded as two separate, antagonistic positions but have overlapping structures of conceptualization. Parsons regarded symbolic interactionism and the theory of George Herbert Mead as valuable contributions to action theory that specify certain aspects of the theory of the personality of the individual. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons, however, criticized the symbolic interactionism of Herbert Blumer since Blumer's theory had no end to the openness of action. Parsons regarded Blumer as the mirror image of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who tended to stress the quasi-determined nature of macro-structural systems. Action theory, Parsons maintained, represented a middle ground between both extremes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
In 1976, Parsons was asked to contribute to a volume to celebrate the 80th birthday of Jean Piaget. Parsons contributed with an essay, "A Few Considerations on the Place of Rationality in Modern Culture and Society". Parsons characterized Piaget as the most eminent contributor to cognitive theory in the 20th century. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
However, he also argued that the future study of cognition had to go beyond its narrow encounter with psychology to aim at a higher understanding of how cognition as a human intellectual force was entangled in the processes of social and cultural institutionalization.In 1978, when James Grier Miller published his famous work Living Systems, Parsons was approached by Contemporary Sociology to write a review article on Miller's work. Parsons had already complained in a letter to A. Hunter Dupree that American intellectual life suffered from a deep-seated tradition of empiricism and saw Miller's book the latest confirmation of that tradition. In his review, "Concrete Systems and "Abstracted Systems", he generally praised the herculean task behind Miller's work but criticized Miller for getting caught in the effort of hierarchize concrete systems but underplay the importance of structural categories in theory building. Parsons also complained about Miller's lack of any clear distinction between cultural and non-cultural systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Japan had long been a keen interest in Parsons' work. As early as 1958, a Japanese translation of Economy and Society appeared. Also, The Structure of Social Action was translated into Japanese. The Social System was translated into Japanese by Tsutomu Sato in 1974. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Indeed, Ryozo Takeda had, as early as 1952 in his Shakaigaku no Kozo ("The Framework of Sociology") introduced Japanese scholars to some of Parsons' ideas. Parsons had visited Japan for the first time in 1972 and he gave a lecture on November 25 to the Japanese Sociological Association, "Some Reflections on Post-Industrial Society" that was published in The Japanese Sociological Review. At the same time, Parsons participated in an international symposium on "New Problems of Advanced Societies", held in Tokyo, and he wrote short articles written that appeared in the proceedings of the symposium. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Tominaga, born in 1931, a leading figure in Japanese sociology and a professor at the University of Tokyo, was asked by Lidz to contribute to a two-volume collection of essays to honor Parsons. Tominaga wrote an essay on the industrial growth model of Japan and used Parsons' AGIL model.In 1977, Washio Kurata, the new dean of the Faculty of Sociology of Kwansei Gakuin University, wrote to Parsons and invited him to visit Japan during the 1978–1979 academic year. In early spring, Parsons accepted the invitation, and on October 20, 1978, Parsons arrived at the Osaka Airport, accompanied by his wife, and was greeted royally by a large entourage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons began weekly lectures at Kwansei's sociology department from October 23 to December 15. Parsons gave his first public lecture to a huge mass of undergraduates, "The Development of Contemporary Sociology". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Professor Hideichiro Nakano served as an interpreter. On November 17–18, when the Sengari Seminar House was opened, Parsons was invited as the key speaker at the event and gave two lectures, "On the Crisis of Modern Society" and "Modern Society and Religion". Present were Tominaga, Mutsundo Atarashi, Kazuo Muto, and Hideichiro Nakano. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
On November 25, lectures at Kobe University were organized by Hiroshi Mannari. Parsons lectured on organization theory to the faculty and the graduate students from the Departments of Economics, Management and Sociology. Also, faculty members from Kyoto and Osaka universities were present. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
A text was published the next year. On November 30 to December 1, Parsons participated in a Tsukuba University Conference in Tokyo; Parsons spoke on "Enter the New Society: The Problem of the Relationship of Work and Leisure in Relation to Economic and Cultural Values".On December 5, Parsons gave a lecture at Kyoto University on "A Sociologist Looks at Contemporary U.S. Society".At a special lecture at Osaka on December 12, Parsons spoke, at the suggestion of Tominaga, on "Social System Theory and Organization Theory" to the Japanese Sociological Association. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Earlier that day, Parsons had a discussion with Tominaga at Iwanami Shoten, which was published in a journal SHISO. On December 14, Kwansei Gakuin University granted Parsons an honorary doctor degree. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Some of his lectures would be collected into a volume by Kurata and published in 1983. The Parsons flew back to the US in mid-December 1978. As a sign of friendship Hideichiro Nakano sent Parsons a Buddha mask. Parsons had especially been captivated by certain aspects of Zen Buddhism. He told his friends that after his experience in Japan, he was going to reconsider certain aspects of his interpretation of the origins of modern civilizations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons died May 8, 1979, in Munich on a trip to Germany, where he was celebrating the 50th anniversary of his degree at Heidelberg. The day before, he had given a lecture on social class to an audience of German intellectuals, including Habermas, Niklas Luhmann and Wolfgang Schluchter. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons produced a general theoretical system for the analysis of society, which he called "theory of action", based on the methodological and epistemological principle of "analytical realism" and on the ontological assumption of "voluntaristic action". Parsons' concept of analytical realism can be regarded as a kind of compromise between nominalist and realist views on the nature of reality and human knowledge. Parsons believed that objective reality can be related to only by a particular encounter of such reality and that general intellectual understanding is feasible through conceptual schemes and theories. Interaction with objective reality on an intellectual level should always be understood as an approach. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons often explained the meaning of analytical realism by quoting a statement by Henderson: "A fact is a statement about experience in terms of a conceptual scheme. "Generally, Parsons maintained that his inspiration regarding analytical realism had been Lawrence Joseph Henderson and Alfred North Whitehead although he might have gotten the idea much earlier. It is important for Parsons' "analytical realism" to insist on the reference to an objective reality since he repeatedly highlighted that his concept of "analytical realism" was very different from the "fictionalism" of Hans Vaihiger (Hans Vaihinger): We must start with the assertion that all knowledge which purports to be valid in anything like the scientific sense presumes both the reality of object known and of a knower. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
I think we can go beyond that and say that there must be a community of knowers who are able to communicate with each other. Without such a presupposition it would seem difficult to avoid the pitfall of solipsism. The so-called natural sciences do not, however, impute the "status of knowing subjects" to the objects with which they deal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The Structure of Social Action (SSA), Parsons' most famous work, took form piece by piece. Its central figure was Weber, and the other key figures in the discussion were added, little by little, as the central idea took form. One important work that helped Parsons' central argument in was, in 1932, unexpectedly found: Élie Halévy's La formation du radicalisme philosophique (1901–1904); he read the three-volume work in French. Parsons explained, "Well, Halévy was just a different world ... and helped me to really get in to many clarifications of the assumptions distinctive to the main line of British utilitarian thought; assumptions about the 'natural identity of interest', and so on. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
I still think it is one of the true masterpieces in intellectual history." Parsons first achieved significant recognition with the publication of The Structure of Social Action (1937), his first grand synthesis, combining the ideas of Durkheim, Weber, Pareto, and others. In 1998, the International Sociology Association listed it as the ninth most important sociological book of the 20th Century. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons' action theory can be characterized as an attempt to maintain the scientific rigour of positivism while acknowledging the necessity of the "subjective dimension" of human action incorporated in hermeneutic types of sociological theories. It is cardinal in Parsons' general theoretical and methodological view that human action must be understood in conjunction with the motivational component of the human act. Social science must consider the question of ends, purpose, and ideals in its analysis of human action. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons' strong reaction to behavioristic theory as well as to sheer materialistic approaches derives from the attempt of the theoretical positions to eliminate ends, purpose, and ideals as factors of analysis. Parsons, in his term papers at Amherst, was already criticizing attempts to reduce human life to psychological, biological, or materialist forces. What was essential in human life, Parsons maintained, was how the factor of culture was codified. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Culture, however, was to Parsons an independent variable in that it could not be "deducted" from any other factor of the social system. That methodological intention is given the most elaborate presentation in The Structure of Social Action, which was Parsons' first basic discussion of the methodological foundation of the social sciences. Some of the themes in The Structure of Social Action had been presented in a compelling essay two years earlier in "The Place of Ultimate Values in Sociological Theory".An intense correspondence and dialogue between Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schutz serves to highlight the meaning of central concepts in The Structure of Social Action. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons developed his ideas during a period when systems theory and cybernetics were very much on the front burner of social and behavioral science. In using systems thinking, he postulated that the relevant systems treated in social and behavioral science were "open:" they were embedded in an environment with other systems. For social and behavioral science, the largest system is "the action system," the interrelated behaviors of human beings, embedded in a physical-organic environment.As Parsons developed his theory, it became increasingly bound to the fields of cybernetics and system theory but also to Emerson's concept of homeostasis and Ernst Mayr's concept of "teleonomic processes". On the metatheoretical level, Parson attempted to balance psychologist phenomenology and idealism on the one hand and pure types of what Parsons called the utilitarian-positivistic complex, on the other hand. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The theory includes a general theory of social evolution and a concrete interpretation of the major drives of world history. In Parsons' theory of history and evolution, the constitutive-cognitive symbolization of the cybernetic hierarchy of action-systemic levels has, in principle, the same function as genetic information in DNA's control of biological evolution, but that factor of metasystemic control does not "determine" any outcome but defines the orientational boundaries of the real pathfinder, which is action itself. Parsons compares the constitutive level of society with Noam Chomsky's concept of "deep structure". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
As Parsons wrote, "The deep structures do not as such articulate any sentences which could convey coherent meaning. The surface structures constitute the level at which this occurs. The connecting link between them is a set of rules of transformation, to use Chomsky's own phrase." The transformative processes and entities are generally, at least on one level of empirical analysis, performed or actualized by myths and religions, but philosophies, art systems, or even semiotic consumer behavior can, in principle, perform that function. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons' theory reflects a vision of a unified concept of social science and indeed of living systems in general. His approach differs in essence from Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems because Parsons rejects the idea that systems can be autopoietic, short of the actual action system of individual actors. Systems have immanent capacities but only as an outcome of the institutionalized processes of action-systems, which, in the final analysis, is the historical effort of individual actors. While Luhmann focused on the systemic immanence, Parsons insisted that the question of autocatalytic and homeostatic processes and the question about the actor as the ultimate "first mover" on the other hand was not mutually exclusive. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Homeostatic processes might be necessary if and when they occur but action is necessitating. It is only that perspective of the ultimate reference in action that Parsons' dictum (that higher-order cybernetic systems in history will tend to control social forms that are organized on the lower levels of the cybernetic hierarchy) should be understood. For Parsons, the highest levels of the cybernetic hierarchy as far as the general action level is concerned is what Parsons calls the constitutive part of the cultural system (the L of the L). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
However, within the interactional processes of the system, attention should be paid especially to the cultural-expressivistic axis (the L-G line in the AGIL). By the term constitutive, Parsons generally referred to very highly codified cultural values especially religious elements (but other interpretation of the term "constitutive" is possible).Cultural systems have an independent status from that of the normative and orientational pattern of the social system; neither system can be reduced to the other. For example, the question of the "cultural capital" of a social system as a sheer historical entity (in its function as a "fiduciary system"), is not identical to the higher cultural values of that system; that is, the cultural system is embodied with a metastructural logic that cannot be reduced to any given social system or cannot be viewed as a materialist (or behavioralist) deduction from the "necessities" of the social system (or from the "necessities" of its economy). Within that context, culture would have an independent power of transition, not only as factors of actual sociocultural units (like Western civilization) but also how original cultural bases would tend to "universalize" through interpenetration and spread over large numbers of social systems as with Classical Greece and Ancient Israel, where the original social bases had died but the cultural system survived as an independently "working" cultural pattern, as in the case of Greek philosophy or in the case of Christianity, as a modified derivation from its origins in Israel. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The difference between Parsons and Jürgen Habermas lies essentially in how Habermas uses Parsons' theory to establish the basic propositions of his own. Habermas takes the division between Parsons' separation between the "outer" and the "inner" dimensions of the social system and labels them "system" (outer dimension (A-G)) and "lifeworld" (inner dimension (I-L)). The problem with this model from Parsons' point of view is a) that conflict within the social system can in reality emerge from any relational point and not simply from the system-lifeworld dichotomy, and b) by relating the system-lifeworld model to some kind of "liberation"-ethos, Habermas produces the Utopian notion that the potential for conflict within the social system has some kind of "final solution," which produces a misleading concept of the nature of systemic conflict. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
It is important to highlight that Parsons distinguished two "meanings" or modes of the term general theory. He sometimes wrote about general theory as aspects of theoretical concerns of social sciences whose focus is on the most "constitutive" elements of cognitive concern for the basic theoretical systematization of a given field. Parsons would include the basic conceptual scheme for the given field, including its highest order of theoretical relations and naturally also the necessary specification of this system's axiomatic, epistemological, and methodological foundations from the point of view of logical implications. All the elements would signify the quest for a general theory on the highest level of theoretical concern. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
However, general theory could also refer to a more fully/operational system whose implications of the conceptual scheme were "spelled out" on lower levels of cognitive structuralization, levels standing closer to a perceived "empirical object". In his speech to the American Sociological Society in 1947, he spoke of five levels: The General Theory level, which took form primarily as a theory of social systems. The theory of motivation of social behavior, which especially addressed questions of the dynamics of the social system and naturally presupposed theories of motivation, personality and socialization. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The theoretical bases of systematic comparative analysis of social structure, which would involve a study of concrete cultures in concrete systems on various levels of generalization. Special theories around particular empirical problem areas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The "fitting" of the theories to specific empirical research techniques, such as statistics, and survey techniques.During his life, he would work on developing all five fields of theoretical concerns but pay special attention to the development on the highest "constitutive" level, as the rest of the building would stand or fall on the solidity of the highest level.Despite myths, Parsons never thought that modern societies exist in some kind of perfect harmony with their norms or that most modern societies were necessarily characterized by some high level of consensus or a "happy" institutional integration. Parsons highlighted that is almost logically impossible that there can be any "perfect fit" or perfect consensus in the basic normative structure of complex modern societies because the basic value pattern of modern societies is generally differentiated in such a way that some of the basic normative categories exist in inherent or at least potential conflict with each other. For example, freedom and equality are generally viewed as fundamental and non-negotiable values of modern societies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Each represents a kind of ultimate imperative about what the higher values of humanity. However, as Parsons emphasizes, no simple answer on the priority of freedom or equality or any simple solution on how they possibly can be mediated, if at all. Therefore, all modern societies are faced with the inherent conflict prevailing between the two values, and there is no "eternal solution" as such. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
There cannot be any perfect match between motivational pattern, normative solutions, and the prevailing value pattern in any modern society. Parsons also maintained that the "dispute" between "left" and "right" has something to do with the fact that they both defend ultimately "justified" human values (or ideals), which alone is indispensable as values but are always in an endless conflictual position to each other. Parsons always maintained that the integration of the normative pattern in society is generally problematic and that the level of integration that is reached in principle is always far from harmonious and perfect. If some "harmonious pattern" emerges, it is related to specific historical circumstances but is not a general law of the social systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The heuristic scheme that Parsons used to analyze systems and subsystems is called the AGIL paradigm or the AGIL scheme. To survive or maintain equilibrium with respect to its environment, any system must to some degree adapt to that environment (adaptation), attain its goals (goal attainment), integrate its components (integration), and maintain its latent pattern (latency pattern Maintenance), a sort of cultural template. The concepts can be abbreviated as AGIL and are called the system's functional imperatives. It is important to understand that Parsons AGIL model is an analytical scheme for the sake of theoretical "production", but it is not any simple "copy" or any direct historical "summary" of empirical reality. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Also, the scheme itself does not explain "anything", just as the periodic table explains nothing by itself in the natural sciences. The AGIL scheme is a tool for explanations and is no better than the quality of the theories and explanation by which it is processed. In the case of the analysis of a social action system, the AGIL paradigm, according to Parsons, yields four interrelated and interpenetrating subsystems: the behavioral systems of its members (A), the personality systems of those members (G), the social system (as such) (I), and the cultural system of that society (L). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
To analyze a society as a social system (the I subsystem of action), people are posited to enact roles associated with positions. The positions and roles become differentiated to some extent and, in a modern society, are associated with things such as occupational, political, judicial, and educational roles. Considering the interrelation of these specialized roles as well as functionally differentiated collectivities (like firms and political parties), a society can be analyzed as a complex system of interrelated functional subsystems: The pure AGIL model for all living systems: (A) Adaptation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
(G) Goal attainment. (I) Integration. (L) Latency (pattern maintenance).The Social System Level: The economy — social adaptation to its action and non-action environmental systems The polity — collective goal attainment The societal community — the integration of its diverse social components The fiduciary system — processes that function to reproduce historical culture in its "direct" social embeddedness.The General Action Level: The behavioral organism (or system), in later versions, the foci for generalized "intelligence". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
The personality system. The social system. The cultural system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
(See cultural level. )The cultural level: Cognitive symbolization. Expressive symbolization. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Evaluative symbolization. (Sometimes called: moral-evaluative symbolization.) Constitutive symbolization.The Generalized Symbolic media: Social System level: (A) Economic system: Money. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
(G) Political system: Political power. (I) The Societal Community: Influence. (L) The Fiduciary system (cultural tradition): Value-commitment.Parsons elaborated upon the idea that each of these systems also developed some specialized symbolic mechanisms of interaction analogous to money in the economy, like influence in the social community. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Various processes of "interchange" among the subsystems of the social system were postulated. Parsons' use of social systems analysis based on the AGIL scheme was established in his work Economy and Society (with N. Smelser, 1956) and has prevailed in all his work ever since. However, the AGIL system existed only in a "rudimentary" form in the beginning and was gradually elaborated and expanded in the decades which followed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
A brief introduction to Parsons' AGIL scheme can be found in Chapter 2 of The American University (with G. Platt, 1973). There is, however, no single place in his writing in which the total AGIL system is visually displayed or explained: the complete system have to be reconstructed from multiple places in his writing. The system displayed in "The American University" has only the most basic elements and should not be mistaken for the whole system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons contributed to social evolutionism and neoevolutionism. He divided evolution into four sub-processes: differentiation, which creates functional subsystems of the main system, as discussed above; adaptation, in which those systems evolve into more efficient versions; inclusion of elements previously excluded from the given systems; generalization of values, increasing the legitimization of the increasingly-complex system.Furthermore, Parsons explored the sub-processes within three stages of evolution: primitive archaic modernParsons viewed Western civilization as the pinnacle of modern societies and the United States as the one that is most dynamically developed. Parsons' late work focused on a new theoretical synthesis around four functions that he claimed are common to all systems of action, from the behavioral to the cultural, and a set of symbolic media that enables communication across them. His attempt to structure the world of action according to a scheme that focused on order was unacceptable for American sociologists, who were retreating from the grand pretensions of the 1960s to a more empirical, grounded approach. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
Parsons asserted that there are not two dimensions to societies (instrumental and expressive) but that there are qualitative differences between kinds of social interaction. He observed that people can have personalized and formally detached relationships, based on the roles that they play. The pattern variables are what he called the characteristics that are associated with each kind of interaction. An interaction can be characterized by one of the identifiers of each contrastive pair: affectivity – affective neutrality self-orientation – collectivity-orientation universalism – particularism ascription – achievement specificity – diffusity | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
From the 1940s to the 1970s, Parsons was one of the most famous and most influential but also most controversial sociologists in the world, particularly in the US. His later works were met with criticism and were generally dismissed in the 1970s by the view that his theories were too abstract, inaccessible, and socially conservative.Recently, interest has increased in Parsons' ideas and especially often-overlooked later works. Attempts to revive his thinking have been made by Parsonsian sociologists and social scientists like Jeffrey Alexander, Bryan Turner, Richard Münch, and Roland Robertson, and Uta Gerhardt has written about Parsons from a biographical and historical perspective. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Parsons |
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