Talcott Parsons
Society holds together because people share values, and every social system must solve the same basic tasks to survive.
Placement
Harvard sociologist whose theory dominated American sociology in the 1950s: he fused Weber, Durkheim and Freud into a general theory of action and social systems – and became the main target of the next generation.
Key ideas
- Voluntaristic theory of action
- Structural functionalism
- AGIL scheme
- The problem of social order
Students: Robert K. Merton, Harold Garfinkel, Niklas Luhmann
Influence
Influenced by 6
Thomas Hobbes
influenced by
Parsons made the ‘Hobbesian problem of order’, why society does not dissolve into a war of all against all, the starting point of his action theory (1937). T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (1937); T. Hobbes, Leviathan (1651); SEP “Thomas Hobbes”
Evidence: AI draft
Thomas Hobbes › 1588–1679
Vilfredo Pareto
influenced by
Parsons devoted part of The Structure of Social Action (1937) to Pareto, reading his theory of non-logical action and residues as converging on a voluntaristic theory of action. T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (1937), part II; V. Pareto, Trattato di sociologia generale (1916)
Evidence: AI draft
Vilfredo Pareto › 1848–1923
Sigmund Freud
influenced by
Parsons used Freud’s superego to explain how cultural values are internalised in socialisation, linking personality to the social system (‘The Superego and the Theory of Social Systems’, 1952). T. Parsons, “The Superego and the Theory of Social Systems”, Psychiatry 15 (1952), in Social Structure and Personality (1964)
Evidence: AI draft
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Émile Durkheim
influenced by
Parsons read Durkheim as moving from positivism to a voluntaristic theory of action in which internalised shared norms constitute social order (The Structure of Social Action, 1937). T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (1937), part II; H. Joas and W. Knöbl, Sozialtheorie (2004)
Evidence: AI draft
Émile Durkheim › 1858–1917
Max Weber
influenced by
Parsons translated The Protestant Ethic (1930) and made Weber, with Durkheim, Pareto and Marshall, a source of his voluntaristic theory of action (The Structure of Social Action, 1937). M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (1930); T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (1937); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Max Weber › 1864–1920
Bronisław Malinowski
influenced by ✓
Parsons heard Malinowski at the LSE (1924–25) and later read his functionalism as a step towards social systems theory (‘Malinowski and the Theory of Social Systems’, 1957). T. Parsons, “Malinowski and the Theory of Social Systems”, in R. Firth (ed.), Man and Culture (1957)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Bronisław Malinowski › 1884–1942
Influenced 5
Robert K. Merton taught
taught
Merton took Parsons’s first courses in sociological theory as a graduate student at Harvard in the early 1930s; his dissertation on science in seventeenth-century England (1938) was supervised by Pitirim Sorokin and guided by the historian of science George Sarton. R. K. Merton, “Remembering the Young Talcott Parsons”, The American Sociologist 15 (1980)
Evidence: AI draft
Robert K. Merton › 1910–2003
Harold Garfinkel taught
taught ✓
Garfinkel took his PhD at Harvard in 1952 under Parsons with The Perception of the Other: A Study in Social Order; ethnomethodology grew out of his questions to Parsons’s theory of action. H. Garfinkel, The Perception of the Other (diss. Harvard 1952); J. Heritage, Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology (1984)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Harold Garfinkel › 1917–2011
Clifford Geertz
influenced ✓
Trained in Harvard’s Department of Social Relations, Geertz used Parsons’s distinction between cultural and social system to explain a failed Javanese funeral (‘Ritual and Social Change’, 1957). C. Geertz, “Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example”, American Anthropologist 59 (1957), in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973); “Passage and Accident” (2000)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Clifford Geertz › 1926–2006
Niklas Luhmann taught
taught
Luhmann, then an administrative official, spent 1960–61 at Harvard on a scholarship and attended Parsons’s seminars; a one-year stay. He took his doctorate and Habilitation later, both in Münster in 1966. N. Luhmann, Archimedes und wir. Interviews (1987)
Evidence: AI draft
Niklas Luhmann › 1927–1998
Jürgen Habermas
influenced ✓
Habermas took over Parsons’s account of money and power as steering media to conceive economy and state as systems, distinct from the lifeworld (Theory of Communicative Action, 1981). J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (1981), vol. II, “Talcott Parsons: Konstruktionsprobleme der Gesellschaftstheorie”; T. Parsons, “On the Concept of Political Power” (1963)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Jürgen Habermas › 1929–2026
Criticism
Criticized by 4
Herbert Blumer
criticised by
Blumer objected that Parsons and the functionalists treat actors as passive media of social forces, neglecting how people interpret their situations (Symbolic Interactionism, 1969). H. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1969), ch. 1; N. J. Smelser, “Remembering Herbert Blumer”
Evidence: AI draft
Herbert Blumer › 1900–1987
C. Wright Mills
criticised by
In The Sociological Imagination (1959) Mills attacked Parsons’s ‘grand theory’, translating passages of The Social System into a few plain sentences and faulting its neglect of power. C. W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination (1959), ch. 2
Evidence: AI draft
C. Wright Mills › 1916–1962
Anthony Giddens
criticised by
Giddens objected that Parsons’s normative functionalism turns actors into ‘cultural dopes’ and attributes needs to social systems, countering with structuration theory (New Rules of Sociological Method, 1976). A. Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method (1976); Central Problems in Social Theory (1979)
Evidence: AI draft
Anthony Giddens › b. 1938
Raewyn Connell
criticised by
Connell rejected the sex-role theory Parsons built on instrumental and expressive family roles, arguing that it naturalises gender and leaves power and change unexplained (Gender and Power, 1987). R. W. Connell, Gender and Power (1987), ch. 3; T. Parsons & R. F. Bales, Family, Socialization and Interaction Process (1955)
Evidence: AI draft
Raewyn Connell › b. 1944
Criticizes 1
Herbert Spencer
criticised
Parsons opened The Structure of Social Action (1937) with Brinton’s question ‘Who now reads Spencer?’, declaring Spencer’s positivist, utilitarian evolutionism dead. T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (1937), ch. 1; C. Brinton, English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1933)
Evidence: AI draft
Herbert Spencer › 1820–1903
Works
Reads Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim and Weber as converging on a single “voluntaristic” theory of action: actors choose their ends, but within norms they share.
Structural functionalism worked out: how a social system maintains order through shared values, roles and socialisation – the main target of the critics of “grand theory”.
Position
The Structure of Social Action (1937) read Alfred Marshall, Vilfredo Pareto, Durkheim and Weber as converging on a single “voluntaristic” theory of action: people pursue ends, but choose their goals and means within norms and values they share. This, Parsons argued, answers the “Hobbesian problem of order” – why society does not collapse into a war of all against all. From The Social System (1951) on he built a vast conceptual architecture. Every action system must fulfil four functions – adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latent pattern maintenance (the AGIL scheme) – which in society are served by the economy, the polity, the “societal community” of law and norms, and the institutions of family, education and culture. “Pattern variables” describe the choices between traditional and modern orientations. With Freud he explained how values are internalised in socialisation, and his concept of the “sick role” helped found medical sociology. From the late 1950s critics such as C. Wright Mills, Ralf Dahrendorf and Alvin Gouldner charged that his structural functionalism was abstract, conservative and blind to conflict and power. Yet his systems thinking lived on, transformed, in Niklas Luhmann and Jürgen Habermas.
Life & context
Talcott Parsons was born in 1902 in Colorado Springs, the son of a Congregationalist minister who later became a college president. He studied biology and then economics at Amherst College, spent 1924–25 at the London School of Economics, where he heard the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, and then went to Heidelberg, where he took his doctorate with a thesis on the concept of capitalism in Werner Sombart and Max Weber. In 1930 he published the first English translation of Weber’s Protestant Ethic. He taught at Harvard from 1927 until 1973 and in 1946 founded its interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations. For two decades he was the leading figure of American sociology. He died in Munich in 1979, during a visit to Germany that had taken him back to Heidelberg.
Further main works
- Toward a General Theory of Action (with Edward Shils and others, 1951)
- Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (1966)
- The System of Modern Societies (1971)
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