Parsons was imporant in the foundational work of establishing sociology as a discipline in America.
Parsons wrote a number of thick volumes which are incredibly difficult, but are very rigorous.
He established a tradition of writing; sometimes called sociologish, which is supposed to be very clear when you understand it.
Within the field of sociology, you could consider him as the antipode of Marxist sociology. He had a radically different position. His sociology is sometimes called conservative, but we should not really actually think that sociological theories can lead to a specific political stance.
There was huge political controversy around the theory.
Was very influenced by German theory; Weber, Simmel and so on.
Parsons lived through the emergance of fascism, and became keenly active in raising awareness against fascism.
He begame an opponent of any type of totallitarianism, apt for defending American values.
Theory is essential for Parsons, he doesn’t really do empirical work. Science can only happen when there are concepts to work around. Systematic theory is fundamentally important for the telos of any collection of data; for any science.
Played a major role in bringing European traditions into the United States. Wrote an important thesis about Weber’s protestantism. Understood, and defends, that his modernisation comes out of his calvinist roots.
”Pierre Bourdieu: Parsons is an academic combination of Weber, Durkehim and Pareto – but of course not Marx.”
Pareto developed Elite Theory, in society there are always elites and the progress of society is all about who remains or overturns the elite class.
Parsons is identified with systems, which he uses to understand social order. He wanted to understand society in terms of systems.
The notion of system after WWII (coming out of computation and cybernetics) becomes very fashionable. There are technological systrems, organisational systems, cultural systems, factorial systems and so on and so on.
[Different sociological authors talks about systems with very different meanins, remember, because it makes Sociology difficult to keep up with because everyone uses the words but in different ways]
When you want to study a material object; since Aristotle, you have to look to the nature of the object, which is found in its substance wherein lies essence. You look at the individual as a substance which has an essence.
We make a move from substance to function, substance to relation.
We no longer study the thing through its essence, but rather as a node of a set of relations. That the individual thing is part of a structure of relations. We have to look at the relations that which the thing is embedded in.
We understand them relationally.
Your behaviour becomes understandable through a pattern that appears when studied en mass.
The meaning of the system is determined by relations.
The status of an element, is determined relationally through a complex of relations.
System goes beyond this:
One way to introduce is it, is to say that it is somehow dynamic. The system ”moves”.
If there is some kind of behaviour that is considered inappropriate to a given system, someone will act to correct that behaviour and reestablish the structure.
There is a capacity for reestablishment and self-correction.
Furthermore, it has a capacity for learning. In the beginning, the system might be unclear, but the system thereafter learns and develops in its whole, not only in its elements.
A system also creates boundaries around itself. The system differenciates itself from what is outside. There is a well-defined ”inside” to the system, and a well-defined ”environment” or outside the system, wherein everything becomes a kind of noise. A system self-differentiates.
Parson’s first great work was the ”Theory of Action” (Weber was also interested in Action, instrumentally rational action.)
Parson’s calls Weber’s theory the positivistic/utilitarian theory of action.
The problem for Parson is that if all actions are instrumentally rational, how can social order then come about?
This is the naiviety of economic theory personified in one question.
It’s more likely what will emerge from this is a kind of state of natural war like in Hobbes.
In a sense, Parsons brings together Weber and Durkheim.
We have to rethink what action is.
He develops an ”action frame of referens”. A theoretical framework which describes all action.
It consists of four aspects:
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An Agent
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Who pursues Ends
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There are certain Situations under which the agents acts
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But these elements are somehow coordinated: Norms
It is in terms of the relations of the agents, which are governed by norms, that which goals can be constructed within action.
Parson develops a langague through which we can describe a lot of different actions.
It is on the base of norms that a kind of integration can occur. All the individuals abide by the same norms.
”Society is a moral entity”, ultimately based on norms (rules of conduct) and values.
Values and norms are regulative: they constrain the choice of means and ends.
There are certain norms that the action of becoming rich is governed by. Investing can be good in our society whilst stealing is bad; but both have the same goal.
If there are norms, which are somehow shared. How do they create order?
Because norms generate expectations about the behaviour and actions of the other.
Eg. when you come to a lecture, there is a set of expectations that both you have, and what the others have about me. Because of these expectations there is a kind of mutual adjustment between individuals. Thus, expectation becomes very important in sociology.
(In Luhmann: it is not expectations that create order, but erwachtungserwachtung. Order is created through expectations of expectations. I expect that other people expect certain things from me. And other people have expectations that I have certain expectations of them).
How do different actions get integrated into one system?
”The problem of order, and thus of the nature of stable systems of social interaction, that is, of social structure, thus focuses on the integration of the motivation of actors with the normative cultural standards which integrate the action system.”
Norms become part of the motivation of our action, through expectation.
(This is a very easy or modified version of Parson but we can’t read the entire 700 page book.)
As time goes on, Parson continues the usage of the term system.
Parsons redescribes the entire thought around systems in 1951 in The Social System.
Through a way in which we respond to actions, we reinforce or sanction an action within a system.
We are continously making decisions, and we are sanction or allow certain actions within a system in order to continue the workings of a system.
Through that type of interaction, a kind of fixity emerges; institutionalisation.
In a sense, it becomes a kind of social fact (from Durkheim) sometimes.
This creates the concept of role. There is an expectation on the role that someone plays in a certain sociological sytem. Attached to a role are particular expectations. Becoming a student means to adopt the role of a student; taking notes and so on.
In different social systems, different roles will be at play, with different expecations; we won’t go talking about politics with our doctor.
The role becomes a key concept in social order.
In social systems, the elements are actions. It is a structure of inter-action. All these elements are functional to each other. (All actions contribute to making the system possible). That structure gets a kind of dynamic, which becomes integrated into itself. Also, a system has a kind of goal, it is purposive. This means that every system can be described in these terms.
We describe the whole of society by splitting it apart into systems. (Contrary to Simmel, we have access to the whole of society, by spitting it apart).
Parson rejects the word structural functionalism, even though this word is still always ascribed to him.
If we understand this class as an action system. This is already a connection between different systems.
In all systems there are at least three subsystems:
The personality system, the system of the individual as studied by psychologists, however in the study of the class system, our personalities belong to the environment.
The cultural system, which informs the general norms which we are holding.
And then the social system, what we are properly studying.
Sometimes, however, eg. if we are fed up with learning about Parsons, the personality system might feed over into the social system: someone might shout out that they hate Parsons (fair).
Parsons wants to divide everything into systems so that he never has to speak of them as Human Beings. Human Beings are not causal factors that can explain systems. Humans disappear behind a rideau of systems. It is a kind of theoretical ahumanistic approach; a reformulation of the scientific goal of objectivity.
We should not do science by talking about people, but abstract away the specific humans.
Humans are a kind of cross-road of systems, which are no longer necessary. They are what happens when certain systems touch each other.
According to Parsons, when we refer to human beings, we become ideological, which we can somehow avoid by abstracting away the humans.
The social system can only happen because there is a cultural system in the background; containing norms, values and meanings.
How does the input of the cultural system come into the social system?
Through institutionalisation.
It becomes a kind of fixed rigidity which governs our interactions. It is that process by which norms becomes order-creating within a social system.
There is the same kind of interaction between the personality and social system. They go two-way.
The personality system has to interorise social sytem norms, socialisation.
And the social system receives inputs from personality input. Socialisation and institutionalisation explain the interaction between these systems.
A social system of any kind are structurally differentiated. Their structures and relations between elements, and throygh these social roles and expectations a kind of order comes about.
But this is not all.
For systems to exist and to maintain themselves through time, they must solve four problems, four functional imperatives: these are the AGIL-Scheme.
Adaptation, Goal attainment, Integration, Latency.
Adaptation: a system has to adapt and adjust itself to its conditions and environment. (But its environmet are other systems?)
Goal attainment: Determining a goal and organising means to reach it.
Integration: mutural adjustment of units of the system.
Latency: maintain internal order on a longer term through the institutionalisation of cultural patterns.
Every system can be described in the same language. They all have to solve these four requirements. Each system will be different from the other by the fact that they answer these four
challenges differently.
Within society as a system, there are subsystems, according to Parson these are four:
The Economy: allocation of resources (does adaptation)
The Polity: coordination of the pursuit of collective goals (Goal attainment)
Societal Community: eg. sharing a lifestyle contributes to social integration ( Integration)
Fiduciary System: transmission and maintenance of values and shared culture (eg. institutions of religion, family, education) (Latency) - There are subsystems that consist of a number of institutions that makes sure that norms are passed on as time goes on (this makes sure latency happens).
What is the sociological vision behind Parsons idea?
That culture and cultural norms are essential to the understanding of any social process.
Parson has been critiqued by Marxists for being an idealist.
Parsons fundamentally agrees with Weber that the big changes that takes place, takes place on the level of cultural norms. Initially there was religious change, then an ethical change and so on until it become a societal change. Weber is explaining a change in the fiduciary system.
Parsons draws a lot of inspiration from input-output models in biology. Such as ontopoiesis, the capacity for a system to create itself, though it is mainly Luhmann who makes sense of this.
What Parsons tries to do, is to rethink insights or problems raised by earlier sociologists. Eg. he redescribes the same conclusion as Weber in his own theoretical jargon. He is also trying to reexpress Tönnies’ Gesellschaft vs. Gemeinschaft.
Parsons thinks that all these distinctions are too blunt and not very abstractedly sophisticated.
If indeed cultural norms are essential, we should describe what they are and the possibility of different norms.
Pattern Variables: a cultural system has to make a choice on 5 levels.
Affective vs Affective Neutrality
Self-orientation vs Collectivity Orientation
Universalism vs. Particularism
Ascription vs Achievement (Caste vs. Having to Work for a Position)
Specialty vs Diffuseness
Gemeinschaft = affective, collective-oriented, particularist, ascription, diffuse
Gesellschaft = affective neutrality, self oriented, universalist, achievement, specific
On this basis, Parsons thinks about cultural evolution.
”Sociol-cultural evolution, like organic evolution, has proceeded by variation and differentaition from simple to progressively more complex.”
(Okay this is actually where I have more beef with him).
If historical evolution is about differentiation, it is about systems, about the creations of more specific systems.
In a pre-industrial society, the family was an economic unit.
In modernity there is a differentiation between the family as a system and the economic activity as a different system.
Role differentiaiton leads to the differentiation of roles.
For example, the family system has to reorganise itself.
For Parson, there is an evolutionary norm process that goes towards an increasing scale of universalism, they are becoming abstract, general and universally applicable.
This underpins Parsons theory of modernisation.
The idea is that there is a process of modernisation which all countries have to follow.
All the countries of the third-world has to modernise, and follow the same kind of modern differentaition.
The idea of Parsons is that the western model has to be universalised.
C.W. Mills critique:
Culture can function as ideology.
Mills argued against Parsons’ ”Grand Theory” and argued that it was ideologically driven. Mills argued that we get lost in the grand abstraction.
Structural functionalism cannot understand change and conflict, and is politically conservative.
ie. Conflict theory = Structure + Conflict, which Parsons lacks.
Big conflicts like class struggle just doesn’t happen in Parsons account of sociology.
Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society.