Talcott Parsons
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| Talcott Parsons | |
 Picture by Lois Lord.
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| Born | December 13, 1902 Colorado Springs, Colorado |
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| Died | May 8, 1979 (aged 76) |
| Residence | United States |
| Fields | Sociology |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Alma mater | Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg London School of Economics Amherst College |
Talcott Parsons (1902 - 1979) was an American sociologist, who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927–1973. He produced a general theoretical system for the analysis of society, which was called action theory based on the concept on methodological and epistemological principle of "analytical realism" and on the ontological assumption of "voluntaristic action" on behalf of the system-environment correlate of the actor.
As Parsons developed his theory it became increasingly based upon the theoretical principles of cybernetics and system theory, as well on Emerson's concept of "homostasis" and Ernst Mayr's concept of "teleonomic processes." On the meta-theoretical level Parsons' theory attempts to navigate -- and find a balance -- between psychologist phenomenology and idealism at the one side and pure types of what Parsons called the utilitarian-positivistic complex, on the other side. The theory include 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-cognititive symbolization of the cybernetic hierarchy of action-systemic levels has in principle the same function as the function of genetic information in DNA's control of biological evolution but this factor of meta-systemic control does not "determine" any outcome but it defines the orientational boundaries of the real path-breaker, which is action itself. As overall goal Parsons' theory reflects a vision of an unified concept of social science and indeed, of living system in general.
For many years Parsons was the best-known sociologist in the United States, and indeed one of the best-known in the world. His work was very influential through the 1950s and well into the 1960s, particularly in the United States, went into a relative downslope in the 1970s. Currently, the interest in Parsons is increasing worldwide. The most prominent attempt to revive Parsonian thinking has been made by the sociologists and social scientists like Jeffrey Alexander, Bryan S. Turner, Victor Lidz, Uta Gerhardt, Giuseppe Sciortino, Helmuth Staubmann, David Sciulli, Richard Münch, Kazuyoshi Takagi and Ken'chi Tominaga, the latter a towering figure in Japanese sociology. On the issue of studying Parsons' biographical and historical data scholars such as William Buxton, Uta Gerhardt and Jens Kaalhauge Nielsen have been most prominent. The key centers of Parsons interest today beside the US is Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Japan.
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[edit] Biography
Talcott Parsons was born 13 December 1902 in Colorado Springs. Parsons was the son of Edward Smith Parsons (1863-1943) and Mary Augusta Ingersoll (1863-1949). His father had been a Congregationalist minister but at the time of Parsons' birth he was a professor in English at Colorado College and vice-president of the College. The father would later become the president of Marietta College in Ohio. Parsons' family is one of the oldest families in American history; his ancestors were some of the first who arrive from England in the first half of the seventeenth century.[1]
As an undergraduate, Parsons studied biology, sociology and philosophy at Amherst College and received his B.A. in 1924. At Amherst Parsons took courses with Walton Hamilton and the philosopher Clarence Ayres, both known as "institutional economists." They submitted him to literature by Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, Graham Sumner among others. Parsons also took a course with George Brown in the philosophy of Kant. After Amherst, he studied at the London School of Economics for a year, where he was exposed to the work of R. H. Tawney, Bronisław Malinowski, and Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse. While studying at LSE he met a young American girl in the students common room by the name of Helen Bancroft Walker who he married on April 30, 1927. The couple had three children, Anne, Charles and Susan and eventually four grandchildren.
After his stay at LSE, Parsons moved to the University of Heidelberg, where he received his PhD in sociology and economics. During his time in Heidelberg, he worked with Alfred Weber (Max Weber's brother), Edgar Salin (who was his dissertation adviser) Emil Lederer, and Karl Mannheim and in addition he was examined in Immanuel Kant's "Critique of pure Reason" by the philosopher Karl Jaspers. It was at Heidelberg that he became familiar with the works of Max Weber, then relatively unknown to American social theorists; he later translated several of Weber's works into English.
In 1927, after a year teaching at Amherst (1926–27), Talcott Parsons entered Harvard as an instructor at the Department of Economics, where he followed F.W. Taussig's lectures on Alfred Marshall and became friend with the economist historian Edwin Gay, who was the founder of Harvard Business School. Parsons also became a close associate of Joseph Schumpeter and followed his course on "General Economics." Parsons was generally at odd with the basic trend in Harvard's Economic department which in those days went in a highly technical, matematical direction, and Parsons looked for other options at Harvard and gave courses in "Social Ethics" and in the "Sociology of Religion." The chance for a swift to sociology came in 1931, when Harvard's first Sociology Department was created under reign of Russian scholar Pitirim Sorokin. During this period Parsons established close ties with Lawrence J. Henderson, a brilliant scientist, who took personal interest in Parsons' career at Harvard. Parsons also made strong connections with two other influential intellectuals with whom he corresponded for years; one was economist Frank H. Knight and the other was Chester I. Barnard, one of US's most dynamic business-men at the time. The relationship between Talcott Parsons and Sorokin quickly ran sour. Pattern of personal tensions was aggravated by Sorokin's deep dislike for American civilizstion, which he regarded as a senate culture in decline. Sorokin attempted to block for Parsons' promotion but through the pressure from Henderson and Edwin Gay Parsons was finally promoted to assistent profesor in 1937.
Parsons first achieved significant recognition with the publication of The Structure of Social Action (1937), his first grand synthesis, combining the ideas of Durkheim, Max Weber, and Pareto, among others. Parsons revisted Germany in the summer of 1930 and became a direct eye-wittness to the feverish atmosphere in Weimar Germany through which the Nazi Party rosed to power. In the following period Parsons received constant reports about the rise of Nazism through his friend Edward Y. Hartshone who was travelling in Germany. Parsons began in the late 1930s to warn the American public about the Nazi threat; this was not an easy task since US in those days was predominant isolationist. One of the first articles Parsons wrote in this regard was entitled: "New Dark Age Seen If Nazis should Win." Parsons became one of the key initators to the Harvard Defense commitee, an organization aimed at rally the American public against the Nazis. Parsons' voice would sound again and again over Boston's local radio-stations as a part of this campaign. During the War Parsons conducted a special study group at Harvard, which analyzed the causes of Nazism and where leading experts on the topic participated. Also during the War, Parsons became the deputy director of Harvard School of Overseas administration, a school which educated administors to "run" the occupied terrorites in Germany and the Pacific. On the issue of China, which also was taught at the school, Parsons received fundamental information from Chinese scholar Ai-Li Sung Chin and her husband Robert Chin.
At Harvard, Parsons was instrumental in forming the Department of Social Relations, an interdisciplinary venture among sociology, anthropology, and psychology. The new Department was officially created in January 1946 with Talcott Parsons as the chairman and with prominent figures at the faculty such as Samuel Stouffer, Clyde Kluckhohn, Henry Murray and Gordon Allport. An appointment for Hartshorne was considered but came to a bloody end, when Hartshorne was killed in Germany by an unknown gunman while driving on the highway. His position went in stead to George C. Homans. The new department was galvanized by Parsons' idea of creating a theoretical and institutional base for an unified social science. During this period Parsons also became strongly interested in system theory and cybernetics and began to adopt their basic ideas and concepts to the realm of social science, especially the work of Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) had his attention.
According to Talcott Parsons' own account, it was during some conversations with Elton Mayo (1880-1949), where he realized that it was necessary to him to take a serious look at the work of Freud. In the fall of 1938 Parsons began to offer a series of noncredit afternoon courses on Freud in which among others Robin Williams participated. William recalls, "Parsons was powerfully impressed with Freud who he particularly discussed in relation to the work of Bronislaw Malinowski." As years past by Parsons develped a strong interest in psychoanalysis. He accepted to be a candidate for non-therapeutic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, where he began a didactic analysis with Dr. Grete Bibring in September 1946. This insight to psychoanalysis is significantly reflected in his later work as well as it also was apparent in his empirical analysis of fascism during the war, where he interpreted the German national character as standing in a conflictual tension between romantic patterns on the one side and preussian rationalized formalism on the other.
Nationally, Parsons was a strong advocate for the professionalization of sociology and its expansion within American academia. He was elected president of the American Sociological Association in 1949 and served as secretary from 1960–1965.
He retired from Harvard in 1973, but continued teaching (at a number of other universities as a visiting professor) and writing until his death in May 8 1979, while on a trip to Germany.[2]
His son Charles Parsons is a distinguished figure in philosophy of mathematics. His daughter Anne Parsons committed suicide in June 1964 at the age of 33.
[edit] Work
Parsons was an advocate of "grand theory," an attempt to integrate all the social sciences (except anthropology) into an overarching theoretical framework.
His early work on the Structure of Social Action, he reviewed the output of his great predecessors, especially Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto, and Émile Durkheim. Parsons attempted to derive from them a single "action theory" based on the assumptions that human action is voluntary, intentional, and symbolic.
Later, he became intrigued with, and involved in, an astonishing range of fields: from medical sociology (where he developed the concept of the sick role, to psychoanalysis—personally undergoing full training as a lay analyst), to anthropology, to small group dynamics, working extensively with Robert Freed Bales, to race relations and then economics and education.
[edit] Systems theory and cybernetics
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," meaning that they were embedded in an environment consisting of other systems. For social and behavioral science, the largest system is "the action system," consisting of interrelated behaviors of human beings, embedded in a physical-organic environment.[3]
Parsons had a seminal influence and early mentorship of Niklas Luhmann, pre-eminent German sociologist, originator of autopietic systems theory.
[edit] AGIL paradigm
The procedure he adopted to analyze this system and its subsystems is called the "AGIL Paradigm", "AGIL scheme" or "GAIL model"[4]. 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 cultural template of some sort. These are called the system's functional imperatives.
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 society as a system of social organization (I) and the cultural system of that society (L). To analyze a society as a social system (the I subsystem of action), people are posited to enact roles associated with positions. These positions and roles become differentiated to some extent and in a modern society are associated with such things as occupational, political, judicial and educational roles.
Considering the interrelation of these specialized roles as well as functionally differentiated collectivities (e.g., firms, political parties), the society can be analyzed as a complex system of interrelated functional subsystems, namely:
- The economy -- social adaptation to its action and non-action environmental systems
- The polity -- social goal attainment
- The social community -- the integration of its diverse social components
- The fiduciary system -- processes and units that function to reproduce social culture
Parsons elaborated upon the idea that each of these systems also developed some specialized symbolic mechanisms of interaction analogous to money in the economy, e.g.., influence in the social community. Various processes of "interchange" among the subsystems of the social system were postulated.
The most elaborate of Parsons's use of functional systems analysis with the AGIL scheme appear in two collaborative books, Economy and Society (with N. Smelser, 1956) and The American University (with G. Platt, 1973).
[edit] Social evolutionism
Parsons contributed to the field of social evolutionism and neoevolutionism. He divided evolution into four subprocesses:
- differentiation, which creates functional subsystems of the main system, as discussed above;
- adaptation, where those systems evolve into more efficient versions;
- inclusion of elements previously excluded from the given systems; and
- generalization of values, increasing the legitimization of the ever-more complex system.
Furthermore, Parsons explored these subprocesses within three stages of evolution:
- primitive,
- archaic and
- modern
Parsons viewed Western civilisation as the pinnacle of modern societies, and out of all western cultures he declared the United States as the most dynamically developed.
Parsons' late work focused on a new theoretical synthesis around four functions common (he claimed) to all systems of action—from the behavioral to the cultural, and a set of symbolic media that enable communication across them. His attempt to structure the world of action according to a mere four concepts was too much for many American sociologists, who were at that time retreating from the grand pretensions of the 1960s to a more empirical, grounded approach. Parsons' influence waned rapidly in the U.S. after 1970.
[edit] Pattern variables
Parsons asserted that there were two dimensions to societies: instrumental and expressive. By this he meant 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 characteristics that were associated with each kind of interaction he called the pattern variables.
Some examples of expressive societies would include families, churches, clubs, crowds, and smaller social settings. Examples of instrumental societies would include bureaucracies, aggregates, and markets.
[edit] Publications
Parsons' analysis was largely developed within his major published works. Like many other sociologists he attempted to combine human agency and structure in one theory and was not confined to functionalism.
- 1937, The Structure of Social Action
- 1951, The Social System
- 1951, Toward a General Theory of Action - with Shils and Kluckhohn
- 1956, Economy and Society - with N. Smelser
- 1960, Structure and Process in Modern Societies
- 1961, Theories of Society - with Edward Shils, Kaspar D. Naegele and Jesse R. Pitts
- 1966, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives
- 1967, Sociological Theory and Modern Society
- 1969, Politics and Social Structure
- 1973, The American University - with G. Platt
- 1977, Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory
- 1978, Action Theory and the Human Condition
- 2007, American Society: Toward a Theory of Societal Community. Edited by Giuseppe Sciortino. Paradigm ISBN 978-1-59451-227-8.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Charles Parsons (2004). "Some remarks on Talcott Parsons’s family". In: Journal The American Sociologist. Vol 35, Nr 3, Sept 2004. pp. 4-22.
- ^ Mayhew, Leonard (1982) "Talcott Parsons, 1902–79: a biographical note" in Talcott Parsons, Talcott Parsons on institutions and social evolution, Pp: xi-xii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- ^ A good summary of the "action frame of reference" as it developed over time is found in Leonard Mayhew's introduction to his anthology of Parsons' major essays: Mayhew, Leonard (1982) "Introduction" in Talcott Parsons, Talcott Parsons on institutions and social evolution, Pp: 1-62. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- ^ P. McNeill, C. Townley, Fundamentals of Sociology,(Hutchinson Educational, 1981)
[edit] External links
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