Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons ( born December 13, 1902 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, † 8 May 1979 in Munich) was an American sociologist. He is regarded as the most influential sociological theorists from the end of World War II well into the 1960s.
Talcott Parsons has emerged with a theory of action, this has evolved into the structural functionalism and this eventually developed into a sociological systems theory. His sociology responded to the prevailing empiricism in the Anglo-Saxon sociology of the first half of the 20th century. Parsons developed a general sociological theory and set forth relationships with other social sciences, especially economics, political science, psychology and anthropology.
- 4.1 Works by Talcott Parsons and co-authors
- 4.2 essay collections by Talcott Parsons
- 4.3 editions of Talcott Parsons and co-authors
- 4.4 After 1979, published works and editions of Talcott Parsons
- 4.5 Commemorative
- 4.6 secondary literature
- 4.7 Luhmann radicalization of Parsons's theory program
Biography
Talcott Parsons was born in 1902 as son of the Protestant minister and president of Marietta College, Edward Parsons Smith Sr. and the suffragette Mary Augusta Parsons, in an ascetic influenced parents' house. He had a sister. 1917 the family moved to New York City. With his wife, Helen B. Walker, whom he married in 1927, he had three children.
From 1920 to 1924 Parsons studied biology at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, to become a doctor, but then changed to the Faculty of Economics, where he obtained a BA in 1924. From 1924 to 1925 he went on to study economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science in London on a scholarship. He then went to Germany for two years where he studied Heidelberg from 1925 to 1927 at the University of Economics. There he worked on the German sociological tradition, such as Max Weber, Parsons met his wife. Shortly before the completion of his doctorate, he returned to Amherst and was in the academic year 1926/27, a lecturer in the field of economics. In 1927 his thesis " Capitalism " in recent German literature: adopted Sombart and Weber in Heidelberg. Supervisor of the thesis was the economist Edgar Salin.
After doctoral studies in Germany began a 46 -year-old Parsons, 1927-1973 lasting career at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he became in 1944 the status of a "Full Professor of Sociology ." From 1930 Parsons worked at Harvard in the newly created Pitirim Sorokin of Sociology Department, where he was but it was only from 1937 Associate Professor. Also in 1937 his main work, The Structure of Social Action was published (often just called Structure or SSA ), which, however, was only years later to a wider audience.
He founded at Harvard University in 1946, the " Department of Social Relations." In 1951 The Social System as his second major work, and in the following years numerous other books and articles. From the 1960s criticism of him grew louder, especially from the student movement and the academic left, who was of the view that Parsons ' theory building had a too conservative basic structure, but this was disputed by observers later that it rather than left - liberal einstuften. 1973 Parsons became Professor Emeritus. He was 39th President of the American Sociological Association.
Among his supporters Pitirim A. Sorokin was one ( 1889-1968 ). His students included, inter alia, Kingsley Davis (1908-1997), Robert K. Merton (1910-2003), Wilbert E. Moore (1914-1987), Albert K. Cohen ( * 1918 ) and Niklas Luhmann ( 1927-1998 ), the Parsons structural - functionalist approach initially evolved into a functional- structural approach. Together with Edward Shils led Parsons in particular Max Weber's work in the American sociology discussion.
Parsons died on May 8, 1979 in Munich, Germany during a trip on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his doctorate in Heidelberg.
Work
Phase I: The voluntaristic theory of action
In The Structure of Social Action (1937 ) Parsons provides the convergence thesis that four thought leaders in the social sciences, namely in particular Max Weber (representing idealism ) and Emile Durkheim (as representatives of positivism ), but also Alfred Marshall and Vilfredo Pareto ( have moved towards a similar theory framework independently as a representative of an economic theory of action ) 1890-1920 from each other by a ( them largely self unconscious after Parsons ' view) criticism of utilitarianism, namely a voluntarist theory of action.
Parsons takes up this (alleged ) criticism and argues against utilitarian theories of action that they basically were not in a position to explain social order. For these, originally raised by Thomas Hobbes question, Parsons wants to answer: Under what conditions is - yes, the de facto existing - social order possible? For example, was not given the assumed in some utilitarian theories of action natural identity of interests of market participants ( Locke, Smith). Developed by Hobbes model of the " state of nature " in which the user-oriented people fight each other at first and then, the peace willing submit to a state order, Parsons criticized in that it was unclear why the ( purely opportunistic basis, acting ) people suddenly to the risky to get idea to submit to a state power. Generally assumed Parsons the utilitarian theories of action that, although they assume that the person takes a benefit, but provide no answer why he thinks a certain thing for useful, so how do desires, needs and benefits of ideas and why they are so often the same.
Parsons reply, the voluntaristic theory of action, he linked to a normativistic theory of social order. Thus, structure prescribed norms and values to which all people (unconsciously partially ) align the individual goals of action before and limit it. These norms and values are immune, according to Parsons against any benefit calculations, they simply exist. Parsons refers here in particular Durkheim's notion of collective consciousness, in Weber on the theory of purposive-rational action.
Every action unit ( "unit act" ) in the so- called action- theoretical framework by him ( "action frame of reference" ) is by Parsons of four elements:
The first player; 2 The aim of the action; 3 The action situation; 4 The norms and values of action.
Norms and values affect this selective action on the agent used and the intended action goals.
In Values, Motives and Systems of Action (1951, with Edward Shils ) the paradigm for the action-theoretical analysis of the " actors ( actor ) in action situation " is being prepared for Action Frame of Reference on. The Pattern Variables are used to classify both of need dispositions (personality), roles (social system) and value scales ( culture system ).
Phase II: structural functionalism
In The Social System (1951 ), the theoretical framework leave "actor - situation " or expanded into the frame of reference " system-environment " (see the review by Robert Dubin, Parsons ' Actor: . Continuities in Social Theory, reprinted in Parsons, Sociological Theory and Modern Society, pp. 521 ff.)
With the AGIL schema start with the basic ways of the social system are characterized; then it is also applied to the culture system, the personality system and the behavior of the organism.
Phase III: system evolution, the human condition
About the strukturfunktionalistische theory, which is essentially based on the designed by Robert F. Bales variables of action orientation from which the four basic functions of the " social system " ( " AGIL scheme " ) are derived, Parsons goes out eventually and replaced the structure - term by the system concept. The structural functionalism is rapidly transferred to a systems functionalism.
The complexity of the exchange ratios between economic system, the personality system, community structures ( family households ), political and socio - cultural system is developed analytically in the book co-authored with Neil J. Smelser work Economy and Society (1956).
Society appears as a system whose development Parsons analyzed with evolutionary concepts. The study Societies (1966 ) deals with primitive and archaic forms, designated as a " seedbed companies ' cultures, which are characterized by use of Scripture. In The System of Modern Societies (1971 ), the emergence of contemporary societies that have knowledge of the law, traced in the process of socio - cultural evolution.
He divided evolution into four subprocesses: 1) differentiation, ie the emergence of functional subsystems of society; 2) Standard lift by adjusting ( "adaptive upgrading" ), thereby increasing their efficiency, these systems; 3) inclusion, ie the inclusion of previously excluded actors into subsystems; 4) value generalization, ie the production of a wider base of legitimacy for increasingly complex systems.
Against the background of the student unrest of the 1960s, Parsons and analyze the psychologist Gerald M. Platt in the study, The American University ( 1973), the fallen into the crisis U.S. university system. The theoretical framework is doing the systems theory and cybernetic " four-function scheme ", which is applied over social systems went into different dimensions of human behavior and action. The " theory of generalized symbolic communication and exchange media " ( media theory ) is intended to serve the diverse social dynamics between eg University and economic system, but also to make them transparent between education and personality.
In his late work (see also the 1978 study published A Paradigm of the Human Condition ) Parsons expands his theories on the human sciences as a whole. Especially in the foreground, an intense preoccupation with questions of religion, particularly the death and the " last things ". The four-function scheme ( AGIL ) is tensioned by Parsons about the world and the people - of its material- organic environment, his psyche, his life in society, up to the last, being metaphysical reasons.
Current importance
Currently ( 2007) can be ' make few direct followers of Talcott Parsons sociology except Uta Gerhardt, Karl Heinz Messelken and Richard Münch in Germany. Also, in the Anglo-Saxon sociology in the late 1970s neofunktionalistische burgeoning movement to Jeffrey C. Alexander, who has sought to find a critical reconstruction of Parsons ' theory, meanwhile, came to a virtual standstill. For particularly scathing of the structure and systems functionalism of the middle and late Parsons was criticized not only by Marxists and representatives of critical theory, but also from the liberal side (eg by Ralf Dahrendorf ). His theory has supremacy - in the USA - long since lost. In summary and key words can be lodged against Parsons criticisms summarized as follows:
But there are parts of his theory in competing " schools " may be used:
In the sociological discipline is broad agreement that the voluntaristic theory of action of Parsons's early work a radical potential and a range of analysis features, behind which there is no turning back.
His systems functionalism of the late work, including the theory of the interaction media, has already found its way into emancipatory designs. Louis Althusser's structuralism, but also formulated by Jürgen Habermas and his school critique of late capitalism have been able to make productive use of the work of the system theorist Parsons.
Parsons ' work was the starting point for different system-theoretical approaches in sociology. Thus, in particular, leave in Germany Niklas Luhmann one hand, deconstructive encourage Richard Münch other hand, has taken it as an opportunity of a theoretical reconstruction experiment. From Parsons, Luhmann assumes the planning, develop social theory as system theory, but he goes beyond it with the consistent basic conceptual shift from action to communication. Luhmann deconstructed Parsons ' systems functionalism, while hardly interested him whose ideological orientations.
With Alfred Schutz Parsons led in the 1930s, a correspondence which ended in mutual frustration, but very well shows the theoretical orientation Parsons ' in contrast to phenomenology. An author who is trying to build bridges between systems theory and phenomenology, Richard Grathoff is.