Talcott Parsons - Biography, Ideas, Pattern variables

Sociologist and educator, born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. Educated at Amherst College, the London School of Economics, and the University of Heidelberg, he spent his long academic career at Harvard (1927–73), where he founded the department of social relations (1946) and trained three generations of students. His first book, The Structure of Social Action (1937), launched a lifelong effort to supplant traditional empirical sociology with a theoretical approach that synthesized existing theories from all the social sciences. Further developed in such works as The Social System (1951) and Toward a General Theory of Action (1951, with E A Shils), this general theory of human action and social systems was abstract, complex, and controversial. Few claimed to understand it fully, but his interdisciplinary theoretical approach exerted a strong influence on academic sociology.

Talcott Parsons (December 13, 1902–May 8, 1979) was for many years the best-known sociologist in the United States, and indeed one of the best-known in the world.

Parsons served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927-1973. A central figure first in Harvard's Department of Sociology, and then in its Department of Social Relations (created by Parsons to reflect his vision of an integrated social science), he produced a general theoretical system for the analysis of society that came to be called structural functionalism.

Parsons' analysis was largely developed within his major published works. Platt (1973) Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory (1977) Action Theory and the Human Condition (1978)

Biography

Talcott Edger Parsons was born December 13, 1902 in Colorado Springs.

Ideas

Parsons was an advocate of "grand theory," an attempt to integrate all the social sciences into an overarching theoretical framework.

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.

The procedure he adopted to analyze this system and its subsystems is called "the AGIL scheme" or "AGIL paradigm". To survive or maintain equilibrium with respect to its environment, any system must to some degree adapt to that environment, attain its goals, integrate its components, and maintain its latent pattern, a cultural template of some sort. These are called the system's functional imperatives.

In the case of the analysis of a societal 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.

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 -- societal adaptation to its action and non-action environmental systems The polity -- societal goal attainment The societal community -- the integration of its diverse social components The fiduciary system -- processes and units that function to reproduce societal 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 societal community. Various processes of "interchange" among the subsystems of the societal 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.

Parsons contributed to the field of social evolutionism and neoevolutionism. He divided evolution into four subprocesses: 1) differentiation, which creates functional subsystems of the main system, as discussed above;

Furthermore, Parsons explored these subprocesses within three stages of evolution: 1) primitive, 2) archaic and 3) modern (where archaic societies have the knowledge of writing, while modern have the knowledge of law).

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.

Perhaps the most noteworthy theoretical contributions from Parsons were the formulations of pattern variables, the AGIL Paradigm, and the Unit Act.

Parsons had a seminal influence and early mentorship of Niklas Luhmann, pre-eminent German sociologist, originator of autopietic systems theory.

Pattern variables

Parsons asserted that there were two dimensions to societies: instrumental and expressive.

Some examples of expressive societies would include families, churches, clubs, crowds, and smaller social settings.