Talcott Parsons: from Action to System/Structure

Parsons wrote The Structure of Social Action in the 1930’s and The Social System was published in 1951.He is influenced by Durkheim in seeing the social system as autonomous, following Durkheim, but he also sees it as interdependent with three other action systems: culture, personality and biological influences (see Lemert, p.296). He was influenced by Durkheim’s idea of the collective consciousness –shared values.

The 4 Dimensions of Parsons’ Model (The Agip model) (Craib, p.43)
All societies must have (i.e. functional prerequisites of social order)

Adaptation- be able to mobilise resources to meet goals
Goal orientation- functions of institutions have to be carried through
Integration- society must regulate relations between institutions e.g. family, school, work
Pattern maintenance- the tensions arising must be handled and channelled (rest and relaxation etc.)

Factors
Biological needs
Systems of action- describe context of a person’s actions, influences
Subsystems of action- the personality, cultural, biological and social
Systems
Subsystems of subsystems- e.g. for the social system: politics, socialisation, economy and societal community (mechanisms of social control- law through to informal pressures to conform). The subsystems can be cross-referenced with the action systems to produced a large number of possible combinations for any complete social system. Craib (op.cit.) list about 590 possible combinations, so Parsons' social system is dazzlingly complicated, but as Habermas (cited in Elliott, see below)says, can we pin down the basic ontological structure?

Information –is the key element in maintaining societal functioning- symbolic exchange e.g. money, power, normative regulation (regulation), commitment to goals, relating to economy, politics, community, socialisation. Each needs the others to get things done so there is an exchange of services between them producing integration (follows Durkheim’s div.of labour perhaps)

Cybernetics and the ranking of subsystems (Craib, p.46)
Cybernetics suggests that any system that is high on information controls those which are not (knowledge = power?) i.e. where emphasis is on energy
Biological analysis
An evolutionary model of social change: biological analogies- cells divide/social differentiation
Three stages of any evolutionary cycle: differentiation, adaptation, re-integration –see youth culture as an example (Craib)
Conflict: this rules out conflict but other theorists have suggested that conflict might have a latent function in resolving tensions
Habermas points out that the cultural subsystem is just one subsystem amongst others whilst in a way it actually contains (is the ontolgoical basis of) all the others as everyday life (lifeworld) and hence should be seen as primary.

Perspectival approach
External and internal perspectives- system and interaction
Interactive perspective: institutions are complemented by culture and personality (Elliott, p.172)
Systems perspective: interaction is about regulation- pattern maintenance/diffusing conflict and tension
Systems integration subsumes social integration (interaction) in the response to system functional imperatives (Elliott, p.172) which therefore dominate the social interactional world.