Discuss and Evaluate the Main Features of Parson’s Concept of Society as a Social System
Identify, discuss and evaluate the main features of Parson’s concept of society as a social system
Talcott Parsons who is a very well known American sociologist represented The School of Structural Functionalism. In this paper I am going to identify the different features of Parsons ‘Grand Theory’ and his concept of society as a social system. I am going to discuss and evaluate these features in detail. Parsons considers society to be a social system, which is also a sub system of the system of social act. The development of Parson’s theory of social action arose through the work of a few European social theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which included Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto and Thomas Humphrey Marshall. Parson’s theory is a combination of a positive and idealistic view.
In the 1930’s all of Parson’s main concerns comprised of the relationships between economic and every other social institution, focusing directly on the theoretical accessories that were required in order to understand this broad empirical field. The foundations of Parsons theory began to form in the early 1930’s through an array of essays. Throughout these essays Parson’s addressed sociological elements ingrained in economic theory. Parson’s first large scale essay that addressed sociological theory as the primary topic instead of economic theory was published in 1935 with the heading ‘The place of Ultimate Values in Sociological Theory’. This was Parson’s first essay to introduce features of the conceptual scheme that later in time became the basis of the structure in social action (V Lidz 2011).
The first element I am going to discuss is the structure of social action. Parson’s theory is an effort to merge the different social sciences into one single theoretical framework, focusing on the concept of structural functionalism. The main goal of the theory was to establish a general theory of human relationships. In the social action theory parsons analyses society as a complex system together with sub systems (social institutions and structures) such as culture, personality and organism. These sub systems are interacting with each other as well as the sub system of the society. Meanwhile society is viewed as the system that progresses over a person and is not depending on a persons thinking or an individuals action. With a systematic approach Parsons analysed society as kind of social system. He viewed society as a system possessing a definite structure and function. At the centre of of Parsons theory of action is the ‘Unit Act’ which doesn’t refer to a phenomena that exists or to an empirical act of an individual, instead it is referring to a process of coherent abstractions most essential elements of action. It is a hypothetical body that represents any instance of meaningful human social behaviour. Parsons stated four key elements of the unit act and minimally the unit act comprised of these elements which were (i) ends (ii)means (iii)norms and (iv)conditions. The structure of social actions foundational ideas and methods is the reason for the change and growth in Parsons later works. As Parsons developed the idea of the unit act he emphasised that the standard elements of social action share the status share the common elements of ends and means. Similar to Weber, Parsons continued to emphasise the rule of values on shaping action, stressing the systematic importance of normative orientations. An argument of Parsons was that the normative elements were vital for social relationships that were ongoing and needed to keep up a degree of social order.
The development of Parsons social theory continued in his essay ‘ Toward a General theory of Action’, focusing on the role of each actor in a large scale system of individual self, that is conscious that the subjective orientations are different from each other. This essay of Parsons presented intersecting elements for the different analysis between processes of social action, essentially defined in the sense of the structure of social action. One of the elements applies to habit of continuous systems of significant action to separate into three independent but all the same, interdependent subsystems, which were culture, social systems and personality. This concept of the triple differentiation of action systems became one of Parsons most well known and famous themes in his work. The second part regards to differentiation of elements of action into moral normative, cathectic affective and cognitive gradients. ( Lidz 2011). In ‘The Social System’ (Parsons 1951) which is a major work of Parsons, he speaks about the general issues of the social systems definition and clarification of the concepts and he proposes a target approach to functional analysis of social systems.
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