THE SOCIAL SYSTEM - Void Network

1 THE SOCIAL SYSTEM In the history of sociological theory, Talcott Parsons holds a very special place. His The Structure of SOCIAL Action (1937), was a pioneer work that has influenced many SOCIAL scientists. The present work, The SOCIAL SYSTEM , presents a major scientific and intellectual advance towards the theory of action first outlined in his earlier work. SOCIAL science is concerned with human beings interacting with one another in terms of mutually accepted standards of conduct. Their interaction takes place in an environment of what one might call brute fact , which comprises, among other things, climate, material resources, the population structure and the physical possibilities of communication.

2 To study this vast complex of material some scheme of concepts is required, by means of which we can pick out what is significant, and so pave the way for discovering what goes with what . It is such a scheme that Professor Talcott Parsons has worked out, in his latest book. It is an important book. The Listener With a new preface on interpreting Parsons by Professor Bryan S. Turner, University of Essex. ROUTLEDGE SOCIOLOGY CLASSICS Editor: Bryan FROM MAX WEBER Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by and Mills IDEOLOGY AND UTOPIA Karl Mannheim Talcott Parsons THE SOCIAL SYSTEM With a New Preface by Bryan First published in England 1951 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd New edition first published 1991 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

3 To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to 1951 Talcott Parsons 1991 Bryan (Preface to the New Edition) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval SYSTEM , without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Parsons, Talcott 1902 1979 The SOCIAL SYSTEM 2nd ed (Routledge sociology classics) 1.

4 Sociology I. Title 301 ISBN 0-203-99295-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN - (Adobe e-Reader Formatf) ISBN 0-415-06055-9 (Print Edition) To Helen WHOSE HEALTHY AND PRACTICAL EMPIRICISM HAS LONG BEEN AN INDISPENSABLE BALANCE-WHEEL FOR AN INCURABLE THEORIST CONTENTS PAGE Preface ix Preface to the New Edition xiii Bibliography of Talcott Parsons xxxi CHAPTER I. The Action Frame of Reference and the general Theory of Action Systems: Culture, Personality and the Place of SOCIAL Systems 1 II. The Major Points of Reference and Structural Components of the SOCIAL SYSTEM 15 CHAPTER III.

5 The Structure of the SOCIAL SYSTEM , I: The Organization of the Components into Sub-Systems 45 IV. The Structure of the SOCIAL SYSTEM , II: Invariant Points of Reference for the Structural Differentiation and Variation of Societies 77 V. The Structure of the SOCIAL SYSTEM , III: Empirical Differentiation and Variation in the Structure of Societies 105 CHAPTER VI. The Learning of SOCIAL Role-Expectations and the Mechanisms of Socialization of Motivation 138 VII. deviant behavior and the Mechanisms of SOCIAL Control 169 CHAPTER VIII. Belief Systems and the SOCIAL SYSTEM : The Problem of the Role of Ideas 220 IX.

6 Expressive Symbols and the SOCIAL SYSTEM : The Communication of Affect 259 X. SOCIAL Structure and Dynamic Process: The Case of Modern Medical Practice 288 CHAPTER XI. The Processes of Change of SOCIAL Systems 323 XII. Conclusion: The Place of Sociological Theory Among the Analytical Sciences of Action 360 Index 374 PREFACE THE present volume is an attempt to bring together, in systematic and generalized form, the main outlines of a conceptual scheme for the analysis of the structure and processes of SOCIAL systems. In the nature of the case, within the frame of reference of action, such a conceptual scheme must focus on the delineation of the SYSTEM of institutionalized roles and the motivational processes organized about them.

7 Because of this focus and the very elementary treatment of processes of economic exchange and of the organization of political power, the book should be regarded as a statement of general sociological theory, since this is here interpreted to be that part of the theory of the SOCIAL SYSTEM which is centered on the phenomena of the institutionalization of patterns of value-orientation in roles. The title, The SOCIAL SYSTEM , goes back, more than to any other source, to the insistence of the late Professor on the extreme importance of the concept of SYSTEM in scientific theory, and his clear realization that the attempt to delineate the SOCIAL SYSTEM as a SYSTEM was the most important contribution of Pareto s great This book therefore is an attempt to carry out Pareto s intention, using an approach , the structural-functional level of analysis, which is quite different from that of Pareto, and, of course.

8 Taking advantage of the very considerable advances in our knowledge at many points, which have accumulated in the generation since Pareto wrote. For the reader s orientation it is important to relate the present book both to the author s previously published work and to his nearly simultaneously appearing contribution to the volume Toward 1 Cf. , Pareto s general Sociology. a general Theory of Action by members of the Harvard University Department of SOCIAL Relations and their collaborators. The author s Structure of SOCIAL Action was not a study in sociological theory in a strict sense, but an analysis, in relation to the work of a group of authors, of the nature and implications of the action frame of reference.

9 Since its publication in 1937 there has been gradually taking shape a formulation of a systematic approach to the narrower tasks of sociological theory as such, stimulated by empirical work in a variety of fields and by the writings of other authors, particularly Various steps in this development are documented in the papers published in thc collection Essays in Sociological Theory. For some years I have intended, when opportunity offered and the time seemed ripe, to attempt to pull these strands of thought together in a general book. In the fall of 1947 I held at Harvard a seminar on the Theory of SOCIAL Systems.

10 The clarification of thought achieved there was documented in exceedingly condensed form in the paper The Position of Sociological Theory (Essays, Chapter I). Then an invitation to deliver the University Lectures in Sociology at the University of London in January-February 1949 provided an occasion for further systematic consideration of the problem. In a rather rough sense those lectures, which were not published as such, constituted the outline of the present book. Then in connection with a collaborative attempt to clarify some of the theoretical fundamentals of the whole field involved in sociology, SOCIAL anthropology and SOCIAL psychology, I was given leave of absence from Harvard teaching for the fall term of 1949 50.