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Parsons, T.
1937
The Structure of Social Action. A study in social
theory with special reference to a group of recent European writers
Highlights from Contents:
Part 1: The Positivistic Theory of Action.
Chapter 2: The Theory of Action.
Chapter 3: Some Phases of the Historical Development of Individualistic
Positivism in the Theory of Action.
Part 2: The Emergence of a Voluntaristic Theory of Action from the
Positivistic Tradition
Chapter 4:
Alfred Marshall: Wants and Activities and the Problem of the
Scope of Economics.
Chapters 5 to 7:
Vilfredo Pareto
Chapters 8 to 11:
Emile Durkheim
Part 3: The Emergence of a Voluntaristic Theory of Action from the
Idealistic Tradition
Chapter 13 The Idealistic Tradition
Chapters 14 to 18:
Max Weber
Part 4: Conclusion
Chapter 19: Tentative Methodological Implications
Preface
... the present work is.. a.. study of a group of writers...
... it is a study in social theory, not theories. Its
interest is .. in .. a single body of systematic theoretical
reasoning the development of which can be traced through a critical
analysis of the writings of this group, and of certain of their
predecessors... ... they have all... made important contributions to this
single coherent body of theory, and the analysis of their works constitutes
a convenient way of elucidating the structure and empirical usefulness of
the system of theory itself.
This body of theory. the "theory of social action" is not simply a group of
concepts with their logical interrelations. It is a theory of empirical
science the concepts of which refer to something beyond themselves.
Hobbes and the Problem of Order
The basis of Hobbes' social thinking lies in his famous concept of the
state of nature as the
war of all against all...
The good is simply that which
any man desires
... reason is essentially a servant of the passions - it is the faculty of
devising ways and means to secure what one desires. Desires are random,
there is
"no common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the
objects themselves"
...
But Hobbes went... further than... defining... the basic units of a
utilitarian system of action. He went on to deduce the character of the
concrete system which would result... And in so doing he became involved in
an empirical problem... the problem of order.
The point under discussion here is not Hobbes' own solution to this crucial
problem... a genuine solution... has never been attained on an strictly
utilitarian basis.
Suicide
Durkheim confines himself to
the rate and makes no attempt to
explain individual cases. Thus he succeeds in eliminating factors in the
latter which bear only upon incidence. Rate is here meant in the sense
similar to 'death rate'. It is the number of suicides annually per 100,000
of a given population. Factors of incidence are, on the other hand, those
explaining why a given person committed suicide rather than another. Thus
to take an example from another field, personal inefficiency may well
explain why one person rather than another is unemployed at a given time.
But it is extremely unlikely that a sudden change in the efficiency of the
working population of the United States occurred which could account for
the enormous increase in unemployment between
1929 and 1932. The latter is a problem of rate, not incidence.
Parsons, T. 1949 Preface to the Second Edition of
The Structure of Social Action
...A central problem... has been and is, how to bring theory of this sort
close to the possibilities of ... testing...
... an important series of steps in this direct seems to be made possible
by a shift in theoretical level from the analysis of the structure of
social action as such to the structural-functional analysis of social
systems. Theses are, of course "in the last analysis" systems of social
action. But the structure of such systems is, in the newer version, treated
not directly in action terms, but as "institutionalised patterns" close to
a level of readily described and tested empirical generalisation.
Parsons, T.
1951
The Social System.
The title, The Social System, goes back... to the insistence of the
late Professor L.J. Henderson [in Pareto's General Sociology] on the
extreme importance of the concept of system in scientific theory, and his
clear realisation that the attempt to delineate the
social system as a system was the most important contribution of
Pareto,s great work. 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...
... to relate the present
(p.viii)
book... to the author's previously published
work...
Structure of Social Action
was not a study in sociological 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. Since 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
Merton {footnote: See especially
Social Theory and Social
Structure}...
(¶1.1)
The subject of this volume is the exposition and illustration of a
conceptual scheme for the analysis of social systems in terms of the action
frame of reference...
(¶1.2)
The fundamental starting point is the concept of social systems of action.
The interaction of
individual
actors,
that is, takes place under
such conditions that it is possible to treat such a process of interaction
as a system in the scientific sense...
(¶1.4)
The situation is defined as consisting of objects of orientation... It is
convenient... to classify the object world as composed of ... "social",
"physical" and "cultural" objects.
A social object is an actor, which may in turn be any given other
individual actor (alter), the actor who is taken as the point of reference
himself (ego), or a collectivity...
Physical objects... do not "interact" with or "respond" to ego. They are
means and conditions of his action.
Cultural objects are symbolic elements of the cultural tradition, ideas or
beliefs, expressive symbols or value patterns... treated as situational
objects by ego.
... in the case of interaction with social objects... part of ego's
expectation... consists in the probable reaction of alter to ego's
possible action, a reaction that comes to be anticipated in advance and
thus to affect ego's own choices.
(¶1.7)
... various elements of the situation come to have
special "meanings" for ego as "signs" or "symbols", which becomes relevant
to the organization of his expectation system. Especially where there is
social interaction, signs and symbols acquire common meanings and serve as
media of communication between actors.
(¶1.9)
Reduced to the simplest terms, then, a social system consists in a
plurality of individual actors interacting with each other in a situation
which has at least a physical or environmental aspect, actors who are
motivated in terms of a tendency to the "optimization of gratification" and
whose relation to their situations (p.6), including each other, is defined and
mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols.
(¶1.10)
Thus conceived, a social system is only one of three aspects of the
structuring of a completely concrete system of social action. The other two
are the personality system of the individual actors and the cultural system
which is built into their action.
(¶1.19) ... in their sociologically relevant forms "motivations" come
to us organised on the personality level. We deal, that is, with more
concrete structures which are conceived as products of the interaction of
genetically given need components with social experience.
It is the uniformities on this level which are empirically significant for
sociological problems. To make use of knowledge of such uniformities it is
generally not necessary to unravel the genetic and experiential components
underlying them. The principle exception to this statement arises in
connection with problems of the limits of social variability in the
structure of social systems which may be imposed by the biological
constitution of the relevant population.
(¶1.52) ... completely raw empiricism is overcome by describing
phenomena as
parts of or processes within systematically conceived
empirical systems. The set of descriptive categories employed...is a
carefully...worked out system of concepts which are capable of application
to all relevant parts or aspects of a concrete system in a coherent way.
(¶1.53)
A particularly important aspect of our system of categories is the
(p.21)
structural aspect... we must have a picture of the system...
of the... relationship of its parts in a given state of the system, and,
where changes take place, of what changes into what...
(¶1.54)... our primary concern in this work must be with the
categorisations of the structure of social systems, the modes of structural
differentiation within such systems, and the ranges of variability with
reference to each structural category between systems.
(¶1.55)... we... "place" a dynamic process structurally in the social
system. But beyond this we must have a test of the significance of
generalisations relative to it. That test... takes the form of the
functional relevance of the process. The test is to ask the
question, what would be the differential consequences for the system of two
or more alternative outcomes of a dynamic
(p.22)
process? Such consequences will
be found to fit into the terms of maintenance of stability or production of
change, of integration or disruption of the system in some sense.
The Institutional Integration of Action Elements
(¶2.39)
The problem of order, and thus of the nature of the integration of stable
systems of social interaction, that is, of social structure, ... focuses on
the integration of the motivation of actors with the normative cultural
standards which integrate the action system, in our context
interpersonally.
(¶2.43)
Generally, in so far as the normative standards in terms of which ego and
alter are interacting are shared and clear, favourable reactions on the
part of alter will tend to be stimulated by ego's action conforming with
the standards in question, and the unfavourable, by his deviating from
them...
... the basic condition on which an interaction system can be stabilised is
for the interests of the actors to be bound to conformity with a shared
system of value-orientation standards.
(¶2.44)
There is in turn a two-fold structure of this "binding in".
Therefore conformity as a direct mode of the fulfilment of his own need
dispositions [1] tends to coincide with conformity as a condition of
eliciting the favourable and avoiding the unfavourable reactions of others.
In so far as, relative to the actions of a plurality of actors, conformity
with a value orientation standard meets both these criteria, that is
from the point of view of any given actor in the system, it is both a mode
of the fulfilment of his own need-dispositions and a condition of
"optimising" the actions of other significant actors, that standard will be
said to be "institutionalised".
(¶2.45)
A value pattern in this sense is always institutionalised in an
interaction context. Therefore there is always a double aspect of
the expectation system which is integrated in relation to it.
The relation between role-expectations and sanctions then is clearly
reciprocal. What are sanctions to ego are role-expectations to alter and
vice versa.
(¶2.46)
A role then is a sector of the total orientation system of an individual
actor which is organised about expectations in relation to a particular
interaction context, that is integrated with a particular set of value-
standards which govern interaction with one or more alters in the
appropriate complementary roles...
(¶2.47)
The institutionalisation of a set of role-expectations and of the
corresponding sanctions is clearly a matter of degree. This degree is a
function of two sets of variables;
... a variety of factors can influence this degree of institutionalisation
through each of these channels.
The polar antithesis of full institutionalisation is ... anomie, the
absence of structured complementarity of the interaction process or, what
is the same thing, the complete breakdown of normative order in both
senses. This is, however, a limiting concept which is never descriptive of
a concrete social system. Just as there are degrees of institutionalisation
so there are also degrees of anomie. The one is the obverse of the other.
(¶2.48)
An institution will be said to be a complex of institutionalised
role integrates {*} which is of strategic structural significance in the
social system in question.
{footnote * Or status-relationships. There are no roles without
corresponding statuses and vice-versa}
The institution should be considered to be a higher order unit of social
structure than the role, and indeed it is made up of a plurality of
independent role-patterns or components of them. Thus when we speak of the
"institution of property" in a social system we bring together those
aspects of the roles of the component actors which have to do with the
integration of action-expectations with the value-patterns governing the
definition of rights in "possessions" and obligations relative to them...
Chapter 3: The Structure of the Social System, 1: The Orgnisation of the
components into sub-systems
pp 74-75
The economic problem is two-fold. On the one hand, within a
given institutional role-structure, it concerns the processes of
allocation of resources, i.e. "labour power" and facilities within the
system. On the other hand, it concerns in motivational terms the processes
of balancing advantages and cost with special reference to the settlement
of terms and within a given role-structure and a given set of power
conditions.
Political science, on the other hand, is concerned with the
power
relations within the institutional system and with a broader aspect of
settlement of terms.
Chapter 3: The Structure of the Social System, 2: Invarian points of
reference for the structural differentiation and variation of societies
p. 121
So far as it concerns the problem of the allocation of facilities this
basically relational problem of order we shall, following
Hobbes, call the
problem of power. With one qualification Hobbes' own famous
definition of power
"a man's present means to any
future good" fits the case. We would add the qualification, that
such means constitute his power, so far as these means are dependent on his
relations to other actors; the correlative is the obligation of alter to
respect ego's rights.
pp 125-126
... what is distinctive about political power is... extension of the
scope of considerations relevant to its definition and exercise...
... political power is capacity to control the relational system as a
system, whether it be an organisation or a diffuser, less integrated
system.
It is this which gives state its central position in the power system of a
complex society.
p. 127
The problem of control of political power is above all the problem of
integration, of building the power of individuals and
sub=collectivities into a coherent system of legitimised authority where
power is fused into collective responsibility.
Chapter 6: The Learning of Social Role-Expectations and the Mechanisms
of Socialisation of Motivation.
p.205
...the problems of the socialisation process are formulated on the
assumption that the factors producing the equilibrium of the interaction
process are stabilised with the exception that the requisite orientations
for adequate functioning of a give actor in a given role have not yet been
learned. But concretely this is not the case. Both within the individual
actors as personalities and in the situation in which the act there are
factors tending to upset the equilibrium. Changes in the situation as such
may be said to present new learning problems and thus fall within the scope
of socialisation. But certain changes arising from the personalities of the
interacting factors and their reactions to situational changes are
another matter.
We have seen that the very structure of the interaction process provides
the major dimension for the organisation of such tendencies. They are
tendencies to deviance, to depart from conformity with the normative
standards which have come to be set up as the common culture. A tendency to
deviance in this sense is a process of motivated action, on the part of an
actor who has unquestionably had a full opportunity to learn the requisite
orientations, tending to deviate from the complementary expectations of
conformity with common standards so far as these are relevant to the
definition of his role. Tendencies to deviance in this sense in turn
confront the social system with "problems" of control, since deviance if
tolerated beyond certain limits will tend to change or to disintegrate the
system...
Chapter 7: Deviant Behaviour and the Mechanisms of Social Control.
Chapter 10: Social Structure and Dynamic Process: The Case of Modern
Medical Practice.
p.431 ...illness is a state of disturbance in the "normal" functioning of
the total human individual, including both the state of the organism as a
biological system and of his personal and social adjustments. It is thus
partly biologically and partly socially defined. Participation in the
social system is always potentially relevant to the state of illness, to
its etiology and to the conditions of successful therapy, as well as to
other things.
p.436 ...for common sense there may be some question of whether "being
sick" constitutes a social role at all - isn't it simply a state of fact, a
"condition"? ...The test is the existence of a set of institutionalised
expectations and the corresponding sentiments and sanctions.
There seem to
be four aspects of the institutionalised expectation system relative to the
sick role.
...the role of motivational factors in illness immensely broadens the scope
and increases the importance of the institutionalised role aspect of being
sick...The privileges and exemptions of the sick role may become objects of
a "secondary gain" which the patient is positively motivated, usually
unconsciously, to secure or to retain.
p.439 ...a pattern of behaviour on the part not only of the physician, but
also of the patient, is expected...
p.440 ...it must be remembered that there is an enormous range of different
types of illness, and of degrees of severity. Hence a certain abstraction
is inevitable in any such general account as the present...
By institutional definition of the sick role the sick person is helpless
and therefore in need of help. If being sick is to be regarded as
"deviant"
as certainly in important respects it must, it is as we have noted
distinguished from other deviant roles precisely by the fact that the sick
person is not regarded as "responsible" for his condition, "he can't help
it."
Andrew Roberts likes to hear from users:
The Unit of Action Systems
The Utilitarian System
The Positivistic Theory of Action.
Hobbes and the Problem of Order
Methodological Background
The Problem of Capitalism
The Spirit of Capitalism
Marx
Sombart
The Action Frame of Reference
The General Status of the Theory of Action
The Place of Sociology
...
... under the assumption of rationality men will seek to attain their ends
by the most efficient means available. Among their ends is... the
recognition of others. And... under social conditions... the services of
others are always ... to be found among the potential means to their ends.
To securing both... recognition and service... the most immediately
efficient means... are force and fraud... But the effect of their unlimited
employment is that men will
"endeavour to destroy or subdue one another". That is, according
to the strictest utilitarian assumptions, under social conditions, a
complete system of action will turn out to be... not an order at all, but
chaos...
Preface
Chapter 1: The Action Frame of Reference and the General Theory of
Action Systems: Culture, Personality and the Place of Social Systems
... The frame of reference concerns the "orientation" of one or more actors
... to a situation, which includes other actors.
(¶1.6)
... action... does not consist only of a ad hoc "responses" to particular
situational "stimuli" but... the actor develops a system of
"expectations" relative to the various objects of the situation.
(¶1.18) A word must be said about the problem of the ultimate
structuring of "gratification needs".
(¶1.49) ... the systematisation of theory in the present state of
knowledge must be in structural-functional terms...
(¶1.50)... all scientific theory is concerned with the analysis of
elements of uniformity in empirical processes. This is what is ordinarily
meant by the dynamic interest of theory. The essential question is
how far the state of theory is developed to the point of permitting
deductive transitions from one aspect or state of a system to another, so
that it is possible to say that if the facts in A sector are W and X, those
in B sector must be Y and Z...
Chapter 2: The Major Points of Reference and Structural Componenets of
the Social System
...
This diffuse character of political power explains the peculiar relevance
to it of the gradient of drasticness of means. Since ability to use force
in its relation to territoriality is one ultimate focus of the political
power system, in one sense the crucial focus.
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alter (another person)
ego (oneself)
gratification: optimization of (see utilitarianism)
gratification needs (motivations): structured by interaction of genetics and social experience
Institutional Integration of Action Elements
optimization of gratification (see utilitarianism)
social structure (see structure)
social systems; defined in simplest terms
Structural-functional: see Preface and 1.49. See also Merton's use of the terms structure and function
