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Talcott Parsons's Views on Functionalism

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Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Who is Talcott Parsons?
  3. Voluntaristic Theory of Action'
  4. AGIL
  5. Criticism of Parsons and the Emergence of Neo-Functionalism

Introduction

Functionalism argues that society should be understood as a system of interdependent parts, where social institutions exist because they must satisfy certain "functional conditions" or specific requirements necessary for the existence of society. As a school of social theory, it primarily rose to prominence in the 1950s, but its origins can be traced to an earlier generation of early 20th-century anthropologists such as Malinowski (1884-1942) and Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955 ). In sociology, elements of functionalism can be traced to the work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1857-1917).

Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, and the other anthropologists of the early decades of the 20th century advanced the central methodological precept for a functionalist perspective: that individual action and behavior cannot be understood or explained independently of the larger social system, in which the collective practices are incorporated. and beliefs. In other words, the different elements of social life depend on each other and exist to perform functions that contribute to the maintenance of social order and its reproduction. For example, the Hopi tribe of North America performs a ritual "rain dance" before planting their crops. From a functionalist point of view, this rain dance should not be understood as an instrumental activity that produces rain; rather, it is a form of expression that serves to strengthen the bonds of solidarity between members of the tribe. Thus, functionalism does not explain the existence of phenomena, behaviors or activities by the traditional logic of causal agreement, which focuses on the direct efficient causes that precede them. On the contrary, functionalism explains them in terms of the function they would fulfill in terms of effects or results within a social system. That is to say that the causes are explained by their effects and not by the consequences which preceded them. However, this teleological approach, in which a phenomenon is explained by the purpose it serves or the effect it produces, rather than by the causes that produced it, is not without its problems. American sociologists such as Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton, among others, attempted to address the problems of this purposive approach.

Parsons, who also studied policing in a social system, developed the "voluntarist theory of action" in his attempt to overcome the challenges of teleology in functionalism. His theory aimed to define the relationship between structure and personality/individual. As a point of reference, he considered the individual or agency whose actions are influenced by the social system in which they find themselves, but whose actions can at the same time influence the social system. Although this notion received much criticism in the 1960s and 1970s, it sparked modern sociological thought and, after extensive critical examination, influenced the emergence of neofunctionalism in the 1980s.

Who is Talcott Parsons?

Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) is often considered the major contributor and practitioner of structural functionalism. He was born in Colorado Springs in 1902 and was the youngest of five children. Parsons, whose father was a congregational minister, professor and university president, and mother a progressive and suffragist, completed her undergraduate studies in biology at Amherst College in Massachusetts. He also studied at the London School of Economics with Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), whose view of society as a system of interconnected parts influenced him. Parsons graduated from Heidelberg University in 1926, where he studied the theories of Max Weber (1864-1920) and became interested in Weber's idea that an individual is a thinking, rational agency, in contrast to earlier theorists who they spoke of individual behavior as pure social behavior. behavior. built, influenced by the social structure. In 1930, he even translated Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905) into English. He was also influenced by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and was therefore interested in how actors or individuals choose goals and means in relation to internalized norms and values. He argued for an objective outside world empirically understood with concepts created by actors' ideas, beliefs, and actions. Parsons then became an associate professor of economics at Harvard University, where he was mentored by Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968), after which he became a founding member of the sociology department. Parsons founded the Harvard Department of Psychology and Social Relations, an interdisciplinary collaboration in behavioral science and economics, in 1945, where he served as chair of the department until its dissolution in 1972. After his retirement in 1973, he continued to teach as a visiting professor at Harvard. Parson died in 1979.

Voluntaristic Theory of Action

Parsons postulated his theory at a time when the two opposing dominant approaches in sociology explained behavior or action in terms of (a) external stimuli, "objective" influences upon them (positivism); or in terms of (b) the internal, 'subjective' influences upon it (idealism). He argued that it is necessary to transcend these extremes and attempted to establish a link between the two approaches. In "The Structure of Social Action" (1937), Parsons developed his analytical approach and explored the difference between the concepts of "behavior" as a mechanical response to stimuli and "action" as an inventive process, with a subjective aspect. He argued that social behavior should be understood in terms of various external influences or stimuli acting on it, but at the same time he argued that the point of reference should be human "action". This is the "voluntarist theory of action", also known as the "frame of reference of action".

Parsons' theory of voluntary action is an attempt to address the problem of social order. He proposed that just as discrete individual action is an impossible social fact, so is disordered social action; and by order he meant non-random, not equilibrium (Alexander 1978). For Parsons, the basic unit of study for understanding action is the 'action unit', which includes: an actor motivated to act; a goal towards which the action is directed; means to achieve this objective; a situation in which the action takes place; and the norms that shape the choice of means to an end. In other words, actions must be understood in the context of the structures and processes by which people are motivated to form meaningful intentions based on their shared knowledge that are put into practice within the social system (Parsons 1966). This shared knowledge arises from the internalization of normative interpretations. Parsons' voluntarist theory of action assumes that action, whether independent or passive, always contains an internalized component (Alexander 1978). He tried to explain this with his conceptualization of the "act of unity", which he identified as the fundamental element for combining the objective and the subjective in a single scheme.

AGIL

The AGIL paradigm, also known as the four-function paradigm, is part of Parsons' larger theory of action. Parsons specified that any surviving social system has certain needs; the AGIL scheme attempts to explain how that social system satisfies these needs and maintains order in relation to both its external environment and internal organization. In collaboration with Robert F. Bales and Edward A. Shils, he first formulated the AGIL scheme in working papers in "Theory of Action" in 1953. According to Parsons, each system is based on four functional requirements, which he classified as an AGIL system:
  1. The adaptive (A) function: whereby a system adapts to its environment. 
  2. The goal-attainment (G) function: how a system defines and achieves its goals. 
  3. The integrative (I) function: the regulation of the components of the system. 
  4. The latency (L) or „pattern maintenance‟ function: the stimulation of motivation and that of the dimensions of culture that create and sustain motivation
Aside from the social systems that make up the more general system of "action" in Parsonian theory, the other primary components he talked about in relation to the AGIL schema are: cultural systems, personality systems, and behavioral organisms, each serving a need functional:
  1. The behavioural organism performs the adaptive function; 
  2. The personality system performs goal attainment; 
  3. The social system performs the integrative function; and 
  4. The cultural system performs pattern maintenance.
Parsons viewed these systems of action as hierarchical, beginning with the behavioral organism and building on the cultural system, with each of the lower levels providing the impetus to the higher levels and the higher levels controlling the lower levels. Therefore, for Parsons, the cultural system is at the forefront of systems of action because, according to him, culture has the ability to be part of other systems, for example through the norms and values ​​of the system. social. Culture is defined as a structured and ordered system of symbols whose normative interpretation is internalized by members of society through socialization, thereby becoming internalized aspects of the personality system and expressing institutionalized patterns. The symbolic character of culture therefore enables it to control other systems of action. Perhaps we can draw an example from the football field to illustrate this point. All footballers on the pitch know that when they play they have to follow certain rules that they have internalized and cannot break if they want to be in the game. Your goal or objective is to score a goal and win the game. And for that, they fall back on the rules of the game and choose the means to achieve their ends, that is to say to score and win. Well, all things considered, within these normative guidelines, players are free to choose how they wish to play. And so the subjective is reflected in their actions, which are shaped by the "objective", external considerations. 

For Parsons, "action" thus consists of the following components: culture (values), society (norms), personality (source of motivation), and organism (source of energy). People choose goals and means in the context of the cultural norms and values ​​in which they find themselves; and these cultural norms are found within a system of common symbols and their associated meanings (Parsons 1951). He further argues that social systems are complex, made up of a network of interdependent and interpenetrating subsystems, each of which, seen as the right reference level, is a social system in its own right.

Criticism of Parsons and the Emergence of Neo-Functionalism

Parsons' theory was widely rejected in the 1960s and 1970s. Critics have argued that his position on the subjective-objective, nominal-realistic or individual-society question is irrelevant because his emphasis on norms has committed him to an "unacceptable degree" of voluntarism, deliberate action. Idealists have pointed out that although he spoke of intentional action, it is not really intentional because it is influenced by internalized norms that are influenced by social structure. Materialist critics, on the other hand, who oppose the individualistic stream of social theory that emphasizes the intentional aspect of action, have argued that by relating action to internal normative elements, Parsons undermines ignored supraindividual social forces rather than to facilitate that action. . 

Alexander (1978) responds to Parsons' criticisms by stating that, according to Parsons, no individual can be absolutely free from constraints in the radical sense suggested by individualist theory, because an individual is influenced by various social forces, the most important of which is the symbolic are those that contain normative elements. These normative elements are internalized by individuals and therefore are not concretely visible. “Parsons attempted to articulate a structure of social action that attributed voluntarism to the influence of subjective ideal elements internalized by the individual, which allow him to become autonomous in relation to material constraints. In this way, Parsons rejects the nominalist notion that freedom implies the complete absence of constraints” (Alexander 1978: 179).

But at the same time, Alexander argues, it is at this precise point that Parsons arrives at his magnificent vision of the voluntary quality of action: that which appears, or appears to be, free and intentional action, but requires the application of an actor's internal capacity. judgment, which in turn is governed by the influenced normative norms, which the actor has internalized. In the words of Parsons: "The voluntarist system in no way denies an important role to conditional...non-normative elements... (rather) consider them… as interdependent with the normative” (1937: 82). It would therefore not be wrong to agree with Alexander when he says that critics have failed to recognize that much of Parsons' work was aimed from the outset to fill in fundamental theoretical gaps by addressing the purpose and the subjective while dividing human action to study.

There is another group of critics who have argued that Parsons ignores social change in his theory. But Alexander (1978) argues that Parson's theory of voluntarism is embedded in the theory of social change as differentiation. If formal voluntarism refers to a universal property of every action, abstracted from time and space, and from all specific ideological properties, substantial voluntarism refers to the exact opposite: to the extent that certain historical and social conditions make it possible the realization of individual freedom .defined by a particular ideological perspective. Thus, while Parsons rejected the individualist position as a formal framework, his theory of differentiation accepts it as the source of the basic parameters within which any theory of material freedom must be rooted… Unlike his formal theory, that by Parsons... The theory of content, in fact, takes the concrete person as its point of reference» (1978: 184).

In this vein, Alexander goes on to say that, according to Parsons' theory of social change, "... personal autonomy is achieved to the extent that institutions are associated with the various dimensions of society, the functional subsystems of the economy, politics, integration and value." . maintain, differentiate and develop (1) its own independent performance criteria expressed in institutionally segregated media; (2) the ability to mobilize the resources of dimensions by exerting partial but independent control over them» (1978: 186). Thus, intellectuals such as Jeffrey Alexander revived Parsonian thinking, which became a defining feature of sociology in the 1980s and heralded the rise of neofunctionalism. Alexander saw Parsonian theory as a starting point for his own synthetic social theory, not an end point, in which he attempted to relate Parsons to various forms of classical and contemporary work. Alexander has addressed the interdependent dynamics of action and social order with a multidimensional analysis. While highlighting the challenge of explaining social order, he argued that while social processes facilitate social order through normative obligations, it is still important to understand the existence of conflicting interests, environmental conditions and constraints, and the contingencies faced by actors when deals with certain situations. I'm in it.

In addition to defining neofunctionalism as a needs-based explanatory model of systemic ensembles, Alexander outlined the other general characteristics of neofunctionalism as “a concern for both action and structure; a recognition of the dialectic between control, integration and deviance; a reformulation of equilibrium in the Keynesian sense of systemic tensions; a maintenance of the differences between, as well as a description of the tensions between personality, culture and social structure; and an emphasis on differentiation as a key mode of change. (Turner and Maryanski, 1988: 117-118)

References

  1. Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Colomy, Paul, “Toward Neo-Functionalism, Sociological Theory” 3, No. 2 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 11-23. 
  2. Alexander, Jeffrey C., “Formal and Substantive Voluntarism in the Work of Talcott Parsons: 
  3. A Theoretical and Ideological Reinterpretation”, American Sociological Review 43. no. 2 (1978) :177-198. 
  4. Darity, William A., Jr. (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2008. 
  5. Holmwood, John, Founding Sociology: Talcott Parsons and the Idea of General Theory, 1996, New York: Longman.
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