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1902–1979 United States
Talcott Parsons (December 13, 1902 – May 8, 1979) was an American sociologist and professor of sociology at Harvard University, known for the development of a general theory for the study of society, called action theory.
United States Anti-communists Sociologists Also known as: Parsons, Talcott
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Ideology is a system of beliefs, held in common by the members of a collectivity.
The social system (1951)
The most elementary communication is not possible without some degree of conformity to the “conventions” of the symbolic system.
The social system (1951)
A social system is a mode of organization of action elements relative to the persistence or ordered processes of change of the interactive patterns of a plurality of individual actors.
The social system (1951)
The functions of the family in a highly differentiated society are not to be interpreted as functions directly on behalf of the society, but on behalf of personality.
Robert Freed Bales (1956)
As a formal analytical point of reference, primacy of orientation to the attainment of a specific goal is used as the defining characteristic of an organization which distinguishes it from other types of social systems.
The structure of a theoretical system tells us what alternatives are open in the possible answers to a given question. If observed facts of undoubted accuracy will not fit any of the alternatives it leaves open, the system itself is in need of reconstruction.
The structure of social action (1937)
'System' is the concept that refers both to a complex of interdependencies between parts, components, and processes, that involves discernible regularities of relationships, and to a similar type of interdependency between such a complex and its surrounding environment.
Talcott Parsons (1968)
A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed. In so far as such a theory is empirically correct it will also tell us what empirical facts it should be possible to observe in a given set.
The structure of social action (1937)
Culture has been distinguished from the other elements of action by the fact that it is intrinsically transmissible from one action system to another from personality to personality by learning and from social system to social system by diffusion. This is because culture is constituted by "ways of orienting and acting," these ways being "embodied in" meaningful symbols.
Toward a general theory of action (1951)
Without deliberate planning on anyone's part, there have developed in our type of social system, and correspondingly in others, mechanisms which, within limits, are capable of forestalling and reversing the deep-lying tendencies for deviance to get into the vicious circle phase which puts it beyond the control of ordinary approval-disapproval and reward-punishment sanctions.
The social system (1951)
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, including each other, is defined and mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols.
The social system (1951)
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