Реферат: Parsons Grand Theory Essay Research Paper Talcott

societies is the collective conscience, which he defined as “the totality of beliefs and sentiments

common to average citizens of the same society.” Primitive societies with mechanical solidarity

had a strong collective conscience but little individualism. As the division of labor increased, so

did individualism. This, in turn, led to a corresponding decrease in the collective conscience and a

shift to organic solidarity. With this foundation of great ideas, and his own experience in the

biological studies, Parsons was ready to form his own functionalism perspective. His

contributions include: his system of action, his action schema, the pattern variables, and the

system problems.

For Parsons, the system was the center of his thinking from a very early age(Wallace and

Ruth 1999). His general theory of action includes four systems: the cultural system, the social

system, the personality system, and the behavioral organism system. Each system in turn has a

basic unit of analysis, or variable by which it is measured. For the cultural system it is “meaning”

or “symbolic systems” like national values, religious beliefs, or languages. In Parsons view,

cultural traditions are made up of shared symbolic systems, with the focus on shared values. An

important concept for the cultural system in socialization, or the process where societal values are

internalized by a society’s members. For Parsons, socialization is an important force in

maintaining social control and holding a society together(Wallace and Wolf 1999). The next level

in Parsons’s scheme is the social system.

The social system’s basic unit is “role interaction”, which refers to how individual actors

interact in relation to their roles in society. Parsons defined the social system as two of more

individuals, or collectivities, interacting in a situation which has at least a physical of

environmental aspect, whose actors are motivated toward personal gratification, and whose

relation to their situations, including each other, is defined and influenced by the cultural system.

The basic unit of the personality system is the individual actor, or human. The main focus

at this level is on the individual’s “motivation toward gratification,” which Parsons emphasizes in

his definition of the social system. More specifically, the focus is on the needs, motives, and

attitudes involved in this “motivation.” This assumption, that people are self-interested or profit

maximizers, is also found in both conflict theory and exchange theory(Wallace and Wolf 1999).

For the behavioral organism, the fourth system, the basic unit is the human being in its