Реферат: Parsons Grand Theory Essay Research Paper Talcott

problem would be the concern of political institutions.

By I Parsons is referring to Integration. This is the need to coordinate, adjust, and

regulate relationships among various actors or collectivities within the system thereby preventing

mutual interference and keeping the system functioning. Integration has been the priority of

functionalists, since Durkheim, and because of this, it is the central variable of the paradigm. Legal

institutions meet the need for social control(Wallace and Wolf 1999).

The last system need is the L, or latent pattern maintenance-tension management. This

need has two parts. The first is to make certain actors are sufficiently motivated to play their

parts of the system or maintain the current values. The second is to provide mechanisms for

internal tension management. In America institutions like the family, religion, the media, and

education cater to this need. Parsons the same problems face every system, from large social

systems to each of their subsystems. He considers these four system needs as the prerequisites for

social equilibrium. However, Parsons’s theory of action, pattern variables, and AGIL model have

not gone on without criticism.

One of the objectives is Parsons’s failure to deal adequately with role conflict. The pattern

variables do not necessarily apply to every specific act within the role as he states according to

Robert Merton(Sztompka 1996). Merton gives the example that the role of an elected official is

collectivity-oriented but still allows the officials to be self-oriented in choosing among jobs. Yet,

the public still expects the official to be collectivity-oriented when making public policy.

Parsons system variables trouble some sociologists as well. In his later years Parsons

moved from interaction to instead focus on wholes as systems devided up into subsystems

according to Nicos Mouzelis(1995). His problem with the shift in focus is these subsystems do

not refer to groups or actors. They instead focus on institutionalized norms that are grouped

together in regards to one of the social system’s four functional needs. The subsystems

themselves refer to institutions rather than actors so that subsystems are devided into

sub-subsystems with no place for groups or actors

Another of the main objectives refers to the inability of Parsons’s grand theory to describe

social change. This may very well be true. However, Alvin Boskoff(1995:207) states that their

are two fundamental problems of general theory. The first one: “What factors account for