Two standard interpretations of traditional action are rejected. Traditional action is not subjectively meaningful in the sense of having what Talcott Parsons calls a 'normative orientation'. But nor ...is traditional action a matter of blind habit. I contend, instead, that traditional action is subjectively meaningful insofar as the actor's seemingly aberrant behavior can be rendered intelligible by appeal to shared exemplars. I provide further evidence for the proposed interpretation of traditional action by showing how it illuminates Weber's account of traditional authority. The traditions that legitimize a traditional master consist, not just in rules or decisions, but in exemplars and precedents as found in the 'documents of tradition'. I conclude with a discussion of how the proposed account of traditional action and authority illuminates charismatic authority and Weber's notion of the irrational.
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In this article, we propose a brief reconstruction of Talcott Parsons’ writings − from his first major book,
The Structure of Social Action
, to his later writing on the 1960s and 1970s − in order to ...clarify his main contributions to a sociological discussion of morality. In so doing, we hope to place Talcott Parsons as one of the forerunners of the sociology of morality conceived as an emerging area of research in the social sciences. Throughout this reconstruction, we also try to situate Parsons in terms of his intellectual lineage pointing out that his formulations reveal important affinities with the theoretical perspective of morality that began with Émile Durkheim. Based on these assumptions, we aim to show, albeit on a preliminary basis, how this dialogue contributes to a more precise delineation of a research program in the field.
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Talcott Parsons is one of the most famous American sociologists, yet he was trained as an economist. During the nineteen twenties and into the thirties, Parsons concentrated on the concept of modern ...capitalism and he wrote extensively on the works of Werner Sombart and Max Weber. Unfortunately, Parsons’ early writings on modern capitalism have not received the scrutiny they deserve because they reveal that Parsons was a competent economist and could have been regarded as an heir to Weber’s economic sociology. However, his increasing interest in society may have prompted his move from economics to the developing discipline of sociology. This essay is an exploration of Parsons’ early writings on modern capitalism and it focuses on his Heidelberg dissertation, his two articles derived from that dissertation as well as a number of other shorter works. This essay reveals his conception of modern capitalism through his analyses of Sombart and Weber and shows that the young Parsons had a promising future as an economist.
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Introduction. The study is devoted to the analysis of modern integration processes in the context of the state social policy implementation, taking the specifics of the public policy space in the ...macroregional dimension into account. The research problem is to clarify the optimal predictive scenarios for the development of the integration of public government institutions in the decision-making process aimed at the formation of social policy in the South of Russia. Methodology and methods. The study was conducted in the context of two methodological foundations (structural functionalism as interpreted by T. Parsons and M. Olson’s theory of collective action). The choice of methodological tools is due to the presence of two components in the object of analysis – the functional process of implementing social policy and the communicative nature of institutional integration. Quantitative content analysis is used to clarify the priorities of the socio-political development of the southern Russia regions. The sources and materials of the study were official documents (strategies for the socio-economic development of the southern Russia regions), reports on the implementation of state programs, as well as materials of state statistics of the Russian Federation. Analysis. The modern political and communicative environment in Russia is characterized by the public sphere transformation in the context of constitutional changes and modernization reforms. Social policy is presented as a product that addresses a fundamental function – the achievement of social welfare. Regionalization of Russia determines the direction and form of communications regarding the implementation of social policy. At the same time, in the southern Russia regions, a positive practice of integration interaction is recorded in the form of the adoption of a fundamentally new document “social code”, which unites many social practices. Results. Based on the results of the study, it was revealed that the existing practices of regional integration are based on replicating the best practices in the South of Russia. The formation of state social policy in the macro-regional dimension is based on the implementation of federal target programs and state projects. At the same time, each of the regions has its own request for the formation of social policy priorities, which allows them to be segmented into two groups: regions with existing infrastructure for the development of the social sphere, as well as regions that systematize the best practices of social project management in order to form their own development infrastructure.
Place is sometimes vague or undefined in studies of context, and scholars use a range of Census units to measure “context.” In this article, we borrow from Parsons and Shils to offer a ...conceptualization of context. This conceptualization, and a recognition of both Lippmann’s pseudoenvironments and the statistical Modifiable Areal Unit Problem, lead us to a new measurement strategy. We propose a map-based measure to capture how ordinary people use information about their environments to make decisions about politics. Respondents draw their contexts on maps—deciding the boundaries of their relevant environments—and describe their perceptions of the demographic make-up of these contexts. The evidence is clear: “pictures in our heads” do not resemble governmental administrative units in shape or content. By “bringing the person back in” to the measurement of context, we are able to marry psychological theories of information processing with sociological theories of racial threat.
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In sociology and criminology, a consensus has emerged since the 1980s that there exist three basic forms of social control: informal, legal, and medical. However, Talcott Parsons developed a typology ...of social control that added a fourth type, namely religious control, which was needed to maintain consistency with his four-function analytical schema. In addition, since the 1980s Michel Foucault’s writings on social control have grown in influence in these fields. One particular aspect of Foucault’s work appears to be both complementary to and subsumable under Parsons’ grand AGIL schema. This is Foucault’s concept of pastoral power, whose four elements or dimensions can be understood as having functional significance for religious social control as developed by Parsons. The study of religion always brings to bear the problem of transcendence, and along the way I confront pertinent elements of idealist philosophy, and especially the phenomenology of Husserl, in this attempt to overcome some of the admitted difficulties in bringing together the thought of Parsons and Foucault.
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This work explored the local wisdom values present within the classical manuscripts of Latoa and within Muhammadan tradition, employing descriptive qualitative and library approaches. A literature ...review was conducted to analyze primary data in the Latoa Classical Manuscript and Muhammadan Tradition in the Hadīh Books, and also to explore secondary data in various contemporary sources. Data were collected using note reading techniques with the assigning of codes. Each text was read in-depth and carefully categorized. This was followed by a reduction stage to select and sort the data. Finally, data were analysed through application of the Talcott Parsons’ theory on functionalism and structuralism. This study concluded that the values of local civilization contained in Luqman al-Hakim’s conception are teppe (faithful), isseng (knowledgeable), gau patujue (of good conduct), and sirie` (dignified). The “Sparkling Pearls” conception suggested by Luqman al-Hakim in the Latoa Manuscripts has great relevancy to developing functional structures of society, emphasizing the ethics of hard work, building character based on nationalism, and developing human behavior for better social interactions.
Systems everywhere? Vanderstraeten, Raf
Systems research and behavioral science,
May/June 2019, 2019-05-00, 20190501, Volume:
36, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Ludwig von Bertalanffy built his hopes for system theory on the growing visibility of systems in the world. The first introductory section of the 1968 edition of General System Theory is titled ...“Systems Everywhere.” Half a century later, system theory has fallen into disrepute in several fields of study. It is targeted for its technocratic and governmental ambitions; it is depicted as an attempt to understand and reshape the world according to the system image of the world. This paper sketches how the social world has been analysed as a system—with a focus on hierarchy, predictability, and control. It proceeds to show how Von Bertalanffy's emphasis on the distinction between system and environment allows for the analysis of heterogeneity, indeterminacy, and uncontrollability. This paper thus makes a plea for a reflexive theory that focuses on problems that emerge despite the fact that our society imagines itself as a system.
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Con esta investigación, pretendemos aplicar el método comparativo a las contribuciones teóricas que, en torno a los conceptos de agente individual, organizaciones e instituciones, llevan a cabo los ...principales economistas keynesianos y Talcott Parsons. A la vista de los resultados, concluimos que, si bien Parsons comparte la caracterización de los agentes individuales que llevan a cabo tanto Keynes como los autores postkeynesianos, también se vale de modelos formales, como lo hacen los neokeynesianos. Además, en el área interorganizativa, legitima el papel que puede jugar el Estado en la economía y destaca, como los postkeynesianos, el positivo papel que pueden desarrollar los sindicatos. Finalmente, Parsons también coincide con los economistas postkeynesianos, y muy particularmente con Kaldor, por cuanto comprende las instituciones como fenómenos generales y naturales que pueden presentar un bajo perfil de conflictividad.
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The encounter between professional and patient is one of the basic units of analysis in the field of 'medical' sociology. From the very beginnings of the sociological investigation of medical ...practice it has been conceived as a dyadic encounter; defined by asymmetries of power; the negotiation of rational and authoritative scientific knowledge, and private, proximal, relations. This article argues for a more dynamic theoretical vision of the clinical encounter: one that shifts attention away from a Parsonian 'paradigm' of professional-patient interaction towards a perspective that incorporates the systemic changes that late modernity brings to medicine. The clinical encounter is no longer the dyadic system envisaged by Parsons, and his theoretical perspective-which has played an important part in framing sociological accounts of the practice of medicine-now needs to be reframed in relation to the organizing impulses of contemporary corporate professional practice.
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