Background
He was born on December 13, 1902 in Colorado Springs. He was the son of Edward Smith Parsons (1863–1943) and Mary Augusta Ingersoll (1863–1949).
(Between 1890 and 1935 the serious study of society revolu...)
Between 1890 and 1935 the serious study of society revolutionized. Eighty-six thinkers who brought about this revolution and are herein represented by selections from their major writings on society.
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( The classic study by Harvard's Talcott Parsons on socia...)
The classic study by Harvard's Talcott Parsons on social systems and the "theory of action," as theorized and applied in a variety of settings, including the medical profession, kinships and role-socialization, psychological relationships, and religious organization. This foundational work is available from Quid Pro Books (with red cover) in a new, high-quality, introduced, and modern formatbut nonetheless features embedded page numbers from the original, to make it easy to cite, reference, or assign to classes. This feature also provides continuity with the new eBook editions from Quid Pro (which also embed standard pagination). Now the book may be assigned and referenced with confidence, and read without the formatting anachronisms of previous offerings. This Classics of the Social Sciences edition from Quid Pro also includes a substantive, analytical new Foreword by Neil J. Smelser, the renowned senior professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In his 2012 introduction, Dr. Smelser places the original work in its historical and critical context and examines the themes and legacy of this great book. Publisher's note: Although this description may appear under editions or used copies offered by other publishers or sellers, only the Quid Pro edition (with red cover and new introduction) features the modern rendition of text and embedded pagination from the original print edition, as well as the analytical Foreword by Dr. Smelser.
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(During the years between the publication of the first of ...)
During the years between the publication of the first of his two major works, The Structure of Social Action (1937), and the writing of his second, The Social System (1951), Talcott Parsons was primarily engaged in political activity through the Office of Strategic Services in its efforts to bring about the defeat of the Third Reich and to set the stage for a democratic reconstruction of postwar Germany. Beyond Parsons' analytic skills the essays reveal a dedicated liberal scholar, far removed from the stereotypes with which he came to be pilloried by later critics. The essays in this collection are the by-products of that special period of intense commitment. They reflect a single dominant theme: National Socialist Germany is seen as a tragically flawed social system but one requiring the same rigorous analysis Parsons brought to more normal and normative systems. Since virulent authoritarianism and even more virulent anti-Semitism were the dominant traits of that system as he saw it, Parsons dedicated many pages to each aspect. While he did not know the full horror of the Nazi ""war against the Jews"" he was able to develop a theoretical framework that continues to be a foundation stone for the analysis of national socialism. Gerhardt's editorial labors in the Parsons archive at Harvard have yielded nothing less than a ""new book"" by the foremost American sociological theorist of his time. This collection of both published and unpublished writings conveys Parsons' cohesive intent. To these otherwise fugitive and neglected essays Gerhardt contributes an introductory essay of her own: in part biography, in part intellectual and social history. She discovered Parsons work on National Socialism while studying his sociology of the professions and his use of medical practice to demonstrate how social science could become an antidote for fascism and authoritarianism. Uta Gerhardt is director of the Medical Sociology Unit at Justu
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(A Collection of essays which studies the theoretical prob...)
A Collection of essays which studies the theoretical problem of relationships between social structure and personality, and how these different relationships merit distinct treatment for particular purposes. Parsons concludes that in the larger picture, their interdependencies are so intimate that bringing them together in an interpretive synthesis is imperative if a balanced understanding of the complex as a whole is to be attained.
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He was born on December 13, 1902 in Colorado Springs. He was the son of Edward Smith Parsons (1863–1943) and Mary Augusta Ingersoll (1863–1949).
He graduated from Amherst College in 1924, where he majored in biology, but decided to do graduate work in economics.
In 1924-25 he attended the London School of Economics.
He took his doctorate at Heidelberg University in Germany in 1927.
During this period he studied the works of Alfred Marshall, the great classical theorist and codiscoverer of the principle of marginal utility; Émile Durkheim, the French sociologist; and Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian sociologist.
While at Heidelberg, he translated Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which exercised a great influence upon young American sociologists.
Parsons was an instructor in the department of economics at Harvard University from 1927 to 1931. Parsons became a full professor of sociology at Harvard in 1944. He held that position until his retirement in 1973.
The pioneering social theory developed by Parsons is abstract and complex. As a frame of reference for his system, he adopted the social action theory and stressed the structural-functional approach as the only way for sociology to achieve systematic theory. He stated that personality formation develops out of action organized around individuals, while action organized around relations of actors leads to a social system which consists of a network of roles.
A third system which is indispensable to the personality system and the social system is the cultural system, which constitutes the standards and channels for guiding action.
These three systems interpenetrate one another, and Parsons focused on the analysis of the socialization process to show the relationship between personality and the social structure.
The areas in which Parsons made contributions included the classification of the role of theory in research; the analysis of institutions; the outline of systematic theory in sociology; the voluntaristic theory of action; the analysis of specific structure and roles, kinship, occupations, and professions; and the analysis of certain modern problems of aggression, fascism, and anti-Semitism.
Parsons died of a stroke on May 8, 1979, while giving a series of lectures in Munich, Germany.
The obituary in the New York Times the next day described Parsons as "A towering figure in the social sciences, " who was responsible for "the education of three generations of sociologists. "
(During the years between the publication of the first of ...)
( The classic study by Harvard's Talcott Parsons on socia...)
(A Collection of essays which studies the theoretical prob...)
(A study in social theory with special reference to a grou...)
(Between 1890 and 1935 the serious study of society revolu...)
(Book by Parsons, Talcott, Platt, George M.)
Throughout his life, Parsons interacted with a broad range of intellectuals and others who took a deep interest in religious belief systems, doctrines, and institutions. One notable person who interacted with Parsons was Marie Augusta Neal, a nun of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who sent Parsons a huge number of her manuscripts and invited him to conferences and intellectual events in her Catholic Church. Neal received her Ph. D. from Harvard under Parsons's supervision in 1963, and she would eventually become professor and then chair of sociology at Emmanuel College in Boston. She was very enthusiastic about the Second Vatican Council and became known for the National Sisters Survey, which aimed at improving women's position in the Catholic Church.
The areas in which Parsons made contributions included the classification of the role of theory in research; the analysis of institutions; the outline of systematic theory in sociology; the voluntaristic theory of action; the analysis of specific structure and roles, kinship, occupations, and professions; and the analysis of certain modern problems of aggression, fascism, and anti-Semitism.
He studied the works of Alfred Marshall, the great classical theorist and codiscoverer of the principle of marginal utility; Émile Durkheim, the French sociologist; and Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian sociologist. Parsons' The Structure of Social Action (1937) fuses the theories of Durkheim, Pareto, and Weber into a single new body of theory and shows their relationship to Marshall's type of economic theory.
In his later years, Parsons became increasingly interested in working out the higher conceptual parameters of the human condition, which was in part what led him toward rethinking questions of cultural and social evolution and the "nature" of telic systems, the latter which he especially discussed with Bellah, Lidz, Fox, Willy de Craemer and others. Parsons became increasingly interested in clarifying the relationship between biological and social theory.
Quotations:
Parsons discussed the upcoming meeting with Reinhard Bendix and commented, "I am afraid I will be something of a Daniel in the Lion's den. "
In an interview in 1975, Parsons would recall a conversation with Schumpeter on the institutionalist methodological position: "An economist like Schumpeter, by contrast, would absolutely have none of that. I remember talking to him about the problem and . . I think Schumpeter was right. If economics had gone that way [like the institutionalists] it would have had to become a primarily empirical discipline, largely descriptive, and without theoretical focus. That's the way the 'institutionalists' went, and of course Mitchell was affiliated with that movement. "
He was a member of the American Sociological Association.
At LSE he met a young American girl in the students' common room called Helen Bancroft Walker whom he married on April 30, 1927. The couple had three children: Anne, Charles, and Susan and eventually four grandchildren. Walker's father was born in Canada but had moved to the Boston area and later become an American citizen.