Talcott Parsons: Despair and Modernity

by Best,Shaun

• ISBN13: 9780754678175
• ISBN10: 0754678172
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-07-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) was the foremost sociological theorist of the decades spanning the middle of the 20th century. In his early work, Parsons integrated ideas derived from the writings of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto, and others into a comprehensive but elementary conceptual scheme that he termed the "voluntaristic theory of action." In his later work, he elaborated this schema into a highly technical theory of four functionally defined subsystems of society, which remains a generation after his death the most thoroughly detailed theory of the overall organization of modern societies. In addition to his several volumes of general theory, Parsons wrote more than a hundred insightful essays addressing a wide range of empirical topics. Both Parsons' general theory and many of his empirical essays were controversial when written and remain so today.This collection includes articles by major interpreters of and contributors to the theory of action, including works by Neil J. Smelser, Robert N. Bellah, S. N. Eisenstadt, Renee C. Fox, Roland Robertson, Hans Joas, Mark Gould, Victor Lidz, and others whose writings have sustained the Parsonian tradition that combines a voluntaristic conception of social action with function analysis of social systems. As editor, Victor Lidz has provided a broad introduction to Parsons' theory of action, the controversies it has engendered, and key trends of thought about its revision and updating.