State, society and calvinism: Parsons and Merton as seen from abroad

Abstract

The contemporary assessment of the works of Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton includes among others three volumes written by authors from abroad.* These works attest to the world-wide penetra? tion, since the end of World War II, of American sociological theory. At the same time, within the United States, sociological theory is experiencing a crisis of confidence of its own. The studies under evaluation here provide us with an angle of refraction allowing us to see our theory as others see it. Talcott Parsons and the Capitalist Nation State is a work that grew out of William Buxton's "radicalization of the early 1970V (p.ix). The journey that led this Canadian scholar to the work of Talcott Parsons and to the writing of this book was guided by a passionate interest in "how domination has been exercised and how it could be challenged and transformed" (p.ix), a passion not uncharacteristic of Buxton's generation of youthful radicals, some of whom aspired to domination for themselves. In contrast to the latter aspirants, a few of whom are now so thoroughly academicized that their concern is with "bringing the state back in" (as if it ever went anywhere), Buxton's quest for political knowledge led him first to Oxford University, then the London School of Economics, later to the Free University of Berlin and, finally, to Talcott Parsons. Par? sons, according to Buxton, addressed the problem of the ordering of the American nation-state almost exclusively and obsessively; more-over, he described the role that sociologists and political scient? ists might play in the guidance of it. Buxton's analysis of the political and intellectual aspects of Par? son's work, shows us how Parsons' liberal Calvinist values were transferred into both a sociology and a form of public philosophy for American society. Guided by a deep sense of responsibility for the