The Fate of the 'Functional Requisites' in Parsonian Sociology

Abstract

The work of Talcott Parsons, now spanning forty years of remarkably prolific publication, is best seen as an elaborate, sometimes ingenious and sometimes vacuous, attempt to solve the Hobbesean problem of order. This problem, expressed in simple terms, is bound up with the reasons why society does not fall apart, why people do what has to be done, and, a more recent aspect, how social evolution guarantees more efficient solutions of these problems. The persistent emphasis on the means-end schema as the main focus of the analysis of social relations in terms of goal-seeking and problem-solving activity, has run through Parsons' sociological enterprise as a unifying thread, linking The Structure of Social Action, of 1937; Toward a General Theory of Action, of 1951; The Social System, of 1951; Working Papers in the Theory of Action, of 1953; Economy and Society, of 1956; his long contributions to Theories of Society, of 1961; and the small volume Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives, of 1966.' In addition to these, Parsons has written and contributed to scores of books, journals, symposia, etc., and has rarely missed an opportunity to explain, develop, and broadcast his theoretical aims, no less than 'the establishment of a general theory in the social sciences'.2