3 Functionalism, neo-functionalism and system analysis: Talcott Parsons

Juanita Kakoty and Dev Pathak

epgp books

 

1.  Introduction

 

Functionalism argues that society should be understood as a system of interdependent parts, where social institutions exist because they have to meet certain “functional prerequisites” or specific requirements necessary for the existence of the society. As a school of social theory, it mainly came to prominence in the 1950s, but its origin is traced to an earlier generation of anthropologists from early 20th century like Malinowski (1884-1942) and Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955). In Sociology, elements of functionalism are traced to the work of French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1857-1917).

 

Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown and the other anthropologists of the earlier decades of the 20th century forwarded the central methodological precept for a Functionalist perspective: that individual action and behaviour cannot be understood or explained independently of the wider social system, within which are embedded collective practices and beliefs. In other words, the diverse elements of social life depend upon each other and exist to fulfil functions that contribute towards the maintenance of the social order and its reproduction. For example the Hopi tribe of North America perform a ritualistic „rain dance‟ before planting their crops. From the functionalist perspective, this rain dance is not to be understood as an instrumental activity that produces rain; rather, it is a form of expressive activity that serves to reinforce the bonds of solidarity amongst the tribesmen. Thus, Functionalism explains the existence of phenomena, behaviour or activity not through the traditional logic of causal agreement where the focus is on the direct efficient causes that precede them. Rather, Functionalism explains them by the function they would serve vis-à-vis their effects or outcome within a social system. That is, causes are explained by their effects rather than the consequences that preceded them. This teleological approach where a phenomenon is explained by the purpose it serves or the effect it produces rather than the causes that produced it is, however, is not free of problems. American sociologists like Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton, besides other issues, sought to address the problems in this teleological approach.

 

Parsons, who was also concerned with the maintenance of order in a social system, came up with the „voluntaristic theory of action‟ in his attempt to overcome the challenges of teleology in Functionalism. His theory was aimed at defining the relationship between structure and the personality/individual. He regarded the individual or agency as the reference point, whose action is influenced by the social system in which he is located, but at the same time, whose action can influence the social system. This notion, although it received a lot of flak during the 1960s and 1970s, sparked modern sociological thought and after much critical standing, it came to influence the emergence of neo-Functionalism in the 1980s.

 

2.  Who is Talcott Parsons? 

 

Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) is often regarded as the single greatest contributor and practitioner of structural functionalism. He was born in Colorado Springs in 1902 and was the youngest of five children. Parsons, whose father was a Congregational minister, professor and university president, and mother a progressive and suffragist, completed his undergraduate studies in Biology at Amherst College in Massachusetts. He also studied at the London School of Economics with Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942), whose view of society as a system of interrelated parts influenced him. Parsons attended the University of Heidelberg in 1926, where he studied the theories of Max Weber (1864–1920) and engaged with Weber‟s notion that an individual is a rational, thinking agency, unlike earlier theorists who talked of individual behaviour as purely socially constructed, influenced by the social structure. He even translated Weber‟s „The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism‟ (1904–1905) into English in 1930. He was also influenced by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and thus took an interest in how actors or individuals choose goals and means in relation to the internalized norms and values. He argued for an objective external world that is understood empirically with concepts created by the ideas, beliefs, and actions of the actors. Parsons went on to become an instructor of economics at Harvard University, where he was mentored by Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968), after which he became an inaugural member of the sociology department. Parsons established Harvard‟s Department of Psychology and Social Relations, an interdisciplinary collaboration in the behavioural sciences and economics, in 1945, where he served as chair of the department until its dissolution in 1972. He continued teaching at Harvard as a visiting professor upon his retirement in 1973. Parsons died in 1979.

 

3.  Voluntaristic Theory of Action 

 

Parsons postulated his theory at a time when the two, mutually antithetical, dominant approaches in sociology explained behaviour or action in terms of (a) the external stimuli,„objective‟  influences upon  it  (Positivism); or  in terms of (b)  the  internal,  „subjective‟influences upon it (Idealism).He argued that it is necessary to go beyond such extremes and attempted an interrelation between the two approaches. In „The Structure of Social Action‟ (1937), Parsons developed his analytical approach and explored the difference between the concepts of „behaviour‟as a mechanical response to stimuli and „action‟ as an inventive process, with a subjective aspect. He professed that social behaviour must be understood in terms of the diverse external influences or stimuli acting upon it, but at the same time, he maintained that the point of reference should be human „action‟. This is the „voluntaristic theory of action‟, which is also known as the „action frame of reference‟.

 

Parsons‟s theory of voluntary action is an attempt at engaging with the problem of social order. He suggested that just as a discrete individual action is an impossible social fact, so is non-ordered social action; and by order he meant non-randomness, not equilibrium (Alexander 1978). For Parsons, the basic unit of study in order to understand action is the „unit act‟, which involves the following:  An actor motivated towards an action; an end towards which action is oriented; means to reach this end; a situation where the action takes place; and norms that shape the choice of means to ends. In other words, actions are to be understood in the context of structures and processes through which humans are motivated to form meaningful intentions, on the basis of their shared knowledge, that are put into practice within the social system (Parsons 1966). This shared knowledge comes from internalizing normative interpretations. Thus, Parsons‟ voluntaristic theory of action assumes that action, whether independent or passive, always involves an internalised component (Alexander 1978). He tried to explain this with his conceptualization of the „unit act‟, which he identified as the basic element in combining the objective and subjective into a single scheme.

 

3.1 Unit Act

 

Parsons (1937:77) forwarded „unit act‟ as the basic element of social life and defined it as having the following characteristics:

 

1.  An end

2. A situation (where the action takes place), which could be analyzed into (a) means to reach this end and (b) conditions

3. At  least  one  selected  standard  in terms  of which the  end  is  related  to  the

situation (that is, norms that shape the choice of means to ends)

 

This „unit act‟ does not exist in isolation. For Parsons, the reference point for „action‟ is the agency/individual and it is a process oriented towards the realization of an end, which occurs in conditional circumstances that must be calculated upon by the actors while pursuing their ends. „Action‟, in the Pasonian sense, also includes internalized norms, which actors of a social system share, while choosing the means to realise a certain end. Thus, according to the theoretical synthesis that Parsons espouses, „action‟ may be described as, both, instrumental and normative; individual and social (Alexander 1978).

 

In his later work, Parsons continued his search for a theoretical synthesis through his AGIL formulation, which conceptualises society as constituting the interaction of four subsystems: economics, politics, integration and value maintenance.

 

4.  AGIL 

 

The AGIL paradigm, also known as the four-function paradigm, is part of Parsons’ larger action theory. Parsons specified that any social system that persists has certain needs; the AGIL scheme seeks to explain how that social system meets these needs and maintains order vis-à-vis both its external environment and internal organization. He, in collaboration with Robert F. Bales and Edward A. Shils, first formulated the AGIL schema in the Working Papers in the „Theory of Action‟ in 1953.

 

According to Parsons, every system rests on four functional imperatives, which he categorised as the AGIL system:

 

1. The adaptive (A) function: whereby a system adapts to its environment.

2. The goal–attainment (G) function: how a system defines and achieves its goals.

3. The integrative (I) function: the regulation of the components of the system.

4. The latency (L) or „pattern maintenance‟ function: the stimulation of motivation and that of the dimensions of culture that create and sustain motivation.

 

Apart from social systems that constitute the more general system of „action‟ in Parsonian theory, the other primary constituents that he talked about, in relation to the AGIL scheme, are: cultural systems, personality systems, and behavioral organisms, each of which serves a functional imperative:

 

1. The behavioural organism performs the adaptive function;

2. The personality system performs goal attainment;

3. The social system performs the integrative function; and

4. The cultural system performs pattern maintenance.

 

Parsons saw these action systems hierarchically, starting with the behavioral organism and building to the cultural system, with each of the lower levels providing the impetus for the higher levels, and the higher levels controlling the lower levels. Therefore, the cultural system, for Parsons, is at the very pinnacle of action systems because culture, according to him, has the capability of becoming a part of other systems, say, through norms and values in the social system. Culture is defined as a patterned and ordered system of symbols, whose normative interpretation is internalised by society members through socialisation, thereby becoming internalized aspects of the personality system, pronouncing institutionalized patterns. The symbolic nature of culture, therefore, allows it to control other action systems. We can, perhaps, draw an example from the football field to illustrate this point. All football players in the field know that they have to adhere to certain rules while playing, rules which are internalised by them and which they cannot break if they want to be in the game. Their end or goal is to score and win the game. And in order to do so, they fall back upon the rules of the game while choosing the means to the end – i.e., score and win. Now, all said and done, within these normative orientations, the players are free to choose how they want to play.  And  that how  reflects  the  subjective  in  their  action,  which  is  informed  by  the „objective‟, external considerations.

 

Thus, for Parsons, „action‟ constitutes the following components: culture (values), society (norms), personality (source of motivation), and organism (source of energy). People choose goals and means within the context of cultural norms and values that they find themselves in; and these cultural norms are within a system of generalized symbols and their associated meanings (Parsons 1951). He also argues that social systems are complex and consist of a network of interdependent and interpenetrating subsystems, each of which, seen as the appropriate level of reference, is a social system in its own right.

 

4.1. ‘Role’ and the social structure 

 

In Parsons‟ scheme of things, social interaction is a structured affair with a series of structural categories, given in ascending order as role, collectivity, norm, and value (Parsons 1961) which roughly cover the social structure from individual to social system. „Role‟ is defined as the essential starting point for individual interaction which occurs in such a way as to constitute an interdependent system. Meaningful interaction in society can only take place when roles and actions have meanings and are governed by shared rules or norms. These shared rules define goals and the consequences of any given move by one player for the situation in which the other must make his choice. Both players are provided with facilities, which are generalized, and their allocation between players depends upon each player’s capacity to make the most of available opportunities. The essential property, however, is the mutuality of orientation understood in terms of shared patterns of normative culture (values). When two individuals interact in such a manner, sharing a normative culture, they form a collectivity.

 

A „role‟, therefore, is normatively regulated, where a person participates in a concrete process of social interaction with specified, concrete role-partners. Performing a role within a collectivity defines the category of membership, which includes the assumption of obligations of performance in that concrete interaction system. Obligations are associated with rights. Parsons believed that an individual has several roles, and that one „role‟ is only a sector in his behavioral system, and thereby of his personality. He further held that, in any given system, the concepts of role and collectivity are particularistic. Norms and values, on the other hand, he says, are universalistic concepts. In other words, the universalistic aspect of norms and values suggests that they are neither situation-specific, nor function-specific.

 

5.  Pattern Variables

 

Pattern variables are “the principle tools of structural analysis” connected to the intrinsic logic of social action, which includes the inherent dilemma of facing choices by actors (Parsons in Leon H. Mayhew, 1983). Parsons argues that there are a strictly limited and defined set of choices that can be made, and that the relative primacies given to choices account for the ”patterning of relational institutions.” These choices or alternatives constitute orientation-selection and there are five pattern variables of role-definition or orientation- selection that Parsons discusses, although he admits to the existence of many more possibilities. They are as follows: affectivity vs. affective-neutrality; private vs. collective; universalism vs. particularism; achievement vs. ascriptive role behaviour; and specificity vs. diffuseness.

 

5.1. Affectivity vs. affective-neutrality: The first set of pattern variables refers to the gratification-discipline dilemma.That is, the dilemma here is in deciding whether one expresses one‟s orientation in terms of immediate gratification (affectivity) or whether one should renounce immediate gratification in favour of moral interests (affective-neutrality). According to Parsons, no actor can survive without gratifications, while, at the same time, no action system can be organized or integrated without the renunciation of some gratifications which are available in the given situation.

 

5.2. Self-orientation vs. collectivity-orientation: The second set of pattern variables self- orientation vs. collectivity-orientation, constitutes the interest dilemma, which is whether one should orient oneself towards the private or collective. Parsons noted that a „role‟ may define certain areas where the pursuit of private interests is legitimate, and other areas where it would be obligatory for the actor to devote oneself to the pursuit of common interests of the collectivity.

 

5.3. Universalism vs. particularism: The third set of pattern variables refers to the choice between the types of value-orientation standard: universalism or particularism. In the case of universalism, the standard is derived from the “validity of a set of existential ideas, or the generality of a normative rule”. In the case of particularism, the status is derived from the “particularity of an object or from the status of the object in a relational system”. Parsons cites as an example the obligation to fulfill contractual agreements vs. helping someone because she is your friend (Parsons in Leon H. Mayhew, 1983).

 

5.4. Achievement vs. ascriptive role behavior: The fourth set of pattern variables is achievement vs. ascriptive role behaviour. The achievement-orientation roles are those which give premium to the performance of people, while ascribed roles assign importance to the qualities or attributes of people, independently of specific expected performances. Roles are ascribed by virtue of being born into a certain social group, for example a caste group.

 

5.5. Specificity vs. diffuseness: The final set of pattern variables, specificity vs. diffuseness, connotes the definition of scope of interest in an object or social phenomenon. If an individual adopts an orientation of specificity towards an object, it means that one assumes the „role‟ of orienting oneself to the social object in specific terms, or to only be a part of the social phenomenon. If one chooses a „diffuse orientation‟, then the mode of orientation is outside the range of obligations defined by the role-expectation. One, here, would orient oneself to the whole of the social phenomenon.

 

6.  Criticism of Parsons and the Emergence of Neo-Functionalism

 

Parsons‟ theory received sweeping dismissal during the 1960s and 1970s. Critics argued that his stand on the subjective-objective issue, on the nominal-realist or individual-society question is irrelevant because his emphasis on norms committed him to an „unacceptable degree‟ of voluntarism, intentional action. Idealists emphasized that although he spoke of intentional action, it is not really intentional because it is influenced by internalised norms which are influenced by the social structure. Materialist critics, on the other hand, who oppose the individualistic strand of social theory that gives prominence to the intentional aspect of action, argued that by relating action to internal normative elements, Parsons ignored the supra-individual social forces that constrain rather than facilitate action.

 

Alexander (1978) responds to Parsons critics by stating that according to Parsons, no individual can be absolutely free of constraints in the radical sense as suggested by individualist theory because an individual is influenced by different social forces, the most important being the symbolic forces that contain normative elements.These normative elements are internalised by the individuals and therefore they are not visible in concrete terms. „Parsons sought to articulate a structure for social action that ascribed voluntarism to the influence of subjective ideal elements, which are internalised by the individual and which allow him or her autonomy vis-a-vis material constraints. In this manner, Parsons rejects the nominalist notion that freedom involves the complete lack of constraint‟ (Alexander 1978: 179). But at the same time, Alexander argues, it is precisely at this point that Parsons arrives at his great insight into the voluntary quality of action: what appears or seems to be free, intentional action but requires the actor‟s application of an internal judgment that is again influenced by the normative standards that the actor has internalised. In the words of Parsons„The voluntaristic system does not in the least deny an important role to conditional… non- normative elements…. (rather) consider…them as interdependent with the normative‟ (1937:82). It would, therefore, not be wrong to agree with Alexander when he says that critics have failed to see that the major segment of Parsons‟ work, from the very beginning, has been aimed at bridging the fundamental theoretical gaps in addressing the objective and subjective divide while studying human action.

 

There is another group of critics who have argued that Parsons ignores social change in his theory. But Alexander (1978) argues that Parsons theory of voluntarism is embodied in the theory of social change as differentiation. „If formal voluntarism refers to a universal property of all action abstracted from time and space, and from any specifically ideological properties, substantive voluntarism refers exactly to the opposite: to the degree that particular historical and social conditions allow the realization of individual freedom defined in terms of a particular ideological perspective. Therefore, although Parsons has discarded the individualistic position as a formal framework, his theory of differentiation accepts it as providing the basic parameters within which any theory of substantive freedom must be rooted… In contrast to his formal theory, Parsons‟… substantive theory does, in fact, take the concrete person as the point of reference‟ (1978:184).

 

In  that  vein,  Alexander  continues  that  according  to  Parsons‟  theory  of  social  change, „…personal autonomy is  achieved to the degree that the institutions associated with the different dimensions of society, the functional subsystems of economics, politics, integration, and value maintenance, become differentiated from one another and, in the process, develop (1) their own independent criteria for performance as expressed in institutionally separated media; (2) the capacity to mobilise the resources of the dimensions by asserting a partial but independent regulation over them” (1978:186).

 

Thus,  intellectuals  like  Jeffrey  Alexander  revived  Parsonian  thought  which  became  a distinguishing feature of sociology in the 1980s, and marked the emergence of neo- Functionalism. Alexander looked at Parsonian theory as a point to begin his synthetic social theory, and not as an end point, where he tried to relate Parsons to different forms of classical and contemporary work. Alexander approached the interdependent dynamics of social action and order with multi-dimensional analysis. While emphasizing the challenge of explaining social order, he maintained that though social processes facilitate social order through normative commitments, yet it is important to recognise the existence of conflicting interests, environmental conditions and constraints, and the unforeseen contingencies actors face while dealing with particular situations they find themselves in.

 

Apart from defining neo-Functionalism as a model of explanation on the basis of needs of systemic wholes, Alexander outlined the other general features of neo-Functionalism as „a concern with action as well as structure; a recognition of the dialectic among control, integration, and deviance; a reformulation of equilibrium in Keynes‟ sense of systemic strains; a maintenance of the distinctions among, as well as a description of the strains between, personality, culture, and social structure; and an emphasis on differentiation as a major mode of change.” (Turner and Maryanski, 1988:117-118).

 

 

8.  Summary 

 

A few important points learnt in this chapter are summarized as follows:

  • Functionalism aims at understanding society as a system of interdependent parts, where social institutions exist because they have to meet certain “functional prerequisites” necessary for the existence of society.
  • Parsons, who was concerned with the maintenance of order,  forwarded the „voluntaristic theory of action‟ in which he regards the individual or agency as the reference point, whose action is influenced by the social system in which he is located, yet at the same time, whose action can influence the social system.
  • According to Parsons, „unit act‟ is the basic element to understand  action. A „unit act‟ involves the following: (1) An actor motivated towards an action; (2) an end towards which action is oriented; (3) means to reach this end; (4) a situation where the action takes place; and (5) norms that shape the choice of means to ends. It is, however, to be noted that the „unit act‟ does not exist in isolation.
  • For Parsons, the reference point for „action‟ is the actor and it is a process oriented towards the realization of an end, which occurs in conditional circumstances that must be calculated upon by the actors while pursuing their ends. Thus, „action‟, in the Pasonian sense, also includes internalized norms, about which exists a shared knowledge among the actors of a particular system.
  • According to the theoretical synthesis that Parsons espouses,  „action‟ may be described as, both, instrumental and normative; individual and social.
  • For Parsons, every system rests on four functional imperatives, which he defined in the AGIL system: (1) adaptive (A): whereby a system adapts to its environment; (2) goal-attainment (G): how a system defines and achieves its goals; (3) integrative (I): the regulation of the components of the system; and (4) latency (L) or „pattern maintenance‟: the stimulation of motivation and that of the dimensions of culture that create and sustain motivation. The behavioural organism performs the adaptive function; the personality system performs goal attainment; the social system performs the integrative function; and the cultural system performs pattern maintenance.
  • A „role‟ is normatively regulated, where a person participates in a concrete process of social interaction with specified, concrete role-partners within an action system. A „role‟ is a normative component that governs the participation of individual persons in given collectivities; and a collectivity component indicates the normative culture that spell out the values, norms, goal-orientations, and ordering of roles for a concrete system of interaction.
  • According to Parsons, a strictly limited and defined set of choices are available to actors in a given situation, and the relative primacies given to choices account for the ”patterning of relational institutions.” These choices or alternatives constitute orientation- selection,  which  he  suggests  as  five  pattern  variables:  (1)  affectivity  (immediate gratification) vs. affective-neutrality (renunciation of immediate gratification in favour of moral interests); (2) self-orientation (pursuit of private interests) vs. collectivity- orientation (pursuit of collective interests); (3) universalism (value-orientation standard derived from the generality of a normative rule) vs. particularism (value-orientation standard derived from the particularity of an object or from the status of the object in a relational system); (4) achievement role behavior (which give premium to the performance of people) vs. ascriptive role behaviour (which give importance to the qualities or attributes of people); (5) specificity (one assumes the „role‟ of orienting oneself to the social phenomenon in specific terms) vs. diffuseness (the mode of orientation is outside the range of obligations defined by the role-expectation; one orients oneself to the whole of the social phenomenon).
  • Parsons theory was radically criticised in the 1960s and 1970s but it contributed to the emergence of neo-Functionalism in the 1980s.
  • Idealists criticised Parsons‟ concept of action by pointing out that it is not really intentional because it is influenced by internalised norms, internalised by the individual through socialisation. Materialist critics, on the other hand, argued that by associating action with internal normative elements, Parsons ignored the supra-individual social forces that constrain action.
  • Neo-Functionalists like Jeffrey Alexander argue that critics have failed to see that Parsons, from the very beginning, has worked towards bridging the fundamental theoretical gaps in studying human action by attempting an interaction between the subjective and the objective elements.
  • Another group of critics have argued that Parsons‟ theory ignores social change. But neo-Functionalist Alexander (1978) argues that Parsons‟ theory of voluntarism is embodied in the theory of social change as „differentiation‟. That Parsons does refer to the fact that particular historical and social conditions allow the realization of individual freedom; that personal autonomy is achieved to the degree that the institutions associated with the different dimensions of society (economics, politics, integration and value maintenance) become differentiated from one another and, in the process, develop (1) their own independent criteria for performance as expressed in institutionally separated media; (2) the capacity to mobilise the resources of the dimensions by asserting a partial but independent regulation over them.
you can view video on Functionalism, neo-functionalism and system analysis: Talcott Parsons

9.  References 

  1. Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Colomy, Paul, “Toward Neo-Functionalism, Sociological Theory” 3, No. 2 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 11-23.
  2. Alexander, Jeffrey C., “Formal and Substantive Voluntarism in the Work of Talcott Parsons:
  3. A Theoretical and Ideological Reinterpretation”, American Sociological Review 43. no. 2 (1978) :177-198.
  4. Darity, William A., Jr. (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2008. Holmwood, John, Founding Sociology: Talcott Parsons and the Idea of General Theory, 1996, New York: Longman.
  5. Parsons, Talcott, An Outline of the Social System in Talcott Parsons, Edward Shils, Kaspar
  6. Naegele, and Jesse R. Pitts (eds) Theories of Society, Volume 1, 1961, New York: Free Press.
  7. Parsons, Talcott, Talcott Parsons on Institutions and Social Evolution in Leon H. Mayhew (ed.), Selected Writings, 1983, Heritage of Sociology Series.
  8. Parsons, Talcott. The Structure of Social Action. New York: Free Press, 1937. Parsons, Talcott, The Social System. New York: Free Press, 1951.
  9. Ritzer, George, Encyclopaedia of Social Theory. SAGE Publications, 2005.
  10. Turner, Jonathan H and Maryanski, Alexandra R., “Is NeoFunctionalism Really Functional”? Sociological Theory 6, no.1 (1988):  110-121.