Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons was born in 1902, and died in 1979, of his time he was considered the most admired American sociologist. Parsons was bread into a well-to do family and was given a strong educational foundation as a child. His father was an American Midwest preacher and very academic. As a student Parsons studied philosophy and biology, he felt out of place though so transferred to sociology and economics. As he excelled in these fields, he began his studies in Europe, giving him a wide view on different societies. In Europe he examined the work of Weber and Marx, and other German sociologists at a time when American sociology was rather parochial. His work was so impressive that he got offered a job at Harvard University, where he remained for the rest of his life. Talcott Parsons was a key functionalist thinker. His work contributes a great deal to the functionalist theory. He argued that socialisation is the key to understanding human behaviour patterns. The role of social institutions such as the family, education, religion and the media is to ensure the passing on, or reproduction, of socially acceptable patterns of behaviour. The institutions do this by socialising people into key values of society, they encourage soci
However, Parsons theory of society is plagued by an absence of clarity. His work also demonstrates an absence of empirical referents. Also he does not consider the fact that wealth or poverty may determine whether women stayed at home and look after the children or not. He identified four "levels" of action, which are interlinked but can also be studied separately: The biological system, the personality system, social system and cultural system. In addition some of Parsons ideas have proved to be very useful to the study of the contemporary world. Parsons is the only modern sociologist to have produced as influential a body of work as the founding fathers- Marx, Weber and Durkhiem. Conflict thinkers argue that Parsons ignored the existence of coercion both within and between societies, and by the late 1980s functionalism and parsons were more or less abandoned and replaced by a variety of sociological models that attempted to develop a variety of on-functionalist approaches to the study of sociology. Parsons also argued that sickness is really a form of deviance, which threatens the stability of society. Accordingly, his conception of development supposedly applies to all modern orders. Consensus maintains a peaceful, harmonious society without much conflict between people and groups. Parsons also didn't show how and why one society evolves, becomes complex, and survives while another fails to adapt and declines. His most important work is his book, The Social System (1951), in which he saw human action as analogous in many ways to a biological system. If too many people did this society would collapse. He argued society is like a human body, every part has a function to do and all the functions together keep the structure going.
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