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Date Submitted: 04/14/2012 12:55 AM
Chapter 10
The Social System—Talcott Parsons
Chapter Objectives:
After reading and understanding this chapter, a student should be able to
• Discuss the systems approach to understanding society
• Explain how social systems are formed through modes of orientation, types of action, and through roles, norms, and status positions
• Describe a system’s functional requisites and interstructural relations using Parsons’s AGIL analytical scheme
• Explain how the cybernetic hierarchy of control works and its importance for understanding how society functions
• Discuss the process of social change through the ascendancy of a social movement through the equilibration of the system
• Discuss the differences between modernism and postmodernism in terms of the kind of theory each wants to produce and be able to explain the significance of neo-tribes
Chapter Outline:
I. Parsons Perspective: Abstract Social Systems
Key concepts: system; boundary negotiation; integration; generalized media of exchange; equilibrium; analytic theory; institutionalization
A. Society as a system
1. Two problems that systems must solve to exist
a. Relationship with boundary
b. Internal integration
2. Two qualities of Parsons’s systems theory
a. Generalized media of exchange: ways that structures within a system talk to one another
b. Equilibrium: systems will tend toward equilibrated states (balance between integrating and dividing forces)
B. Analytic theory
1. Parsons doesn’t give a theory capable of predicting only explaining—it’s an analytical scheme that can be used to understand diverse social systems
II. The Making of the Social System
Key concepts: voluntaristic action; action theory; the unit act; normative influence; modes or orientation; cognitive, appreciative, and moral values; cognitive,...