Social System

THE subject matter of this volume is the exposition and illustration of a conceptual scheme for the analysis of social systems in terms of the action frame of reference. It is intended as a theoretical work in a strict sense and systematic treatment of its empirical uses will have to be undertaken separately. The fundamental starting point is the concept of social systems of action is the interaction of individual actors, that is, takes place under such conditions that it is possible to treat such a process of interaction as a system in the scientific sense and subject it to the same order of theoretical analysis which has been successfully applied to other types of systems in other sciences.

The fundamentals of the action frame of reference have been extensively dealt with elsewhere and need only to be briefly summarized here. The frame of reference concerns the "orientation" of one or more actors, i.e. in the fundamental individual case of a biological organisms—to a situation, which includes other actors. Therefore the scheme, that is, relative to the units of action and interaction, is a relational scheme.

The situation is defined as consisting of objects of orientation, so that the orientation of a given actor is differentiated relative to the different objects and classes of them of which his situation is composed. It is convenient in action terms to classify the object world as composed of the three classes of "social," "physical," and "cultural" objects. A social object is an actor, which may in turn be any given other individual actor (alter), the actor who is taken as a point of reference himself (ego), or a collectivity which is treated as a unit for purposes of the analysis of orientation. Physical objects are empirical entities which do not "interact" with or "respond" to ego. They are means and conditions of his action. Cultural objects are symbolic elements of the cultural tradition, ideas or beliefs, expressive symbols or value patterns so far...