Parsons' Sociological Theory

Structural functionalism, represented by T. Parsons, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, was the dominant theory and methodology of western sociology in 1950s and 1960s.

Parsons deliberately integrated the different theoretical viewpoints of Pareto, A. Marshall, Durkheim and Weber, organically combined British utilitarian economics, French positivism and German historicism tradition, and constructed a will-based action theory to replace the social behavior theory of American popular positivism variant psychology. According to Parsons' theory, every actor has certain freedom of choice in the choice of means and goals, which is deeply restricted and influenced by the environment and regulated by people's norms and values. Parsons emphasized that the recognition of the same value is the basic factor in the formation of social order, and he deeply discussed how individual actions caused by different people's subjective orientations can be combined to form interdependent social actions. Among them, his five model variables, universalism and particularism, achievement performance and pre-endowments, emotion and non-emotion, specialization and diffusion, self-orientation and collective orientation, are the explanations of people's ways to meet their needs through social actions, and AGIL (adaptation, goal achievement, integration and potential model maintenance) analysis model emphasizes the functional requirements of social systems; The two are interrelated and intertwined, which makes structural functionalism realize the synthesis of early action theory and functionalism in a highly theoretical abstract form.

Parsons' main works:

Structure of social action

social system

Economy and society

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