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SOC3070 - Lecture 6

SOC3070 - Lecture 6. Talcott Parsons. Functional Historical Sociology and the Convergence Thesis. The historical sociology of Durkheim, Marx, Weber History as the way social action and social structure create and contain one another

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SOC3070 - Lecture 6

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  1. SOC3070 - Lecture 6 Talcott Parsons

  2. Functional Historical Sociology and the Convergence Thesis

  3. The historical sociology of Durkheim, Marx, Weber History as the way social action and social structure create and contain one another Historical sociology aims to recognise the historical structuring of action

  4. Reaction against contemporary evolutionary theories Identifying patterns and tendencies without falling into teleology (developments are due to the purpose that is served by them) Interaction of purpose and structure without law-like necessity independent of human action

  5. It’s a difficult task: Durkheim: the logic of division of labour Marx: inevitability of socialism Weber: bureaucratization as fate

  6. Postwar period: neo-evolutionism, and debate about ‘convergence’. The industrial destiny of all societies Meta-historical laws of development. Inevitable destiny of society Key figure: Talcott Parsons

  7. Parsons The evolution of social systems towards ever higher level of social organisation Change is driven by the logic of development, in the form of functional necessities Example: the family

  8. Modernisation moves towards pluralism, decentralisation, individualism According to these criteria, the USA are the most advanced society

  9. Parsons’ analysis: Industrialism is a type of social system that emerged from a process of structural differentiation Structural solutions to functional problems Structural change seem divorced from historical action The ultimate cause of change is not human agency, but rather its functionality, its role in the process of development

  10. Functional analysis can conceal that history is made by people, not functions Parsons’ vision of social evolution seems abstracted from the concrete enactment of history by historical actors

  11. Parsons on evolution: The driving force is differentiation; in turn it increases the ‘adaptive capacity of society’ (i.e. productivity) Differentiation raises problems of integration and values that must be solved From these standards (differentiation, productivity) derives the primacy of the USA

  12. Parsons on American history: American society as ‘associational’, differentiated and integrated Not much empirical evidence for this For functionalists like Parsons, function explains why things happens. How they did happen is less relevant

  13. The debate on convergence of all industrial societies towards common forms of organisation The ‘convergence thesis’, most famously presented in Industrialism and the Industrial Man (1960) The ‘logic of industrialism’ overcomes everything else (agency, historical variations,…) Towards a ‘pluralistic industrialism’ Their work lacks historical depth (unlike, for example, the work of Marx) Inevitability in historical sociology

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