Talcott Parsons was perhaps the most ambitious and influential sociologist of his generation. Parsons was born at Colorado Springs, Colorado, on 13 December 1902. He was educated at Amherst College (Massachusetts), the London School of Economics, and Heidelberg University, from which he received a doctorate in economics in 1927. Parsons served on the faculty at Harvard University from 1927 until his retirement in 1973. He played a key role in the organization of the interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations at Harvard (now defunct), serving as chair of that department from 1946 to 1956. Parsons was a prolific, if notoriously abstruse writer, producing more than a dozen major books and scores of articles on a variety of (mainly theoretical) subjects. His most influential works are The Structure of Social Action (1937) and The Social System (1951). Parsons died in Munich on 8 May 1979.

While at Heidelberg, Parsons came under the influence of Continental sociology, particularly the work of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Parsons was subsequently responsible, more than any other figure, for introducing the thought of these theorists into Anglo-American sociology. He translated Weber’s famous essay on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism into English in 1930; he analysed the work of Durkheim and Weber at length in The Structure of Social Action (1937); and his edited version of Weber’s Economy and Society appeared in 1947 under the title The Theory of Social and Economic Organization.

Parsons himself attempted to elaborate nothing less than a comprehensive theory of society, a general theory of ‘the social system’. He argued that the economy is a functional subsystem of the larger social system and that economic theory, consequently, is a ‘special case’ of the general theory of society. Parsons put forth the controversial claim that the thought of Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim, and Weber ‘converged’ on what he called a ‘voluntaristic theory of action’. This theory emphasizes the normative and purposive dimensions of social (including economic) behaviour, rejecting purely utilitarian or interest-based accounts. Parsons also emphasized the importance of shared cultural values in his treatment of the ‘Hobbesian problem’ of social order and in his analyses of social change.

Parson’s ‘grand theory’ continues to generate considerable debate. For his proponents, Parson’s work ranks among the most sophisticated attempts to overcome the antinomies of modern social thought; for his critics, Parsons’s ponderous prose conceals a simplistic and fundamentally conservative cultural determinism.

Selected Works

  • 1937. The structure of social action. New York: McGraw-Hill.

  • 1951. The social system. New York: Free Press.