Parsons - Essays in Sociological Theory

ESSAYS IN
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Revised Edition

TALCOTT PARSONS

REVISED EDITION

TALCOTT PARSONS

THE FREE PRESS
A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
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Copyright 1954 and 1949 by The Free Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-029-24030-4

eISBN-13: 978-1-439-11921-1

ESSAYS IN
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Revised Edition

THE FIRST EDITION of this volume of Essays appeared in 1949. In the Introduction written at that time it seemed appropriate to say that it brought together work done by the author since the publication of his book, The Structure of Social Action in 1937. In preparing a new edition, the Free Press and the author thought in terms of work which lies between the aforementioned book and three new publications in the field of general theory which document a new phase in the development of the authors theoretical thinking. These are the monograph, Values, Motives and Systems of Action, written in collaboration with Edward A. Shils and published in the volume Toward a General Theory of Action (Harvard University Press, 1951) of which the two of us were co-editors; The Social System (Free Press, 1951); and the collection entitled Working Papers in the Theory of Action (Free Press, 1953), written in collaboration with Robert F. Bales and Edward A. Shils.

When the Free Press was considering the present new edition of the Essays, some of the papers printed in the Working Papers were either written or in process. The question arose as to whether any of these should be included in a new edition of the Essays, but at the time it seemed advisable to reserve all theoretical work done since the completion of The Social System for the separate publication of Working Papers and thus to confine the new edition of these Essays to work done before the new theoretical phase was under way. The present edition therefore was planned to end with the essay on The Prospects of Sociological Theory, the authors presidential address before the American Sociological Society at its 1949 meeting, which was written in the midst of the work leading to Toward A General Theory of Action and points up the transition between these phases of intellectual development.

Since the Working Papers went to press, however, two other papers have been written which it has seemed advisable to include in the present collection. Both are to be published elsewhere but would through these channels have come to the attention of only rather restricted groups. Since they belong in the broad field of application of sociological theory and stand in the line of scientific development documented by these essays, they seemed to belong in the collection.

Within this general policy, several new items have thus been included in this new edition which were not part of the original one, and in order not to allow the volume to grow too large, three items in the earlier edition have been omitted.

The new additions fall into three classes. First, there are three papers which had been written before the publication of the first edition of these essays, but for reasons partly of space, and partly of balance, were not included in the volume at that time. These all fall in the applied category of essays in theory, dealing with large problems of the analysis and interpretation of institutional structures of the modern world, and dynamic processes of social change in it. The dominant focus of all three is on the political situation, a focus which is at least partly attributable to the urgencies of the time.

These three papers are, in order of their writing and placing in the new volume: (1) Chapter VI, Democracy and Social Structure in Pre-Nazi Germany. This was written for and published in the first issue of the then new Journal of Legal and Political Sociology in 1942. It reflected the authors long-standing interest in problems of German society and forms a companion piece to the later paper on Controlled Institutional Change. (2) Chapter VII, Some Sociological Aspects of the Fascist Movements. This was written as the presidential address to the Eastern Sociological Society at its 1942 meeting, and was published in Social Forces, December, 1942. It attempts to generalize some of the insights developed in relation to Germany about the social background of the fascist movement, and to state them in terms of their relations to certain general features of modern Western society. (3) Chapter XIII, The Population and Social Structure of Japan. This was published in the collaborative volume Japans Prospect (D. G. Haring, Ed., Harvard University Press, 1946) by members of the faculty of the Harvard School for Overseas Administration. It is an attempt to extend to an Oriental society the same order of structural and dynamic analysis which had previously been developed in connection with Western countries.

The next three additions are papers written since the appearance of the first edition of these essays but prior to the general theoretical work cited above. These are (1) Chapter XV, Social Classes and Class Conflict in the Light of Recent Sociological Theory. This was read at a meeting of the American Economic Association in December, 1948, which was concerned with assessment of the scientific influence of Marx in economics and sociology on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. It was published in Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Review, May, 1949. It is an attempt to bring to bear the main lines of modern sociological analysis on the problems of class conflict as stated in Marxist theory. (2) Chapter XVI, Psychoanalysis and the Social Structure. This paper was read at a meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in May, 1948, and published in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, July 1950. It is included because it states in rather general terms the authors approach to the relations between psychoanalysis and sociology. This theme has become a most important one in subsequent work. (3) The last addition in this group is the one already mentioned, Chapter XVII, The Prospects of Sociological Theory, which points the way to the phase of theoretical work which was just beginning at the time it was written.

Finally, come the last two papers mentioned above which were written after those appearing in the Working Papers. The first of these, Chapter XVIII, is A Sociologist Looks at the Legal Profession. This paper was read at the 50th Anniversary Symposium of the University of Chicago Law School in December, 1952. It is concerned with the similarities and differences between the place and functions of the legal profession in modern society and the medical profession which had been the object of considerable earlier study. It has proved possible in this paper to draw a closer analogy between the two professions than had at first seemed possible. The final paper added is A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social Stratification. This paper was written for the