The Mysterious Disappearance of an Action System in Parsons and Elsewhere

• In Event: 024 - Regular Session. Correcting the History of Sociology: Du Bois, Odum, Parsons, and Merton

Abstract

Essential in Parsons’s sociology was the notion of “action systems,” series of actions interlinked systematically through meanings. Oddly, he identified three main classes of them but used only two as bases for central concepts – viz., social systems and personalities. Where social systems are interconnected actions of two or more actors and personalities are interconnected actions of an actor in reference to his or her self, there is also the class of interconnected actions of individual actors pursuing distal goals. Examples are when people make things or when they pursue educational, career, or religious goals. In this paper I show where Parsons identified these systems in his early work, how he went on to name, formalize, schematize, and in later work, elaborate on extensively, the two classes of systems, while leaving the third unnamed, residual, and perpetually unmarked. I argue that compared to social system and personality, the other class of action system warrants the same level of treatment with respect to theorization, formalization, and empirical study – e.g., sustained study of the structures of activities in society and of peoples’ strivings. I then discuss some of the negative consequences of the omission in Parsons, and end y arguing that an equivalent omission has continued in sociology.

Author

• Michael E. Bare, University of Chicago