Profile Major Works Resources

Talcott Parsons, 1902-1979

Founder of the American "functionalist" school of sociology, which sought to draw sociology away from the traditional view of society as an "organism" view to a "mechanical" view of social equilibrium.  Parsons was a professor at Harvard from 1927 until the end of his career.

Talcott Parsons brought the continental sociological theories of Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto  and Emile Durkheim to America.  The English translation of Vilfredo Pareto's Trattato in 1935 energized Parsons and his colleagues at Harvard.  Parsons helped set up the famous "Pareto seminar" at Harvard at this time, which included the participation of Joseph Schumpeter and L.J. Henderson.  This led up to Parsons' famous 1937 book, Structure of Social Action, which has been rightly regarded as a landmark in sociological theory, forging together the theories of Weber, Durkheim and Pareto into Parsons's single analytical scheme.  

 

  

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Major Works of Talcott Parsons

  • "Capitalism in Recent German Theory", 1929, JPE
  • "Pareto's Central Analytical Scheme", 1936, J of Social Philosophy
  • The Structure of Social Action: A study of social theory with special reference to a group of recent European writers, 1937 [1949 ed, av] [intro mrx]
  • Social System, 1951 [av]
  • (Editor, with E. Shils) Toward a General Theory of Action, 1951 [av]
  • Essays in Sociological Theory, 1954 [av]
  • Structure and Process in Modern Societies, 1960
  • Theories of Society: foundations of modern sociological theory, with E. Shils, K.D. Naegele and J.R. Pitts, 1961 v.1 [av], v.2 [av]
  • Sociological Theory and Modern Society, 1968
  • Politics and Social Structure, 1969.

 
HET

 
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Resources on  Talcott Parsons

 

 
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