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The article analyzes the Amherst papers in relation to development of Parsons' theory. A careful analysis of the Amherst papers reveals that the basic ideas and philosophical principles that Parsons followed throughout his life were already in place, some more fully developed than others, yet forming an integrally coherent pattern to a surprising degree. The clear existence in Parsons's Amherst papers of a metatheoretical framework predating his later professional writing calls into question some still existing myths about radical breaks in the development of Parsons's theory. In one version of this mythology, Parsons began his theory as a voluntarist, then became a structural-functionalist, later moved on to become a systems-theorist and ended up as a social evolutionist. Despite such claims, Parsons always was a voluntarist, even during his so-called structural-functionalist middle period. The Amherst papers reveal an amazingly complex and logically coherent theoretical system-in the mind of a twenty-year-young man-and testify to an extraordinary scope of philosophical depth, and intellectual maturity.

The decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons' major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the Joseph McCarthy movement in American politics. In the 1960s, he contributed supportive essays to the Civil Rights movement. Later in the decade and in the 1970s, he contributed to the protection of academic freedoms while also proposing accommodations to the demands of the student movement for more "relevant" teaching and greater participation in university governance. Throughout his career, he taught and worked closely with students of various political views and sought to protect their rights of freedom of political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short article pleads for research rather than rumor regarding Parsons' alleged role regarding the admittance to United States of an ex-Soviet citizen in 1948 or 1949. Some evidence on background issues that could be found among the Parsons papers at Harvard University Archives is being presented verbatim. I argue that the point is to refrain from fabrications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section introduces the articles featured in the summer 2000 issue of The American Sociologist. As a new millennium unfolds, a global dialogue in sociology is underway that promises to enrich and renew culture-bound sociological imaginations. As Gary Marx notes, by 1911 Edward A. Ross, a towering figure in his day, had published a book for popular audiences about China as seen by a sociological traveler. Karl Marx brings this commentary up to date, and provides insight into a reality that Ross did not experience, namely, the teaching of sociology in Chinese universities. William Buxton has gathered together a fascinating set of materials about U.S. interest in Asia, with particular reference to Talcott Parsons, Harvard University and Japan. As he notes, these materials call into question simplistic views of Parsons as a Eurocentric thinker by documenting an ongoing encounter with Asia that extended from the 1940s through the late 1970s. One product of events at Harvard was a graduate-seminar paper written in 1941 by Marion Levy and rediscovered by him a half century later. In addition to its relevance for the emergent sociology of Asia, Levy's paper is a most interesting example of early functionalist analysis in U.S. sociology.

This article provides information about the invitation made by the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology," for articles from economists and sociologists on Talcott Parsons's contribution to a dialogue between economics and sociology, the economic ideas discussed in his works, and the potential of his theories for illuminating a multitude of issues located on the border between the two disciplines. More than 20 years after his death, Talcott Parsons is still regarded as the most influential American sociologist. So broad was the scope of his theoretical inquiry, it transcended sociology and crossed into fields of other social sciences, of which economics played a particularly important role in Parsons's intellectual career. It would not be an exaggeration to say that building a bridge between economics and sociology was one of the major goals of Parsons's intellectual life. Authors interested in participating should submit a 600-word abstract to the journal editor, Professor Laurence S. Moss. The deadline for the submission of the abstract is November 30, 2004. The proposed final version of the paper will be due on February 1, 2005.

This contribution to consideration of "Talcott Parsons and Politics" explores the kind of optimism of sociology's "incurable theorist" that is evident in his mature view of the USA as the world's "New Lead" society. Statements related to optimism can be identified in his extensive writings and this article focuses upon its expression when as an "early career academic" in the late 1920s and 1930s he laid the foundations for his life-long work in sociology. Parsons' sociology developed as the USA's twentieth century contribution unfolded. His "moderate optimism" about the viability of the American experiment shares deeply and intimately in his claim that sociology had finally emerged as an analytical social science oriented by the theory of social action. His mature work considers the "societal community" to be the peculiar focus for sociology's special scientific attention. The USA has taken on this "New Lead" role at the same time that the societal community itself has emerged from within American experience. The discussion here is as much a personal memoire of the author, revisiting efforts to understand how the earliest stages of Parsons's sociology were maintained by him over a long career. Parsons sociological scholarship exhibited American characteristics. As sociology's "incurable theorist" he sought understanding of his own (American) situation, and its context, past and present, seeking to promote a social science that contributed positively to global society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The information chain theory developed by reformulating Talcott Parsons' four function paradigm as information chains of varying length, using Gordon Allport and Leo Postman's findings on rumor for the information chain paradigm, using life expectancy as the dependent variable, and organizing concepts from across the social sciences as different values of six variables. The theory has been tested with data from all countries of the world in 1986 and 2008. The equations obtained have been put into a spreadsheet that allows users to apply the theory to explore various policy options. The theory also led to understanding money as missing an essential element, a unit for price defined by a measuring instrument. Currency exchange rates support using an hour of work defined by the visible hands of the clock as that unit. The concept of 'hour money' has been tested with a board game and computer simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic divide between economics and sociology suggested by Talcott Parsons in the 1930s is based on a fundamentally mischievous and incoherent reading of various authors from the tradition of political economy. The interpretations proposed by Parsons are criticized, and it is thereby concluded that this divide has inhibited more than propitiated the intellectual commerce within social sciences, although no doubt enhancing Parsons' academic position. At any rate, it has also assured an academic recognition for sociology, if in a subaltern - situation vis-à-vis economics. Further theoretical reformulations by Parsons are confirmation of previously mentioned incoherence and misunderstandings, without resolving them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information related to sociologist Talcott Parsons. It is no doubt very well known that Talcott Parsons was of New England ancestry. It may be less well known how pure this ancestry was. His father, Edward Smith Parsons (1863-1943), had a strong interest in genealogy and did quite a bit of work (evidently some of it with the help of other family members) tracing his ancestry and that of his wife, Mary Augusta Ingersoll Parsons (1863-1944). He verified that every line of the ancestry of both could be traced back into seventeenth-century New England. Several ancestors apparently came to Massachusetts Bay Colony in its earliest years, and it appears that one came on the Mayflower. Edward wrote out handwritten copies of the genealogy for his children. The one he gave to his son is now in the author's possession, but some years ago the copy was given to the Harvard University Archives, so that some people may have seen it. The earliest direct male ancestor who was traced is John Parsons, who is a couple of generations younger than those who came to New England in the 1630s. It is not known where or exactly when he was born. But it seems very likely that he was the first of the family to settle in York, Maine, on the coast six miles from the river dividing Maine from New Hampshire.

The history of sociology is marked by periods of theoretical pluralism and hegemony. Their interplay has resulted in the slow and uneven development of the discipline. Today, however, bodies of theory and practice have become so diverse that many scholars worry that sociology is in a state of disintegration. The theoretical career of Talcott Parsons provides a microcosm in which to explore similar processes. Building on the success of The Structure of Social Action, Parsons led a movement that transformed Harvard's Department of Sociology into the Department of Social Relations. There he attempted a grander, but failed synthesis in Toward A General Theory of Action. His case provides a situation in which to explore features of disciplinary integration and fragmentation, The comparison stimulates one to fashion an informed sense of whether sociology is now facing its latest crisis or may be in the process of decomposition as a corpus of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the problematic relationship between the theoretical work of the writers, Talcott Parsons and Georg Simmel. Parsons in his book "The Structure of Social Action," which is his finest single work, established the base line vocabulary for modern sociology. The book makes three principal claims: first, prior to the generation of Max Weber, social theorists were divided between those who viewed action as organized solely by the utilitarian pursuit of benefits and those who viewed action as organized solely in terms of affectively grounded normative dispositions, second, the thought Weber converged behind a single theoretical orientation constituted by the view that action is shaped both by utilitarian interests and normative ideals and, third, the reconstruction represents the core line of theoretical development in sociology. One notable consequence of the peculiar selectivity of Parsons' book has been the exclusion of Simmel from the pantheon of sociological classics, following decades in which Simmel figured as a preeminent originative thinker.

Parsons's analysis of Marx and its conclusion that Marx was a utilitarian are criticized. I endeavor to demonstrate that Marx succeeded in avoiding the pitfalls of both idealism and positivism and that he must be viewed as the founder of the voluntaristic theory of social action. In addition, I contend that this categorization makes a difference; if we incorporate Marx into action theory, build action theory on a Marxian foundation, certain problems within Parsons's work can be resolved. I illustrate this contention in a discussion of the relationship between structural and Junctional theory. "An earnest warning is given against … premature claims to finality. The author has been more or less intensively concerned with the major works of the men treated in this study over periods ranging from six to ten years. After considerable periods of occupation in other fields, he has come back to intensive reconsideration of their works. Every time this reconsideration brought to light fundamentally important things about them which had been missed before. The most important points, for the purposes of this study, were not understood at the first reading, but generally only alter repeated consideration." (Parsons, 1948:40) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the contributions sociologist Talcott Parsons to the phenomenological tradition in sociology. From his early work in "The Structure of Social Action" in 1937 forward, he drew upon a phenomenological perspective in developing his action theory. The voluntaristic theory of action, his earliest systematic thinking, combined the individual's orientation to normative ideals with what he later termed the concept of internalized compliance. This process of compliance was elaborated through his subsequent applications of both Freudian theory and economic models of rationality to explain individual behavior. While distinct from phenomenological descriptions of motive, these rationalist paradigms included the actor's state of mind and subjective orientations as variables. His continued concern and misgivings about a phenomenological perspective in sociology are revealed by the 1974 retrospective comment. He contended that direct recording and analysis of empirical reality was impossible. All facts obtain their status through interpretation and are subject to further verification on the theoretical level. Hence, empirical knowledge is the basic resource for systematic theorizing.