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John Marshall is best remembered as the first resident director of the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center at Bellagio. Yet, his influence on knowledge, thought, and practice rivalled that of any of his contemporaries at the Rockefeller. This paper describes how he `went about his business' as a Foundation officer, and examines his contribution to the creation of a transatlantic community of like-minded theorists and practitioners of communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article relates the details of a meeting between sociologists Talcott Parsons and Ken'ichi Tominaga in 1978. The discussion between Talcott Parsons and Ken'ichi Tominaga took place at the Iwanami Shoten publishers office in Tokyo, Japan on the afternoon of December 12, 1978. Parsons arrived in Tokyo at mid-day, after having taken the train that had departed from Osaka around 9:00 a.m. that morning. In a letter written to Parsons, a few weeks before the Parsons' visit to Tokyo, Professor Tominaga described the Iwanami Shoten session as a colloquy with himself concerning the retrospection of Parsons on the formation of his own sociological thought. What Tominaga had in mind was something along the lines that Parsons had written for Daedalus. Iwanami Shoten had already shown some interest in Parson's work, having published in 1958 a Japanese translation of Economy and society, with an introduction by Tominaga. Parsons was paid an honorarium of 50,000 yen for the discussion, the same amount that he was given for his lecture later in the day. A few days prior to the discussion, Tominaga had supplied Parson with the following list of provisional questions: voluntarism vs. utilitarianism, motivation vs. value orientation, nature of system theory, relation between the Theory of Action and the Structural-functional theory, phenomenological approach.

In striking contrast to the conflict surrounding his earlier studies of Japanese society and culture, an amicable climate of mutual respect developed between Parsons and Japanese scholars in the 1970s. During this time, Parsons made two visits to Japan, where he was hailed as a great theorist whose views were taken most seriously by Japanese sociologists. The data indicate that, shortly before his sudden death in the spring of 1979, Parsons had begun to reformulate his ideas about modernization as a result of his increasing knowledge of Japanese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a text of the discussion that took place between Talcott Parsons and Ken'ichi Tominaga on December 12, 1978. Tominaga claims that he asked the editor of SHISO to publish questions and answers between them. His role will be limited to ask several questions. He also claims that his questions are from the point of view of the general readers and Japanese social scientists. According to Tominaga, the books and papers of Parsons developed much original theoretical thinking especially the voluntaristic theory of action, the action frame of reference, the theory of social system, structural-functional analysis, the paradigm of four functional requisites of A-G-I-L, the scheme of boundary interchange and the theory of generalized media of exchange. In terms of the problem areas, perhaps economic sociology, political sociology, and religious sociology would be the big three among other things and in addition to that, organization theory, social stratification, ego structure, educational problems, and medical problems are several topics which Parsons has developed. Parsons states that not only did he borrow ideas from European scholars but he actually translated two things from Max Weber from German into English and thinks that is one of the best possible ways to get to understand his work.

This article traces the involvement of Talcott Parsons in research and teaching about Asian nations, especially China and Japan, in the period of World War II. The data indicate that, in contrast to his Eurocentric image, Parsons worked to develop a global perspective in studies on comparative institutions. This approach, inspired by the sociology of Max Weber, also addressed the practical needs of policy makers in connection with the war effort. Within Parsons's intellectual biography, it stands between the "voluntaristic" framework of his early treatise, The Structure of Social Action (1937) and the later non-historical formalism of The Social System (1951) for which he is perhaps most famous. An understanding of this relatively unknown phase of Parsons's work is therefore indispensable for an adequate appreciation of his career as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the sociology of knowledge. Despite occasional outbursts, the sociology of knowledge has failed to emerge as a clearly defined area of research. Many social scientists have endeavored to define the sociology of knowledge as a disciplinary matrix, whose main identifying feature would be to empirically explain the relationship between ideas and social structure. Sociologist Karl Mannheim and his sociology of knowledge have been prominent targets for the presentist project in the social sciences, most notably through the efforts of another sociologist Robert Merton. The practice of sociology of knowledge is at odds with the overall concerns of a scientific community to enforce consensus of belief and method among its members. Despite the failure of Merton's groundwork to give form and substance to the sociology of knowledge, an inchoate field addressing similar issues has emerged.

The article discusses the essay "The Theory of Social Action in the Schutz-Parsons Debate," by Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab. The paper describes that in an age in which academics tend to confine themselves to familiar and predictable patterns of discourse, it is refreshing to return to an era in which searching discussion about foundational issues was not only possible, but eagerly carried out. The Parsons-Schutz "debate", which took place over a brief span a little more than fifty years ago, is notable as an exchange of this kind. The reasons are not difficult to deduce. Those working within human studies--particularly in Germany--have shown considerably more interest. But perhaps feeling that they have learned what is possible from the debate, they have moved on to other matters. More generally, with the demise of the sociology of knowledge and the philosophy of the social sciences, and the resurgence of positivism and applied quantitative approaches, less attention has been given in recent years to issues concerning the foundations of the social sciences.

The place of Georg Simmel in the thought of Talcott Parsons has come under increasing scrutiny, a concern fuelled by a "Simmel Renaissance" on the one hand, and by a resurgence of interest in Parsons's early writings on the other. This paper raises some question, about Parsons's interpretation of Simmel in light of the discovery of a second manuscript on Simmel that Parsons wrote in 1939. This document (which was unknown until quite recently) may best be seen as an elaboration and reworking of the fragment on Simmel that had been left out of The Structure of Social Action (1937). After summarizing and comparing the two documents, the paper demonstrates that Parsons blurred them in his recollections. This means that interpretations of his engagement with Simmel--which have often drawn on Parsons's later testimony (19681979)--need to be reconsidered. The discovery of the second manuscript also underscores the importance of examining how Simmel fit into Parsons's evolving thought, rather than narrowly focusing on why he left Simmel out of the convergence in European social thought that he traced in Structure. Taking the former approach as a point of reference, the paper outlines some interpretive issues that arise from the discovery of Parsons's second Simmel document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]