PARSONS' "STRUCTURE" IN AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY.

The article discusses the book "The Structure of Social Action," by Talcott Parsons. The paper was prepared, at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association in 1987, a session held to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the book and it drew a large and interested audience. The Structure, would at that time have been taken as a founding event in a relatively consensual, proto-scientific discipline. For even as late as the mid 1960, Structure was still seen as parsons had originally presented it: as a framework of accumulated theoretical knowledge, on the basis of which predictions could be made and compared with what social scientists had subsequently discovered about empirical fact. But there are even more important reasons for the continuing contemporary relevance of Parsons' early work. It is not only that there continue to be important discussions about, and in relation to the book earlier concepts. It is also that people can now understand the influence of Structure in a more reflective and more accurate way.