Some Remarks on "The Social System"

This article considers the propositions put forward in The Social System, by Talcott Parsons, which illustrate Parsons' analysis of social dynamics. For Parsons, the social system is a system of action. It is made up of the interactions of individuals. Of special concern to sociology is the fact that such interactions are not random but mediated by common standards of evaluation. Most important among these are moral standards, which may be called norms. Such norms structure action. Because individuals share the same definition of the situation in terms of such norms, their behaviour can be intermeshed to produce a social structure. That sociology should deal with a particular set of problems within the theory of social systems is the position taken by Parsons in his discussion of the division of labour between the social sciences. Here sociology is defined as having to do with the process of institutionalization of normative patterns : that aspect of the theory of social systems which is concerned with the phenomena of institutionalization of patterns of value-orientation in the social system, and of changes in the patterns, with conditions of conformity with and deviance from a set of such patterns, and with motivational processes in so far as they are involved in all of these. Parsons' concern with the normative and his definition of sociology as a discipline exploring the dynamics of the normative, is in one way an attempt, whether intentional or unintentional, to make the status of sociology less ambiguous by making it a special social science. But this confinement, which has a definite conceptual expression, seems to break down, both on a theoretical and an empirical level, when the problems of social stability and change are tackled.