Essays in Sociological Theory

Talcott Parsons

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780029240304
• eBook ISBN: 9781439119211
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Talcott Parsons needs little introduction to anyone acquainted with the literature of sociology. Few men have dominated their fields so much as Dr. Parsons does his.
In this collection of nineteen essays, Dr. Parsons focuses his attention on subjects ranging from the social structure of Japan to propaganda and social control, from sociological aspects of Fascist movements to the place of psychoanalysis in society. Also dealt with are such topics as: The role of ideas in social action, the motivation of economic activities, American social structure, social classes and class conflict, and the prospects for contemporary sociological theory.
The whole body of essays presented here belongs in the broad field of "application" of sociological theory. It stands in the line of scientific development of the most advanced techniques for sociological investigation and evaluation of data.

A Revised Analytical Approach
to the Theory of
Social Stratification*

IT HAS COME to be rather widely recognized in the sociological field that social stratification is a generalized aspect of the structure of all social systems, and that the system of stratification is intimately linked to the level and type of integration of the system as a system.

The major point of reference both for the judgment of the generality of the importance of stratification, and for its analysis as a phenomenon, is to be found in the nature of the frame of reference in terms of which we analyze social action. We conceive action to be oriented to the attainment of goals, and hence to involve selective processes relative to goals. Seen in their relations to goals, then, all the components of systems of action and of the situations in which action takes place, are subject to the process of evaluation, as desirable or undesirable, as useful or useless, as gratifying or noxious. Evaluation in turn has, when it operates in the setting of social systems of action, two fundamental implications. First the units of systems, whether they be elementary unit acts or roles, collectivities, or personalities, must in the nature of the case be subject to evaluation. To say that all acts were valued equally, that it did not “matter” what a person did or how he did it, would simply be to say that the category of evaluation was irrelevant to the analysis of action. But given the process of evaluation, the probability is that it will serve to differentiate entities in a rank order of some kind. Exactly equal evaluation of two or more entities may of course occur, but it is a special case of evaluative judgment, not a demonstration of its irrelevance. Just how great the differentiations may be, how permanent or generalized they are, and by what criteria they are made is of course the focus of a whole series of analytical and empirical problems, but that they should be imputed to actors in a system is inherent in the frame of reference we employ for the analysis of social interaction.¹

The second implication is the well-known one that it is a condition of the stability of social systems that there should be an integration of the value-standards of the component units to constitute a “common value-system.” Again the content of such a common value system and the degree and modes of its integration with the actual action of the units in a social system vary empirically. But the existence of such a pattern system as a point of reference for the analysis of social phenomena is a central assumption which follows directly from the frame of reference of actions as applied to the analysis of social systems.

Stratification in its valuational aspect then is the ranking of units in a social system in accordance with the standards of the common value system. This ranking may be equal but obviously from a logical point of view this is a limiting case, and there are good reasons to believe that from an empirical point of view it should also be so regarded, the more so the larger and more complex the system. The valuational aspect must be analytically distinguished from the others entering into the total “power” system of a society.

In the above statement care has been taken to use the very general term “unit” as the “that which” to which ranking evaluation is applied. One of the most important ranges of problems in the field of stratification is the discrimination of the different kinds of units to which the categories of stratification can be applied, and the order of relations of these different kinds of units to each other.

It will simplify our analysis if in a strict sense we focus attention on social systems, and hence confine the technical discussion of the bases of social stratification to the ranking of the units of a given system of specific reference in terms of scope and time-span. We may then maintain that for a given social system, in the theoretical sense, there can be only one kind of unit, which is the “membership” role, or status-role complex. The “actor” of whom this is a role may, however, be either an individual human being or a collectivity, and it is particularly important to keep in mind that these two cross-cut each other, a collectivity by definition is composed of a plurality of roles pertaining to actors each of whom has roles in several different collectivities. Strictly speaking we will not refer to a personality as having a place in a scale or system of social stratification, because even in the case of the total society an individual’s membership does not exhaust his personality as a system.

This focus on the specific social system is, we believe, exceedingly important. But the familiar sociological fact that a given actor has a plurality of roles, calls our attention to the fact that the particular system which is isolated for analysis never stands alone but is always articulated with a plurality of other systems, specifically though not exclusively, the systems in which the same actors have other roles, such for example as kinship units and occupational organizations in our society. We have found by experience that a great many of the problems of empirical sociological analysis can most effectively be handled by treating more than one system at a time. We shall have occasion below to consider a number of problems in these terms, but in the meantime it is most important to define our terms and the basic relationships with which we are concerned in terms of a single system of reference, and then to introduce the further complications involved in the articulations of more than one system with each other.

Specific judgments of evaluation are not applied to the system unit as such—except in a limiting case—but to particular properties of that unit—always by comparison with others in the system. These properties may be classificatory, in the sense of characterizing the unit independently of its relations to other objects in a system as in the case of sex, age or specific abilities, or they may be relational, characterizing the way in which it is related to other entities as in the case of membership in a kinship unit.²

Looked at on another basis the properties to which a judgment may be applied may be classified as qualities, performances (including their reward significance as sanctions) and possessions.³

Qualities are those properties of a unit which can be evaluated independently of any change in its relations to objects in its situation, but may be ascribed to the unit as such. Thus when we say a man “has an I.Q. of 120” we describe a quality usually called “intelligence.” When, however, we say, “he gave the right answer to the question” we describe a performance, which is thus a process of change in his relation to a situational object, the questioner, which can be ascribed to his “agency.” Qualities may be interpreted, of course, in whole or in part, as consequences of previous processes of performance, on the part of the system-unit in question and/or of others in the system, and performances are never understandable without reference to an ascriptive or quality point of reference which describes “that which” is the starting point of the performance and that which brings it about. Thus to give the right answer the man had to be “intelligent.” Or to say a man is now a member of the American Sociological Society is to describe a quality, but he got there by a variety of performances including (if an “active” member) getting a Ph.D., applying for membership and paying his dues. Hereditary status is the limiting case where only qualities and no prior performances are the requisites, the “ascriptive base,” of a social status.⁴

Possessions are situational objects which are intrinsically transferable and to which an actor ( individual or collective ) in a social system has a specific relationship of “control” such that he has in the institutionalized case rights to their use, control or disposal differentiated from those held by other units in the system. In the nature of the case possessions are valued objects, valued directly by their possessor and either actually or potentially by others in the system. Possession is thus a category not of the “intrinsic” nature of the object, but of its relation to a unit in a system as distinguished from its relation to other units in the same system. Possessions in turn may be of two primary orders of significance in social systems, either of which may have primacy. On the one hand they may be “facilities,” i.e. means-objects relative to instrumental goal-attainment processes, on the other hand “rewards,” i.e. objects which either are objects of direct gratification or are symbolically associated with such objects.⁵

It is quite clear that the concrete hierarchical “position” of a system-unit in a social system cannot be only a function of its place in the scale of valuation relative to an integrated common value-system, because no social system is ever perfectly integrated in this sense. It is convenient to conceptualize this element of discrepancy between the normatively defined “ideal” ranking order and the actual state of affairs, in terms of the relation between ranking in value terms and “power.” Power we may define as the realistic capacity of a system-unit to actualize its “interests” ( attain goals, prevent undesired interference, command respect, control possessions, etc.) within the context of system-interaction and in this sense to exert influence on processes in the system.⁶

Power in this sense we may conceive to be the resultant of three sets of factors which are cognate with the above aspects of institutionalized ranking but are treated differently in order to permit the analysis of discrepancies between institutionalized standards and the empirical state of affairs. The first of these is the valuation of the unit in the system according to value standards, whether completely common throughout the system or not, and including both the quantitative and the qualitative aspects of judgment in relation to the standards. The second is the degree to which and the manner in which actors in the system permit deviance from these standards in performance. The most obvious way in which this factor can be seen to operate is the permission of other actors to allow any one (ego) to do things which are more or less out of line with the common value standards. The third set of factors is the control of possessions, which is a source of differential advantage in bringing about a desired result (including preventing one not desired). The assumption is that these three sets of factors are interdependent and hence that “position” with respect to any one of them will be correlated with position with respect to each of the others, but they will also be to some degree independent.

From this point of view one type of measure of the integration of a social system (that in terms of pattern consistency) should be the degree to which ranking in terms of paramount common value standards does in fact correlate with all three of the above sets of factors. Any such correlation would, however, be a complex resultant of a variety of considerations. Thus there is no reason to believe that all of the units in the system conform or are expected to conform equally with the common value-standards. If ego—the unit of reference—conforms relatively more fully than the others this may diminish ego’s power relative to that of the others because he is less willing to exploit opportunities forbidden by the norms. On the other hand his own deviance, if it happens to mesh with that of others, may increase his power, because he is allowed to “get away with it.” The effect of deviance on power naturally depends on just what the nature of the deviance in question on both sides is. Similarly, access to possessions is always to some degree a function of factors which are “adventitious” from the point of view of the value-standards of the system; these discrepancies may or may not be corrected by the equilibrating mechanisms of the system.⁷

The problems of the place of power in social systems shade directly over into those of authority. Both root in the most elementary fundamentals of social interaction on the one hand, its normative control on the other. Interaction, as we will discuss further below, is a continual interplay of what we call “performance” and “sanctions.” What people do has an influence on the state of the system as a system, and on each other as members; the latter is the sanction aspect. In so far as influence on the action of others in the system becomes an institutionalized expectation of a role, we have the roots of authority. Authority, finally, is full blown when this institutionalized expectation comes to include the legitimation of “coercive” sanctions, that is the right to impose consequences deprivational to alter in case he fails to act as ego has an institutionalized right to expect he will, and of course to use the “threat” of such consequences to motivate alter to “conform.”

Authority in this sense is an aspect of power in a system of social interaction; it is institutionalized power over others. In the nature of the case it must be evaluated, and therefore like other evaluated aspects, be stratified. In the strictest sense we probably ought to say that every member of a social system has some authority, at the very least he would be felt to be justified in passively resisting “unreasonable” demands upon him by others, in effect saying negatively “if you do this, I won’t—” do something expected. This is certainly a coercive sanction. In common usage however we tend to restrict the term authority to the higher ranges of the stratification of institutionalized power; thus we speak of parental authority over children but seldom of children’s authority over their parents.

It should also be noted that authority, as legitimizing the use of power involving coercive sanctions, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of a much larger family of mechanisms of social control each of which may involve an element of authority, but also other elements as well. Thus patterns of religious ritual, of therapy, and of facilitation of ecological adjustment through intervention in the distribution of possessions or communication may serve this type of function. We will comment briefly on some of these problems below.

Empirically the imperfections of integration of social systems formulated by the two non-valuational components of the power of a unit may be extremely important. However, the point of view from which we approach the analysis of stratification prescribes that analysis should focus on the common value-pattern aspect. Only through this can we gain stable points of reference for a technical theoretical analysis of the empirical influence of the other components of the system-process. This is essentially because on general theoretical grounds we can state that the “focus” of the structure of a system of action lies in the common value-pattern aspect of its culture.

We have throughout treated the stratification of a social system as an aspect of its fundamental structure. It may be regarded as one of the most important conclusions of sociological theory that the distinction between the normative and the factual aspects of a social system must be regarded as relative. The basic categories in terms of which we describe a system as a structure, i.e. as a set of objects seen from the point of view of an observer, are the same as those in terms of which we describe the norms which regulate behavior or performance. This does not in any way imply that deviance from normative expectations is not to be treated as important, but concerns only the nature of the categories in terms of which social phenomena are to be described and analyzed.

Every unit in a system of action, e.g. the actor in a social role, is treated both as an object having ascertainable qualities, and as an entity performing the functions of a role. In the quality aspect we may, so far as his position in the system is concerned, speak of an actor’s status; in the performance aspect we may speak of his role in the narrower technical sense. The value-standards of the common value system then will on the one hand categorize the units of the system as objects in status terms, and the units will be stratified in this respect so far as application of these status categories leads to differences of evaluation according to the common standards. At the same time, for objects having the qualities in question there will also be expected performances. These in turn will be evaluated in terms of norms, and the actual performances will be differentially evaluated.

The distinction of performance and quality is, it is important to recognize, relative. Every performance implies what may be called an ascriptive or a “quality-base,” a description of “that which” acts. The evaluation of performances is always relative to that base; we never literally mean that a performance is to be judged with no reference to who is responsible for it. Thus we say “pretty good, considering he is only twelve years old” or “Somebody with all his experience ought to have done better.” Naturally we very often think or speak eliptically, and just say “well done” or the reverse; but the quality-base may always be regarded as implicit if it is not explicit.

At the same time performances have consequences. If these concern only the situation of action, they may be ignored, not from the point of view of evaluation of the performance, but in the quality context. If, however, these consequences involve change in the properties of the actor (through learning), then we may speak of a change in his own quality-patterns. A child, as actor in a social system, does not remain unchanged, but his qualities develop as a function of the socialization process itself.

On the basis of recent theoretical work it seems possible to treat the standards on the basis of which both object-qualities and performances are evaluated as reducible to four fundamental types which correspond to what we believe to be the four dimensions of action systems.⁸ Any concrete system, including a single role-status unit considered as a sub-system, will be subjected to all four types of standard, but they will stand in different orders of precedence in different kinds of systems. We will first take up the four types of standard in their relation to the normative control of performances, and then speak of their application to the evaluation of status-qualities.

The first type of standard we wish to consider, in relation to the evaluation of objects and performances, involves in its cognitive aspect, what we call universalism. In relation to performance its dominance defines what we call “technical” norms which maximize universalistic values in the adaptation of action to the intrinsic properties of the situational object-system in the service of a specific goal. This is what in common sense terms we ordinarily mean by “efficiency.” The only reference is to the effectiveness with which objects in the situation are utilized (including adaptation to its uncontrollable features) in the interest of attainment of the goal. There is no consideration of the justification or usefulness of this particular goal-state itself nor of the consequences of the performances taken for other units in the system, i.e. in an integrative context, nor of change in qualities of the system. Cognitive knowledge of the situation is at a premium in defining a technical norm,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• I The Role of Ideas in Social Action
• II The Professions and Social Structure
• III The Motivation of Economic Activities
• IV An Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social Stratification
• V Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States
• VI Democracy and Social Structure in Pre Nazi Germany
• VII Some Sociological Aspects of the Fascist Movements
• VIII Propaganda and Social Control
• IX The Kinship System of the Contemporary United States
• X The Theoretical Development of the Sociology of Religion
• XI The Present Position and Prospects of Systematic Theory in Sociology
• XII The Problem of Controlled Institutional Change
• XIII Population and the Social Structure of Japan
• XIV Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World
• XV Social Classes and Class Conflict in the Light of Recent Sociological Theory
• XVI Psychoanalysis and the Social Structure
• XVII The Prospects of Sociological Theory
• XVIII A Sociologist Looks at the Legal Profession A
• A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social Stratificationa
• Index