Parson

determined to provide a systematic, abstract, and generalizable theory

of social action. He wanted sociology to be a theoretically informed
science
whose analytical laws would be applicable to any society, and he saw
the development of
theory as essential to the growth and maturation of sociology
Parsons regarded all social units, whether groups, institutions or whole
societies as selfcontained social systems (1949/1954: 13) or social
action systems; each could be studied
and analyzed in its own right. Like durkheim, who underscored the
functions of specific
social structures (e.g., division of labor, crime, religion), Parsons is
regarded as a structuralfunctionalist, because his core focus was the
analysis of the structure of the social system
(society) and its subsystems (social institutions and structures), and
their consequences for
or functional relevance in maintaining society, social order, system
equilibrium
Society, for Parsons, is an action system “analytically divisible into four
primary subsystems” of action (Parsons 1971: 10) – economy, politics,
law, and culture. These four subsystems
comprise the core institutional structure of modern societies
established to accomplish
the economic, political, societal integration, and cultural socialization
functions necessary
for societies to maintain themselves and adapt to change.
These core functions are:
(1) adaptation to the environment (e.g., economic production); (2) goal
attainment (the
political system with, in democratic societies, the goals of equality and
universal rights);
(3) integration into the societal community by articulating and
enforcing society’s collective
norms (e.g., the legal system); and (4) latency or pattern maintenance,
i.e., the inter-generational transmission of society’s generally shared
values through socialization (e.g., the
family, education)
A functionalist analysis of the education system, for example, would
show
that in the mid-nineteenth century, high
school education was not necessary (or
adaptive) to the basic functioning of the
economy: industrial and factory production did not need young men
and
women to have skills beyond basic math
and literacy (e.g., Smelser 1959).
Moreover, it was working side by side
with parents, not high school courses,
which socialized children into the work
Tension between Adaptation and Goal Attainment functions: There is
tension
between the entrepreneurialism required for business expansion and
continued
economic growth and the political goals of a society that is still wedded
to strong
state control over economic as well as non-economic policies.
● Tension between Adaptation and Integration functions: Some of the
adaptive
strategies of the economic subsystem (e.g., hiring migrant workers,
imposing
large production quotas and overtime on workers) are in tension with the
functions of the integrative (legal) subsystem. They are producing social
strain
indicated, for example, by a surge in worker suicides

Tension between Adaptation and Latency (cultural maintenance): The

conse
quences of economic adaption (e.g., increased productivity, profits, and
consum
erism) are in tension with the cultural maintenance requirements of a
society
which affirms the values of state socialist equality

Integration functional
requirements (e.g., the legal system’s lack of protection of human
rights, and of the
dignity of workers and citizens) are in tension with the Goal attainment
functions of
the political subsystem
He proposed a set of five dichotomous value-orientations which shape
social behavior and in terms of which it can be analyzed. He proposed a
set of five dichotomous value-orientations which shape social
behavior and in terms of which it can be analyzed