The Structure of Social Action Parsons launched a most ambitious scheme to provide a “general theory of action”. This is the first major work of Parsons published in 1937. A general theory of action would provide a general framework of analysis which would include all the main social science discipline, such as psychology, economics and government, with sociology. Parsons’ analysis of action theory mainly based on prominent thinkers in three main intellectual traditions:
utilitarianism,
positivism, and
idealism.
Parsons believed that how conceptual orientations of these three tradition could be synthesised to form a more strengths and weaknesses of adequate conceptual base for subsequent Sociological theorising. In addition, Parsons tried to make an effort to abstract from the theories of four European writers-Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim, and Weber’s work and to give a single the poetical scheme. In this work, Parsons attempted to develop a “voluntaristic theory of social action” by way of a creative synthesis of Durkheim, Weber, and Parkton (The work of the British economic Marshall was also considered in detail but later was somehow largely dropped from consideration).
Parsons agreed with the utilitarian view of individuals age purposive and goal-oriented actors, and rejected what he conceived to be its atomistic and overly rational orientation and its attendant incapacity to account for the emergence of a social order regulating the goal-oriented activities of individual actors. Positivism was attacked for its reductionism-its propensity to explain individual behaviour in terms of physiological, psychochemical, genetic, geographical influences-and its consequent inability to account for the voluntaristic, choice-making, and goal-striving tendencies of social actors. In Parsons’ view, a social theory is positivistic which holds the view that human action can be adequately characterised without regard to the agent’s own standpoint. He considered utilitarianism as one of the good examples of a positivistic theory. In this context, Parsons stated:
The utilitarian branch of positivistic though has, by virtue of the structure of its theoretical system, been focused upon a given range of definite empirical insights and related theoretical problems. The central fact-a fact beyond all question-is that in certain aspectsand to certain degrees, under certain conditions, human action is rational. That is, men or adapt themselves to the conditions in which placed and adapt means to their ends in such a way as to they approach the most efficient manner of achieving these ends. And the relations of these means and conditions to the achievement of their ends are ‘known’ to be intrinsically verifiable by the methods of empirical science.
By ‘rational’ in this passage he appears to mean making the right rather than the wrong choice of means in order to attain an end. In this case, the opposite of rational would be irrational. For him, rational choice is essential to the voluntaristic theory of action in terms of making right and wrong choice. In this case the opposite of rational choice would be determined choice, or determinism. Another important tradition related to theory of action is the German idealistic tradition. This tradition was emphasis on the influence of cultural determinants such as ideas symbolic processes, while it was criticised for not giving satisfactory explanations for the complex interrelations between social structures and the world of ideas. “It is a fact that they manifest the subjective feelings, ides, motives, associated with their actions by means of linguistic symbols as well as in other ways. Thus, the utilitarian approach does have the notion of individual actor in the system but only endowed qualities.
The idealist approach beings act only to fulfil a grand mental design. The idealist talk of values and miss out the pressures exerted on values by empirical reality. Finally, the positivists emphasise complete knowledge of the situation and overtook the role of values, or of error or of as an abstraction with certain assumes that human variation. The concept of action, according to Parsons, is derived from behaviour of human beings Parsons was eager to differentiate action theory from behaviourism. In this sense, behaviour implied mechanical response to stimuli, whereas, action implied states that, “A theory which, like behaviourism, insists on treating human beings in terms which exclude his subjective aspect, is not theory of action.” The basic phenomenon in Parsons’s action theory is what he called the unit act. Parsons idenfied four general analytic components of the unitact.
Parsons identified four general analytic components of the unit act.A unit act implies
(a) an agent, an ‘actor’;
(b) an end
(c) a situation, which is turn contains two elements: means over which the actor has control, and conditions, over which he does not; and a normative orientation. Hence, an actor is able to exert
(d) anormative orientation .Hence,an actor is able to exert a degree of voluntaristic (free will) control over events.
When all these four factors of unit act are present, a behaviour becomes action. Therefore, action must be understood from the actor’s point of view because his or her knowledge of both means and choice of ends is essential.
The action theory has implications The first implication is that an act is alwaysa process in time and as well as complications. space. The category of time is basic; the category of space disappears.o T1he concept end always implies a future references, to a state which is either not yet in existence, and which would not come into existence if something were not done about it by the actor or, if already existent, would not remain unchanged. Second. in any action there exists the possibility of error; the actor may choose inappropriate combination with the concept of a normative orientation of action. The third implication is that an act is subjective. In the words of Parsons:
The frame of reference of the scheme is subjective in a particular sense. That is, it deals with phenomena, with things and events as they appear from the point of view of the actor whose action is being analysed and considered. Of course the phenomena of the “external world” play a major part in the influencing of action. But in so far as they can be utilised by this particular theoretical scheme, they must be reducible to terms which are subjective in this particular sense. This fact is of cardinal importance in understanding some of the peculiarities of the theoretical structure under consideration here.
Again he says: “While the social scientist is not concerned with the studying the content of his own mind, he is very much concerned with that of the minds of the persons whose action he studies.” “But Parsons never tries to explain howa social scientist can enter the minds of other person. Here, Bicrstedt makes comment as follows:
The human penchant for post factum rationalisation of the ends and means of action should give ample warning of the practical impossibility of the explaining a given unit act in terms of the means which the actor says he has employed for the attainment of ends he says he had in ‘mind’. What the actor says about his action is no better and is almost always less reliable than what the observer could have learned simply by watching the action.
Parsons in his analysis of the frame of reference and the notion of subjectivity, he made a distinction and a relationship between objectroe and subjective. By the word objective in this context, he means, “from the point of view of the scientific observer of action” and by subjective “from the point of view of the actor”. Parsons argues:
A still further consequences follows from t A categories of the thewy of actin Vadoy Paychologist stidies a human faing t o asnVAK distinguishable beparate unid in the world Te ut d nde which we are considering as fhe actor nt the ne or ‘self’ The principal importane of this iw tht e dy ‘ego the actor forms, for him, just as much part of the situatn d e as does the “external environment” Among he conditions to why his action is subject the most important of the means at his disposal are thorr relating to his own bely, while emng the’pee body and, of course, his ‘mind’, The analytical dioincton his own between actor and situation quite definitely cannet fe identded wit the distinction in the biological sciencus betwen organiem nd environment,
The fourth implication of the schema of action is the situation of action. Under the situation of action, Parsons analyses the physical and biological sciences. In this sense, he discussed about the units of physical and biological sciences such as atoms of iron, a small amount of carbon, etc. and their constituent electrons, protons and neutrons and so on and outlined the problems in the theory of action. As Parsons puts it,
…atoms, electrons or cells are not to be regarded as units for purposes of the theory of action. Unit analysis of any phenomenon beyond the point where it constitutes an integral means or condition of section leads over into terms of another theoretical scheme. For the purposes of the theory of action the smallest conceivable concrete unit is the unit act.
And hence the unit act and its elements-end, means, conditions and guiding norms, are relevant to the theory of action rather than the units of physical and biological sciences.
Further, a general theory of action, according to Parsons, may be employed ‘analytical’. On the concrete level, actual act and by its ‘element are meant the concrete entities that make it up.” In fact, the concrete end is anticipated as the total future state of affairs. The function of this concrete use of the action schema is primarily descriptive “A concrete actor is conceived as acting, in the pursuit of concrete ends, in a given concrete situation.” On the other hand, analytical level of the action schema is related to the actual capability to use and control by the actor in the pursuit of his end. “An end, then, in the analytical sense must be defined as the difference between the Alicia ted future state of affairs and that which it could have been PTdicted would ensue from the initial situation without the agency of the bettor having intervened.”
Lastly, a social system is a system wherein a plurality of individual actors, for the attainment of gratification, are engaged among themselves in the processes of social interactions within a system of cultural symbols bearing common meanings. To quote Parsons, “A social system consists in a plurality of individual actors interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspect, actors who are motivated in terms of a tendency to the “optimization of gratification”, and whose relation to their situations including each other, is defined and mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols.” It is thus, evident that a social system is only one part of the entire action system. The social system together with the personality system of the individual actors, and the cultural system completes the structure of a concrete system of social action. These three aspects of action system must be viewed as “an independent focus of organization.” They are inter-dependent and inter-penetrating. “Each is indispensable to the other two in the sense that without personalities and culture there would be no social system and so on around the roster of logical possibilities.
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