Toward a General Theory of Action

Theoretical Foundations for the Social Sciences

Talcott Parsons, Edward Shils

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351301503
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This new edition introduces the social science audiences of a new century to one of the classic highlights of the mid-twentieth century. This is the most general statement of the general theory of action as it was developed by its principle exponent, Talcott Parsons, and his close collaborators who formed the core of the fabled department of social relations at Harvard University. Toward a General Theory of Action is an extremely ambitious formulation of the ingredients, dimensions, and ranges that determine human behavior.

Parsons and Shils enunciate principles that are at the core of contemporary social science preoccupations-including the precarious balance between social integration and conflict. The volume is at once universal in intent and highly personal, an expression of Parsons' thought, one of the most notable sociological theorists of the century. Finally, the book symbolizes the interdisciplinary impulse that typified a widespread belief in the unity of the sciences. This edition includes the collaborative group's introductory statement, Richard Sheldon's essay on the theoretical and philosophical status of the general theory of action, and "Values, Motives and Systems of Action" by Parsons and Shils.

Guy Swanson, writing in the The American Sociological Review, noted that "Parsons and Shils have performed a major service in clearing away many old controversies, in showing the reasonableness of a behavioral foundation for general theory in social science as a whole and in sociology in particular, in clarifying the interrelations among many concepts, and in the insightful interpretation of particular pieces of data." It is testimony to this book's continuing significance that it continues to generate new lines of research and writings.

1

The General Theory of Action

1

Some Fundamental Categories of the Theory of Action: A General Statement

1 Introduction

The present statement and the volume which it introduces are intended to contribute to the establishment of a general theory in the social sciences. Theory in the social sciences should have three major functions. First, it should aid in the codification of our existing concrete knowledge. It can do so by providing generalized hypotheses for the systematic reformulation of existing facts and insights, by extending the range of implication of particular hypotheses, and by unifying discrete observations under general concepts. Through codification, general theory in the social sciences will help to promote the process of cumulative growth of our knowledge. In making us more aware of the interconnections among items of existing knowledge which are now available in a scattered, fragmentary form, it will help us fix our attention on the points where further work must be done.

Second, general theory in the social sciences should be a guide to research. By codification it enables us to locate and define more precisely the boundaries of our knowledge and of our ignorance. Codification facilitates the selection of problems, although it is not, of course, the only useful technique for the selection of problems for fruitful research. Further than this, general theory should provide hypotheses to be applied and tested by the investigation of these problems. If research problems are formulated in terms of systematically derived theoretical hypotheses, the resulting propositions will in turn contribute toward both the validation and revision of the theory.

Third, general theory as a point of departure for specialized work in the social sciences will facilitate the control of the biases of observation and interpretation which are at present fostered by the departmentalization of education and research in the social sciences.

This statement does not itself purport to be the general theory which will adequately fulfill these three functions. It is rather a formulation of certain fundamental categories which will have to enter into the formulation of this general theory, which for many years has been developing through the convergence of anthropological studies of culture, the theory of learning, the psychoanalytic theory of personality, economic theory,¹ and the study of modern social structure.

2 The Frame of Reference of the Theory of Action

The present discussion will begin with an exposition of the fundamental concepts from which it is intended to develop a unified conceptual scheme for theory and research in the social sciences. In accordance with already widespread usage, we shall call these concepts the frame of reference of the theory of action. In order to make the rest of the exposition comprehensible, we shall define a considerable number of the concepts² and state their more general bearing on our problem.

Orientation and Situation

In the theory of action the point of reference of all terms is the action of an individual actor or of a collectivity of actors. Of course, all individual actors are, in one aspect, physiological organisms; collectivities of actors are made up of individual actors, who are similarly physiological organisms. The interest of the theory of action, however, is directed not to the physiological processes internal to the organism but rather to the organization of the actor’s orientations to a situation. When the terms refer to a collectivity as the acting unit, it is understood that it does not refer to all of the actions of the individuals who are its members, but only to the actions which they perform in their capacity as members. Whether the acting unit is an individual or a collectivity, we shall speak of the actor’s orientation of action when we describe the action. The concept motivation in a strict sense applies only to individual actors. The motivational components of the action of collectivities are organized systems of the motivation of the relevant individual actors. Action has an orientation when it is guided by the meaning which the actor attaches to it in its relationship to his goals and interests.

Each orientation of action in turn involves a set³ of objects of orientation. These are objects which are relevant in the situation because they afford alternative possibilities and impose limitations on the modes of gratifying the needs and achieving the goals of the actor or actors.⁴ A situation provides two major classes of objects to which the actor who is the point of reference may be oriented. These are either (1) nonsocial, that is, physical objects or accumulated cultural resources, or (2) social objects, that is, individual actors and collectivities. Social objects include the subject’s own personality as well as the personalities of other individuals. Where collectivities are objects, sectors of the action systems of a plurality of individual actors form a system which is an object for the actor or actors who are our point of reference. A specific combination of selections relative to such objects, made from among the possibilities of selection which were available in a specific situation, constitutes an orientation of action for a particular actor. The organized plurality of such orientations of action constitutes a system of action.⁵

The orientation of action to objects entails selection, and possibly choice. Selection is made possible by cognitive discriminations, the location and characterization of the objects, which are simultaneously or successively experienced as having positive or negative value to the actor, in terms of their relevance to satisfaction of drives⁶ and their organization in motivation. This tendency to react positively or negatively to objects we shall call the cathectic mode of orientation. Cathexis, the attachment to objects which are gratifying and rejection of those which are noxious, lies at the root of the selective nature of action.⁷ Furthermore, since selection must be made among alternative objects and gratifications at a single point of time or through time, there must be some evaluative criteria. The tendency of the organism toward integration requires the assessment and comparison of immediate cognized objects and cathectic interests in terms of their remoter consequences for the larger unit of evaluation. Evaluation rests on standards which may be either cognitive standards of truthfulness, appreciative standards of appropriateness, or moral standards of rightness. Both the motivational orientations and the value-orientations are modes of distinguishing, testing, sorting, and selecting. They are, in short, the categories for the description, on the most elementary level, of the orientation of action, which is a constellation of selections from alternatives.

It is essential to point out that a description of a system of action must refer not only to the particular constellation of orientations and sets of objects actually selected, but also to the alternative sets from which the selections might have been made but were not. In other words, we are concerned not only with how an actor actually views a situation, but also with how he might view it. This inclusiveness is required for the purposes of a dynamic theory of action which would attempt to explain why one alternative rather than another was selected.

The range of the alternatives of action orientation is determinate; it is inherent in the relation of the actor to the situation and derives ultimately from certain general properties of the organism and the nature of objects in their relation to such organisms. This determinate range of the alternatives which are available for selection marks the limits within which variability is possible.

Descriptive and Dynamic Analysis

The complete analysis of a system of action would comprise description both of the state of the system at the given moment and of the changes in the system through time, involving changes in the relations of the constituent variables. This dynamic analysis would treat the processes of action and is the proper goal of conceptualization and theory construction. But we feel that it is uneconomical to describe changes in systems of variables before the variables themselves have been isolated and described; therefore, we have chosen to begin by studying particular combinations of variables and to move toward a description of how these combinations change only when a firm foundation for such analysis has been laid. Hence, it should be understood that when we describe the orientations of action in a given system, we are describing the state of the system at a given moment. The variables to which we refer in the analysis of given orientations are also those referred to in the analysis of the processes which maintain one system of orientation rather than another; these same variables are also dealt with in the analysis of the processes in which, through change in the values of the variables, one orientation changes into another. There is, thus, no difference between the variables involved in description of the state of a system and analysis of its processes. The difference lies in how the same variables are used.

Personality, Social System, and Culture

The frame of reference of the theory of action applies in principle to any segment of the total round of action or to any process of action of any complex organism. The elaboration of behavior to which this conceptual scheme is especially appropriate, however, occurs above all in human action. In the formation of systems made up of human actions or the components of human action, this elaboration occurs in three configurations. First, the orientation of action of any one given actor and its attendant motivational processes becomes a differentiated and integrated system. This system will be called the personality, and we will define it as the organized system of the orientation and motivation of action of one individual actor.⁸ Secondly, the action of a plurality of actors in a common situation is a process of interaction, the properties of which are to a definite but limited extent independent of any prior common culture. This interaction also becomes differentiated and integrated and as such forms a social system. The social system is, to be sure, made up of the relationships of individuals, but it is a system which is organized around the problems inherent in or arising from social interaction of a plurality of individual actors rather than around the problems which arise in connection with the integration of the actions of an individual actor, who is also a physiological organism. Personality and social system are very intimately interrelated, but they are neither identical with one another nor explicable by one another; the social system is not a plurality of personalities. Finally, systems of culture have their own forms and problems of integration which are not reducible to those of either personality or social systems or both together. The cultural tradition in its significance both as an object of orientation and as an element in the orientation of action must be articulated both conceptually and empirically with personalities and social systems. Apart from embodiment in the orientation systems of concrete actors, culture, though existing as a body of artifacts and as systems of symbols, is not in itself organized as a system of action. Therefore, culture as a system is on a different plane from personalities and social systems.⁹

Concrete systems of action — that is, personalities and social systems — have psychological, social, and cultural aspects. For one thing, the state of the system must be characterized in terms of certain of the motivational properties of the individual actors. The description of a system of action must employ the categories of motivational orientation: cognition, cathexis, and evaluation. Likewise, the description of an action system must deal with the properties of the system of interaction of two or more individuals or collective actors — this is the social aspect — and it must note the conditions which interaction imposes on the participating actors. It must also take into account the cultural tradition as an object of orientation as well as culture patterns as internalized patterns of cognitive expectations and of cathectic-evaluative selection among possible orientations that are of crucial significance in the personality system and in the social system.

Cultural elements as constituents of systems of action may be classified in two ways. First, they may be differentiated according to the predominance of types of interests corresponding to the predominance of each of the modes of motivational orientation. Second, culture patterns as objects of the situation may be distinguished from culture patterns as internalized components of the orientation system of the actor. These two classifications cut across each other.

In the first method of classification it is convenient to distinguish the following three major classes of culture patterns. (1) Systems of ideas or beliefs. Although cathexis and evaluation are always present as orientational components, these cultural systems are characterized by a primacy of cognitive interests. (2) Systems of expressive symbols; for instance, art forms and styles. These systems are characterized by a primacy of cathectic interests. (3) Systems of value-orientations. Here the primary interest is in the evaluation of alternatives from the viewpoint of their consequences or implications for a system of action or one of its subsystems.

With respect to the second classification, it is quite clear that culture patterns are frequently objects of orientation in the same sense as other types of objects.¹⁰ The actor knows their properties (for example, he understands an idea); he “responds” to them (that is, he is attracted or repelled by them); and he evaluates them. Under certain circumstances, however, the manner of his involvement with a cultural pattern as an object is altered, and what was once an object becomes a constitutive part of the actor. When, for example, he cannot violate a moral rule without intense feelings of guilt, the rule is functioning as a constitutive part of his system of orientation; it is part of his personality. Where this occurs a culture pattern has been internalized.

Before we continue with an elaboration of each of the above three major types of system into which the components of action become organized and differentiated — personality, cultural systems, and social systems — it is essential to review briefly certain other categories of action in general, particularly those that have been develo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Preface
• Part 1 The General Theory of Action
• 1 Some Fundamental Categories of the Theory of Action: A General Statement
• 2 Some Observations on Theory in Social Science1
• Part 2 Values, Motives, and Systems of Action
• Introduction
• 1 Categories of the Orientation and Organization of Action
• 2 Personality as a System of Action
• 3 Systems of Value - Orientation
• 4 The Social System
• 5 Conclusion
• Figures 1-15, Pages 247-275
• Index