Talcot t P a r s o n s on Economic a n d Soc ia l Theory: The R e l e v a n c e

o f the A m h e r s t Term P a p e r s

BRYAN S. TURNER

T h e issue o f in te l lec tua l c o h e r e n c e and con t inu i ty in the a c a d e m i c life o f

m a j o r socia l theor i s t s is a t op ic m u c h d e b a t e d in the h i s to ry of soc io log ica l t hough t . For e x a m p l e , the a l leged d i f f e r ences b e t w e e n the ear ly and late Marx

w e r e s e e n to be c ruc ia l to the in te l lec tua l evo lu t i on and c h a r a c t e r o f Marxis t

soc io logy as a w h o l e . In the case of Ta lco t t Parsons , it has o f t en b e e n t h o u g h t

tha t t he r e was a ma jo r divis ion in the w o r k of Parsons b e f o r e 1951 and the s u b s e q u e n t g r o w t h o f func t iona l i sm wi th the p u b l i c a t i o n of The Social System (Parsons , 1951). W h e r e a s the w o r k of the ear ly Parsons was s een to be p r imar i ly c o n c e r n e d w i t h the d e v e l o p m e n t of a vo lun ta r i s t i c t h e o r y of ac t ion , the publ i -

c a t i ons of the la ter Parsons w e r e be l i eved to b e f o c u s e d p r imar i ly on s t ruc tu ra l

f u n c t i o n a l i s m as a m o d e l for the analysis o f social sy s t ems in t e rms , for e x a m p l e , o f the i r s u b s y s t e m p r o p e r t i e s . This v i e w of the divis ions w i t h i n P a r s o n s ' s w o r k

has b e e n c h a l l e n g e d by wr i t e r s such as Char les Camic in his c o m m e n t a r y on The Early Essays o f Talcott Parsons (Camic , 1991), b e c a u s e he w a n t e d to s h o w the i m p o r t a n c e of the ear ly pub l i ca t i ons of Parsons , tha t is p r i o r to the p u b l i c a t i o n

of The Structure o f Social Action (Parsons , 1937). One can an t i c ipa t e tha t the

p u b l i c a t i o n of P a r s o n s ' s Am her s t t e r m p a p e r s will in fact raise f u r t h e r ques t i ons

a b o u t the f o u n d a t i o n s o f Pa r sons ' s social t h e o r y p r io r to the ear ly essays to w h i c h Camic has d r a w n a p p r o p r i a t e a t ten t ion . Cer ta in ly the A m h e r s t t e r m pa-

p e r s d isp lay an i m p o r t a n t c o n c e r n w i t h major ques t ions in the p h i l o s o p h y o f

Bryan S. Turner is Dean of Arts and Foundation Professor of Sociology at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. He has held professorial appointments in The Netherlands (1988-90) and England (1990-92), and was an Alexander yon Humboldt Fellow at Bielefeld University (1987). His research interests are in the sociology of citizenship and medical sociology. He is the foundation editor of the new journal Citizenship Studies and co-founder of the journal Body and Society. He has published on the work of Talcott Parsons with Roland Robertson and Robert Holton. He has edited The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory (1996). He is currently undertaking research on voluntary associations and welfare in Russia, Sweden and Australia, which is funded by the Australian Research Council. Address for correspondence: Bryan S. Turner, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia.

Turner 41

social science, particularly with reference to the relationship be tween biology and culture.

However , if one wanted to identify a thematic cont inui ty in the work of Parsons from the Amherst term papers, through the early essays, into The Struc-

t u r e o f Soc ia l A c t i o n and beyond into his collaborative work with Nell Smelser, then surely it would be his perennial interest in the intellectual and academic relat ionship be tween economics and sociology. Parsons's pers is tent a t tent ion to economic theory has been relatively neglected by critics of Parsons who, in

attacking the alleged functionalism of Parsonian sociology, concen t ra ted on the issues of value consensus and normative integration, believing that Parsons had relatively little interest in the "economic base" of society. This neglect of Parsons's economic sociology was probably intensified by the Marxist undercur ren t of much so-called conflict theory. In recent years there has for tunately been con- siderable interest shown in Parsons's analysis of economic theory and more specifically in his economic sociology (Gansmann, 1988; Holton, 1991; Holton and Turner , 1986; Robertson and Turner, 1991). Following the work of Charles

Camic and Bruce Wearne, we have a much bet ter understanding and apprecia- tion of Parsons's early immersion in debates about the nature of economic theory. At Amherst, Parsons came under the influence of the ph i losopher Alexander Meiklejohn, who p rompted his students to consider broad questions relating to alternatives to industrial capitalist society and who created an educational envi- ronment within which students were involved in a general analysis of the social sciences. More importantly, Parsons in his junior year under took a course en- titled The E c o n o m i c Order with Walter Hamilton, one of the leading theorists of so-called institutional economics, and he also took the companion course enti t led The M o r a l Order with the phi losopher Clarence Ayres, who was also closely involved in the debate about institutional economics.

It was this engagement with institutional economics that marked Parsons's depar ture from biology into the social sciences as an academic career. Hamilton was deeply critical of neo~ economics because he believed it had aban- doned the large scale moral questions relating to the disharmonies of the capi- talist e c onomy associated with its individualism and utilitarianism. Neo-classical economics , in suppressing the broader debates about morality and economics , had deve loped an approach to economic choice in terms of theories that were highly abstract and remote from the mundane economic problems of society. By "institutions" Hamilton was conce rned to understand the way in which moral systems (namely customs and convent ions) impinged upon economic activity. From his coursework with Ayres, Parsons was in t roduced to a broad spec t rum of social theory relating to cultural and biological dimensions of human exist- ence as explanat ions of social differentiation. In the Amherst te rm papers, Par- sons a t tempted to make sense of this debate in the social sciences regarding the foundat ions of moral behaviour in human beings. Parsons's interest in quest ions relating to evolut ionary theory, cultural anthropology and biological sciences was fur ther amplified and deve loped by his studies at the London School of Economics and later at the University of Heidelberg. It was at Heidelberg that

42 The American Sociologist/Winter 1996

Parsons came thoroughly under the influence of Max Weber's economic sociol- ogy, specifically with respect to the debate over the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, a monograph that Parsons came subsequently to translate (Weber, 1931). Parsons's study of Weber and Werner Sombart provided the basis for his early published articles on capitalism and economic sociology. These academic experiences brought Parsons to a study of the social and cultural dimensions of the capitalist economic order from the perspective of institutional economics, but Parsons rejected much of the psychological and biological as- sumptions of the precursors of institutionalism, especially in the work of Thorstein Veblen and Wesley Mitchell (Camic, 1991: xxiv).

What was the importance of economics and economic theory for the devel- opment of Parsons's sociological theories? At one level economics presented Parsons with a model of a successful social science. In particular, economics provided a model of a general theory of action. Economics as a discipline was successful in two separate senses. First it was an established and prestigious discipline within the university system, and secondly it offered the opportuni ty to create an analytically coherent but parsimonious account of rational behaviour. Economics promises to explain social reality by reference to an elementary list of propositions that are to do with rational behaviour in a context of scarcity. The principle of marginal utility lies at the core of this elementary account of human behaviour. By contrast, sociology lacks parsimony and precision, giving rise instead to a welter of imprecise, competing observations and proposit ions about human behaviour and social relations. In this context, sociology was also subject to competi t ion from the biological sciences and biologically based psy- chology, which at tempted to explain human behaviour by various processes of reductionism. Parsons's general theory of action was an at tempt to reconcile these conflicting sociological approaches and perspectives. Parsons's sociology, from the Amherst term paper through the Marshall lectures to the final version of his action theory, grappled with these issues: the relationship be tween eco- nomics and sociology as competing explanations of rational action; the problem of biological reductionism with respect to human values and culture; the ques- tion of so-called "misplaced concreteness" in the philosophy of the social sci- ences; and the nature and role of analytical schema in the development of sci- ences. Parsons sought to solve these issues via a voluntaristic theory of action in order, not only to resolve a set of intellectual puzzles but to contribute to the professional establishment of sociology as an autonomous and recognised disci- pline within the pantheon of the academic social sciences.

If the social sciences are concerned with action systems, then Parsons saw the relationship between sociology and economics in terms of a cont inuum in the means-end schema, whereby sociology was concerned with the value end of the action chain and economics with the specific means by which scarcity is re- solved. In practice, sociology has evolved more as a commentary on the mar- ginal problems of economic theory, that is the nature of nonrational and irratio- nal behaviour in a context of scarcity of means to the satisfaction of needs. In The Structure o f Social Act ion, Parsons approached this problem of the relation-

T u r n e r 43

ship be tween sociology and economics by reference to what he called "residual categories," namely the hidden and submerged set of assumptions within eco- nomic theory whereby such phenomena as social stability and contracts are

explained. The prob lem facing economics was the explanat ion of social order in rational terms, in a con tex t where fraud and force are rational solutions to condi t ions of scarcity. Economics has traditionally solved this Hobbesian prob- lem of order by reference to such notions as sentiment and the hidden hand of history. Sociology as an academic discipline has, by contrast, been conce rned with such issues as culture, values and morality as foundations of social rela- tions.

If we compare economics , politics and sociology as social sciences of action,

then we can argue that economics is the discipline conce rned with the reduc- tion of scarcity by the application of means to ends, politics is a science con- cerned with the distribution of power in relation to scarce resources, and finally

sociology is that discipline conce rned with the condit ions and maintenance of social solidarity (namely value integration) in a world of risk, scarcity and uncer- tainty. The word itself "sociology" is derived from the Latin not ion for fr iendship (socius), that is, sociology is a science or discipline conce rned with the expla- nation of companionship via such phenomena as rituals, values and culture. Parsons addresses this issue in the Amherst term papers by an interesting set of reflect ions on the work of W.G. Sumner (1840-1910). Thus, in the second term paper "The Behavioristic Concept ion of the Nature of Morals" we find Parsons drawing extensively on Sumner's approach to folkways (Sumner, 1906) and upon Emile Durkheim's sociology of religion, namely The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1954). Sumner had developed the idea of "folkways" to describe the taken-for-granted assumptions, conduct and pract ices that had deve loped in

human societies as part of an evolutionary adaptation to the natural environ- ment. These group habits funct ion on a collective level as social habits. These folkways were rarely subject to critical reflection because they are part of the routine pract ices of everyday life. When these folkways do become part of the self-reflective inquiry of society, they emerge as part of the moral system of a society as mores; social selection is determined by these mores. Mores become authoritative as a consequence of habit and tradition, which reinforce communal accep tance of mores as guides to action. Parsons was to elaborate this idea in his sociology of social action in terms of the not ion that shared values guide

action through the choice of ends. Although Sumner had framed this issue within an evolut ionary and adaptive paradigm, his approach provided an influential a t tempt to unders tand the role of culture in social arrangements.

Sumner was important in the Amherst papers, but subsequent references to Sumner were infrequent. There was a positive re fe rence to Sumner in "The Prospects of Sociological Theory, ~ (1950) where Parsons commen ted on the significance of Sumner 's view of the relativity of mores. There was also a foot- note to Sumner in Toward a General Theory of Action (Parsons and Shils, 1951). We can assume that Parsons did not see the relevance of Sumner 's evo- lutionism to his own approach to values; Durkheim and Weber remained conge-

44 The American Sociologist/Winter 1996

nial to his orientation towards the place of values in society. While Sumner eventually dropped from the range of references characteristic of Parsons's work, the interest in Durkheim's theory of religion as a sociological response to the problem of solidarity remained a constant feature of Parsons's sociology. Few American social theorists influenced Parsons's general sociology. By contrast, Parsons was influential as a conduit of European sociological theory.

In his discussion of culture, mores and custom in the Amherst term papers, we see Parsons beginning the process of establishing an alternative approach to institutional economics and to the psychological reductionism by understanding the framework within which, for example, economic contracts work in terms of culture and values. We could argue that this is Parsons's substantive answer to the economic analysis of scarcity, namely that collective behaviour and social agreements depend upon a bedrock of shared cultural assumptions that are handed down to new generations by the processes of socialisation and internalisation of values, for example, within the domestic or familial context. This substantive understanding of the relationship between scarcity and solidarity occupied Parsons's sociology throughout his mature academic and intellectual life, and we see this contrast emerging once more in the famous AGIL subsystem analysis within his approach to systems theory (Parsons, 1951). The AGIL paradigm depends upon a fundamental distinction or contrast between the allocative problems of society (which are primarily to do with economics and politics) in a context of scarcity and the integrative and motivational problems of social systems (which are to do with the creation of solidarity and commitment through values and mores). The allocative problem is the essence of political economy, while the integration and commitment issues are fundamental to sociology.

Alongside this substantive answer to the problem of scarcity and rational choice, Parsons was also concerned to understand certain analytical questions in the philosophy of social sciences, which he approached via the work of Alfred North Whitehead in terms of the idea of abstraction, selection and the so-called "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." While Whitehead believed that science was concerned with the observation and understanding of facts, these facts always arose as a consequence of selection and abstraction from reality. For Parsons, sociology could flourish only as a consequence of developing its own analytical schema whereby it could select and abstract from the complexity of social re- ality in order to come to scientifically valid observations about social action. This was also the basis of the attraction of Weber's concept of the ideal type in the development of Parsons's analytical scheme. In his review of Alexander von Schelting's analysis of Max Weber's Wissenschaftslehre (Parsons, 1936) and in The Structure of Social Action (Parsons, 1937), Parsons developed his own interpretat ion of these basic issues in the production of a theoretical foundation for sociological analysis. Like Whitehead, but from a very different philosophical background in neo-Kantian philosophy, Weber argued that sociological theory would always require a one-sided selection from reality in order to achieve meaning and comprehension in both descriptive and causal accounts of reality.

In trying to develop an analytical framework for sociology, Parsons sought to

Turner 45

avoid the traditional d ichotomy be tween idealism and positivism. In general the natural and social sciences in the n ine teenth century, particularly in the Anglo-

Saxon world, had emerged on the basis of a positivistic science of reality. Within this paradigm biological accounts of human behaviour were significant in the positivist reduct ion of values to nature. In the first of the Amherst papers ("The Theory of Human Behaviour in its Individual and Social Aspects"), we find the young Parsons grappling with the issues of race, biology and environmenta l condi t ions in relation to values and culture. Parsons did not want to reject the idea of a biological foundat ion to human action and society, but he wanted to

assert the au tonomy and emergence of culture and values as independen t phe- nomena in the explanat ion and understanding of action. This pr inciple of emer-

gence was not fully deve loped until The Structure o f Social Action, and in his later work he absorbed the idea of the "super organic" from the work of anthro- pologists like A.L. Kroeber. In at tempting to grapple with issues about biology and envi ronment in the Amherst papers, we find the early version of what Parsons came to call the "external condit ions of the action schema" in the unit act concep t of The Structure o f Social Action. Parsons came to conceive of the action schema in terms of a means end chain in which ends are selected by re fe rence to values and means by reference to norms, but the or ientat ion of the actor towards his or her social situation is always conduc ted in the con tex t of

what Parsons called the condit ions of action, which were basically the physical, envi ronmenta l condit ions of action and choice. In the first Amherst term paper these so-called external influences are listed by Parsons in terms of geography, climate and the physical condit ions of action. This physical or environmental condi t ion provides what he calls the "very definite limits within which a cul ture may develop" (p.18). Parsons did not substantially depart from this f ramework, al though he came to conceptual ise the embodiment of the social actor in more compl ica ted terms in his later work, partly as a consequence of his engagement with the psychoanalyt ic theories of Freud and a more sophist icated understand- ing of cybernet ics and teleology. Whether or not Parsons came to an appropr ia te understanding of the "embodiment of the human actor" (Turner, 1992) is an issue beyond the confines of this commentary on the early philosophical explo-

rations of Parsons. The Amherst papers are, therefore, of considerable interest to the historian of social theories, specifically the history of sociological theory in the twent ie th century, because in these papers, as I have argued, we find Parsons providing a substantive answer to the economic theory of rational ac- tion and an analytical answer to the difficulties of a reduct ionist approach to human action that reduces the e lement of choice in the voluntaristic action to

a set of external conditions, namely to biology and environment .

R e f e r e n c e s

Camic, C.C. 1991. The Early Essays of Talcoit Parsons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Durkheim, E. 1954. The Elementary Forms o f the Religious Life. London: Allen and Unwin. Gansmann, H. 1988. Money--A Symbolically Gencralised Medium of Communication, Economy and Society 17

(3): 285-316.

46 The American Sociologist/Winter 1996

Holton, R.J. 1991. Talcott Parsons and the Integration of Economic and Sociological Theory, Sociological Inquiry 61(1): 102-114.

Holton, R.J. and Turner, B.S. 1986. Talcott Parsons on Economy and Society. London: Routledge. Holton, R.J. and Turner, B.S. 1991. Max Weber on Economy and Society. London: Routledge. Parsons. T. 1936. Max Weber's Wissenschaftslehre by Alexander yon Schelting, American Sociological Review

l: 675-681. Parsons, T. 1937. The Structure of Social Action. New York: McGraw-Hill. Parsons, T. 1950. The Prospects of Sociological Theory, American Sociological Review 15: 3-16. Parsons, T. 1951. The Social System. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Parsons, T. and Shils, E.A.(eds) 1951. Toward a General Theory of Action. New York and Evanston: Harper &

Row. Robertson, R. and Turner B.S. 1991. Talcotr Parsons: Theorist of Modernity. London: Sage. Turner, B.S. 1992. Regulating Bodies." Essays in Medical Sociology. London: Routledge. Weber, M. 1931. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London Allen and Unwin.

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