Talcott Parsons was a social theorist at the center of the sociological universe and did theoretical work in work in functionalism, structural-functionalism, and system theory. Parsons analyzed the interrelated character of personality, social systems, and culture. He identified the key elements of personality and culture that form the prerequisite for the growth of any social system. According to (Parson 9), for a system to be made up of persistent order or perform in an orderly system, some functional prerequisites should be attained. Person’s theory includes the sociological paradigm of structural functionalism, where society is described as a social system made up of functional prerequisites that give the system a long life span. According to Parson, a social system consists of units, organizations, institutions, and actors interacting. His main idea was to demonstrate the interrelationship between personality and social systems. Parsons believed that all systems, including family, economy, and polity, must maintain boundaries to subsist. The action of self-maintenance done to this system is because they are made up of human beings who are social beings whose value orientations are patterned. For a social organization to be maintained, there must be some indispensable adjustments in the internal and external organization. Parsons argues that social systems have self–adjusting and self-maintaining qualities. The adjustment activities play a role in maintaining the social system internally, and the developed boundary conditions are termed functions. The process of the social system is called self-maintenance. According to Parsons, social systems cannot exist without these important functions. He termed these functions as ‘functional prerequisites’ (Parsons 10). According to Parsons, four functional prerequisites include adaptation, goal attainment, Integration, and Latency (AGIL). He further describes the functioning of these functional prerequisites and whether they impact social system processes internally or externally.
According to Parson, adaptation as a functional prerequisite is the development and acquisition of resources outside the social system and the external surrounding and their distribution inside the system, including water and land. An example of adaptation is the economic system, which involves utilizing resources and producing and distributing products to society. Goal-Attainment is another functional prerequisite that involves the development of goals and targets and motivating members within the system to attain those goals. It also involves the mobilization of the people to work on achieving the set goals. An organization with a power and leadership structure in a social system is an example of a society where the key focus is attaining the set goals (Persons 10).
Another functional prerequisite is Integration, which helps a social society maintain cohesion, solidarity, and cooperation. The cultural system and the aligned bodies and practices comprise the Integration factors. Integration ensures cooperation, continuity, and unity within the social system. It also plays a key role in safeguarding the social system from disruption and breakdown. The last functional prerequisite is Latency. Latency is the functional unit of the social system that stores, maintain, and organizes the motivational power of factors in the social system. Its key roles include maintaining patterns and managing tension within the system (Gerstein et al. 362). Parson’s social systems theory has a special significance and importance in sociology. His ideas on the functioning of the social system and provocative and descriptive.
Parson primarily defines the four key structures of a social system. These include the economic, family, personality, and political systems. In his book “The Social System in 1951, he mentions different types of social systems and differentiates them from social structures. A family can be described as a social society, but its social structures are witnessed in the empirical clustering or kinship roles. Economic systems are another example of a social system by their social structure is described with the roles related to production, marketing, and management (Gerstein et al. 359).
Origin of the AGILE SYSTEM
Some of the sociologists in the nineteenth century came up with theories about society in terms of an “organic analogy .”They considered society an organism composed of several interdependent organs that cannot be separated (Perrin 1342). One of the beginners of this idea was Herbert Spenser. Emile Durkheim was another social thinker that theorized the functions of social institutions. B. Malinowski and A.R Radcliffe-Brown were other British sociologists studying social life in terms of social systems and functions. Closing the social structure, the study of social system function and the structural-functional perspective dominated many parts of the world. Talcott Parsons and R.K Merton were other sociologists who considered patch-breaking in their theoretical developments, among others not mentioned. Hebert Spencer is known for his organismic and evolutionary approach to sociology. He characterizes social and organic aggregates according to a progressive increase in size. He argued that a society is a system just like an organism, a coherent whole or connected and interdependent parts (Perrin 1342). The system has different needs that must be satisfied, and a structure’s function must be determined by knowing the needs it fulfills.
Emile Durkheim focused on how traditional and modern society evolved and functions. He advanced Herbert Spencer’s ideas of social functions and established social functionalism as a clear doctrine. He undertook and studied the function and causes of religion. He argued that religion unites people in a society into a common system of ideas and then regulates collective affairs (Turner 2). He is described as the theorist behind the functional perspective or theory of sociology. Bronislaw Malinowski is known for his theory of functionalism. Malinowski argued that every aspect of culture contributes to the maintenance of the whole culture hence satisfying the need of the whole; he further explains that every culture fulfills some key role (Macfarlane 4). He uses this concept to explain the functioning of society, which is composed of interdependent parts that work together to meet different social needs. His theory added the idea of system levels and that multiple systems need each other. His approach to sociology involved a strong assertion of the functional Integration of every society. Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) differed from Malinowski and followed Emile Durkheim’s analogy between social and organic life. He emphasized substituting the term “need” with “necessary conditions of existence.” His theory avoided the teleological implications of functionalism. He viewed cultural items such as kinship rules and religious rituals as understandable regarding social structure, especially the need for solidarity and Integration. He argues that partial activities or parts contribute to the maintenance of the whole and brings unity that is described as the social unity of the organism (Turner 5).
R.K. Merton (1911-2003) advanced the theories of sociology by overcoming the shortcomings of Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, and Malinowski. Merton began by defining ‘function’ and separated the relevant and contextual meaning of the term used by sociologists before. Merton addresses the shortcomings in the modification of the theory. He states that the concept of function in the observed consequences develops in adaptation or adjustment to a given social system (Calhoun). According to Merton, there has been an emphasis on observing only the positive items in the social or cultural system. After making all the considerations, examinations, and reforms, Merton summarized his findings in the “Paradigm for Functional Analysis in Sociology.” These paradigms comprise all the concepts, items, and possibilities of their usage during the research of complex societies. It comprises eleven points, from the idea of function to the application and understanding of changes in the system elements.
The development of the theoretical perspective of social systems and functionalism targets understanding society through the roles of different parts that contribute to the development of society as a whole. The different parts of society are considered interrelated and interdependent. In his AGIL system paradigm, Parson maintains that the social system has itself to contain deviations, particularly in complex societies.
Development of Social Systems
Two primary theorists of the management systems method were Robert Kahn and Daniel Katz (Hartnell 104). Their research focused heavily on how organizations function as social systems. This social system was described as an open system in which unknown, uncontrollable variables with probabilistic and nondeterministic outcomes impact and influence it. The degree to which these borders are permeable will determine whether the system is more or less open to the outside world. The last characteristic of these systems is the lack of an immediately discernible physical structure in the social systems discovered by Katz and Kahn instead of structuring a collection of occurrences. Katz and Kahn propose dividing all components of the social system into three subsystems despite their awareness of how challenging it is to analyze a system with these characteristics. This includes the management subsystems, such as the coordination, authority, control, and organization functions, and the maintenance subsystems concerned with stability and supplying the rules, values, and rewards applicable to the organization’s members. The adaptive subsystems are concerned with the organization’s future (Hartnell 105).
The most innovative ideas concerning social systems emerged from German sociologist Niklas Luhmann in the years following Parsons’ theory of social systems. While developing a unique theory, Luhmann was influenced by Parsons and used some of his ideas. Concerning social systems, Luhmann emphasizes autopoiesis, a term he borrowed from biological theory rather than equilibrium. Autopoietic systems, or “self-producing,” can reproduce their parts. Instead of emphasizing component balances as in equilibrium theories, Luhmann focused on social systems’ self-organizing and self-sustaining characteristics and components. While maintaining functional analysis, Lehmann viewed it as a connection between a system and its various contexts. He proposed that autopoietic systems are adaptive within particular ecological environments by presenting his theory as in Darwinian natural selection (Vanderstraeten 271).
Lehmann stressed that all autopoietic systems develop by simplifying the intricate organizational relationships between the various systems in their contexts (Vanderstraeten 275). Each system symbolizes the simplification of the underlying environmental complexity. Social systems continued to develop over time and remained in intricately dynamic interactions with their psychological, biological, and physical-chemical contexts. Social systems are more crucial and complex due to their naturally occurring adaptation to diverse and finely organized contexts.
In conclusion, the Parsons AGIL system was designed to guide sociology and related social sciences. There are many pieces of research drawn from his work several decades later. Its long-term effect will be derived from the critical perspective it gives on other theories.
Works Cited
Parsons, Talbot. “The functional prerequisites of social systems.” Social Theory: Roots and Branches, comp. P. Kivisto (1951): 357-362.
Sciulli, David, and Dean Gerstein. “Social theory and Talcott Parsons in the 1980s.” Annual Review of Sociology (1985): 369-387.
Perrin, Robert G. “Herbert Spencer’s four theories of social evolution.” American Journal of Sociology 81.6 1976: 1339–1359.
Macfarlane, Alan. “Malinowski and Functionalism.” Creative Lives and Works. Routledge, 2021. 1–7.
Turner, Jonathan H. “Functionalism.” The Wiley‐Blackwell encyclopedia of social theory 2017: 1–9.
Calhoun, Craig, ed. Robert K. Merton: Sociology of science and sociology as a science. Columbia University Press, 2010.
Hartnell, C. A., Ou, A. Y., Kinicki, A. J., Choi, D., & Karam, E. P. A meta-analytic test of organizational culture’s association with elements of an organization’s system and its relative predictive validity on organizational outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 2019. 104(6), 832.
, Raf. “Niklas Luhmann and Talcott Parsons.” The Routledge International Handbook of Talcott Parsons Studies. Routledge, 2021. 271-280.
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