Structural-functional analysis of Tolcott Parsons

Modern sociology is characterized by the coexistence of various concepts of social knowledge. Continuity of sociological ideas at the moment is the basis of the very development of the teachings about society. A significant contribution to this progress was made by the concept - the structural and functional analysis of Parsons, which the distinguished American scientist formulated in the middle of the last century. Today, Tolcott Parsons is recognized in the scientific world as one of the classics of sociological science. He created a detailed concept - functional analysis, which is a necessary methodological tool for sociological knowledge of the modern world in all its diversity.

At the center of this concept is the notion of systemic nature, it is with it that the entire complex of ideas and problems in the subject area of research of issues of social equilibrium, conflict, consensus and the evolution of society as a system is associated.

For the first time Parsons touches on functional analysis as a methodological resource, exploring the Henderson-Pareto theory, where the main place was given to the issues of economics and its role in the evolution of society. Then this topic was continued by Schumpeter, who approached the analysis of the economy precisely from the point of view of its systemic nature.

Summarizing the conclusions of the scientists, Parsons comes to the conviction that systematicity alone can not objectively explain social trends, therefore it is necessary to include in the system analysis the components of the study of social functions. So this complex theoretical education was born - "structural and functional analysis". Its essence lies in the universalism of approaches to the study of the laws and trends observed in modern social life.

Completely new in this theory was the study of the cybernetic aspects of society as a "system of cultural symbolic meanings." The cybernetic method made it possible to deal more thoroughly with the previously unexplored problems of stability and entropy of society.

The functional analysis substantiated by Parsons made it possible to take a fresh look at the problem of social conflict that was popular then . The fact is that the spread of positivism and its methods created one-sidedness and a contradiction in the interpretation of the categories of stability and conflict. Therefore, the question was raised about the coexistence in society of chaos and order as dialectical aspects of social life. The then developing theory of the conflict, Lewis Coser - American economist and sociologist, in fact, complemented the idea of Parsons, arguing that society does not exhaust one stability of all possible states of its own. This conclusion became especially significant in substantiating the economic development trends, which experienced the processes of cyclical changes of its states - the periods of crises were replaced by periods of relative economic stability. Therefore, functional analysis in the economy today also acts as a necessary methodological method for studying economic processes, especially in the field of assessing the likelihood of risks, macroeconomic forecast and others.

In Parsons' theory, the unit of analysis is the concrete action of the individual, and not the abstract society as a whole. Such a fundamentally new approach made it possible to analyze the society not from the point of view of the individual traits of man, what was accepted in psychology, but from the point of view of the behavior of the individual in a particular situation. According to Parsons - social action is a localized in time and space behavior, which is due to the fulfillment by a person in the surrounding society of certain functions. In the context of these functions, various structures, social mechanisms, value and cultural systems can intersect and all will influence human behavior and the performance of social functions.

This completely original approach, which provided for functional analysis, and his new methodological paradigm laid the foundations for future European sociology. Famous followers of Parsons' ideas here were Max Weber, Wilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels.

In general, although Parsons' theory contains some abstractions and elements of formalism, it continues to be very popular and practically in demand in the analytic study of modern society.