Born Dec. 13, 1902, in Colorado Springs, Colo. American theoretical sociologist; one of the major representatives of the structural-functional school of sociology. President of the American Sociological Association (1949).

Parsons has worked at Harvard University since 1927. From 1946 to 1956 he was chairman of the department of social relations.

Parsons has drawn upon the work of M. Weber, E. Durkheim, A. Marshall, and V. Pareto, as well as upon modern systems analysis, cybernetics, and the semiotics of symbols. He supports the construction of a general analytic, deductive theory of human action as the basis for solving particular empirical problems. According to Parsons, human action is a self-organizing system. The distinctiveness of this system, in contrast to the systems of physical or biological action, consists in the use of symbols, that is, in the presence of such symbolic regulatory mechanisms as language and values. Also distinctive is the normative quality of human behavior, that is, the dependence of an individual action on generally accepted values and norms. Finally the system of human action is distinguished by voluntariness, that is, a certain irrationality and independence from the cognizable conditions of the environment and at the same time a dependence on subjective situational determinants. On this basis, Parsons has constructed an abstract formalized model of a system of action that places the cultural, social, personality, and organism subsystems in relationships of mutual exchange. One of Parsons’ main ideas is the invariability of the set of functional problems, which always involves adaptation, goal attainment, integration, pattern-maintenance, and tension-management. The solutions to these functional problems is provided by specialized subsystems. Thus, within a social system the function of adaptation is carried out by the economic subsystem; that of goal attainment, by the political subsystem; that of integration, by legal institutions and customs; and that of pattern-maintenance by the system of beliefs, by morals, and by such agents of socialization as the family and educational institutions.

Parsonian concepts have significantly influenced American sociology, including empirical research. At the same time, Parsons’ theory has been criticized by empirically oriented or radical bourgeois sociologists, such as C. Wright Mills, for its excessive intellectual complexity and its conservatism. Marxist sociologists have criticized Parsons’ theory for its formalism, ahistoricism, idealism, undervaluation of the significance of social conflicts and contradictions, and apologetic aims. Marxist thought has demonstrated the insubstantiality of structural functionalism’s claim to be an all-encompassing sociological and anthropological theory; at the same time, however, Marxist thought does not deny the validity of a systemic approach to the analysis of social phenomena and processes.