Talcott Parsons: Despair and Modernity

Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) was the foremost sociological theorist of the decades spanning the middle of the 20th century. In his early work, Parsons integrated ideas derived from the writings of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto, and others into a comprehensive but elementary conceptual scheme that he termed the "voluntaristic theory of action." In his later work, he elaborated this schema into a highly technical theory of four functionally defined subsystems of society, which remains a generation after his death the most thoroughly detailed theory of the overall organization of modern societies. In addition to his several volumes of general theory, Parsons wrote more than a hundred insightful essays addressing a wide range of empirical topics. Both Parsons' general theory and many of his empirical essays were controversial when written and remain so today. This collection includes articles by major interpreters of and contributors to the theory of action, including works by Neil J. Smelser, Robert N. Bellah, S. N. Eisenstadt, Renee C. Fox, Roland Robertson, Hans Joas, Mark Gould, Victor Lidz, and others whose writings have sustained the Parsonian tradition that combines a voluntaristic conception of social action with function analysis of social systems. As editor, Victor Lidz has provided a broad introduction to Parsonsa€? theory of action, the controversies it has engendered, and key trends of thought about its revision and updating.

Victor Lidz was taught by Talcott Parsons at Harvard and after graduation in 1962 entered the Department of Social Relations at Harvard to continue his studies in sociological theory. He was Parsons' research assistant from 1963 to 1968 and in the 1970s he taught seminars on new developments in the theory of social action with Parsons at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. Lidz received his doctorate from Harvard in 1976. He is presently Associate Professor and Director of Programs for Addictive Disorders at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, USA. He has published both with Parsons and on Parsons' work, including After Parsons: A Theory of Social Action for the Twenty-First Century co-edited with Renee C. Fox and Harold J. Bershady and the chapter on Parsons for The Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social Theorists edited by George Ritzer.