Parsons' The Structure of Social Action and Contemporary Debates

Index:

Gabriele Pollini, Giuseppe Sciortino , Preface

Jeffrey C. Alexander , Parsons as a Republican Critic of Industrial Society: A New Understanding of the Early Writings

Gabriele Pollini , The Currency and Validity of Parsons' Interpretation of Vilfredo Pareto's Theory of Social Action

(The intellectual context in which Parsons developed his interpretation of Pareto; The principal features of Parsons' interpretation of Pareto: logical and non-logical action; The structure of non-logical action: residues and derivations; The theory of social utility; The question of voluntarism)

Giuseppe Sciortino , The Structure of Social Àction's "Missing" Chapter on Simmel: An Introduction

(Much ado for nothing? A brief history of "SSA's missing chapter"; The chapter on Simmel and Tönnies within SSA's project; Parsons, social forms and subsequent developments of the theory of action; Appendix. Talcott Parsons' letter to Jeffrey C. Alexander)

Talcott Parsons , Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies: Social Relationships and the Elements of Action

Pierpaolo Donati , Parsons' Lesson on Freedom and Order in Social Action: Why and How It Must Re Made Relational

(What is the structure of social action? Parsons' work and the argument of this essay; Parsons' grandiose project; What Parsons' theory has taught us and why it failed; Starting again from the problems that Parsons left behind; Why may we say that action is social? The structure of social action from a relational perspective)

Mark Gould , The Generalized Media of Communication and the Logic of Cultural Intelligibility: Macro and Micro Analyses in Luhmann, Habermas and Parsons

(A theoretical context; Empiricism and the failure to construct a viable microsociology; Societal universals, structural models, usage, and individual actions; Culturally mediated interaction; Socially mediated interaction; Power: the integration of micro and macro perspectives)

Davide La Valle , Parsons and Social Exchange

(Parsons and the method of economic theory; "The Structure of Social Action": Parsons' critique of utilitarianism; The concept of institutionalization in "Toward" and "The Social System"; The "Marshall Lectures" and "Economy and Society": the new solution to the problem of the relationships between economies and sociology; The theory of generalized and symbolic media of interchange; The exchange model and functional analysis)

Nicolò Addario , Why a Theory of Society Cannot Re Founded on a Theory of Action: On the Legacy of Parsons' Scientific Programme Sixty Years after "The Structure"

Maurizio Ghisleni , The History of Sociology between Continuity and Discontinuity: Parsons and the Consensus-Conflict Dualism

(The history of sociology in reverse; Sociology, science and historiography; Classics and interpretation: in search of a notion of discontinuity; Unilinear history, or returning to the problem of order and the great divide; Functionalism and structural-functionalism, consensus and conflict theory; Beyond historical linearity)

Jens Kaalhauge Nielsen , Are There Cultural Limits to Inclusion? An Analysis of the Relation between Culture and Social Evolution in Talcott Parsons' Theory

(The religious framework of Parsons' intellectual ideas; His father's creed; The logic of Parsons' theodicy; On the concept of secularization; Some critical considerations; The fate of culture in the modem world; Is there a place for a communitarian view of culture in Parsons' theory of social evolution?).

Serie: Sociologia

Subjects: Sociological Theory and History of Sociological Thought

Level: Scholarly Research