Notes

- Parsons made efforts to systematically theorize the relationship between culture, personality, and social structure by developing abstract and universally applicable models.
- He was an important advocate of Durkheimian and Weberian cultural sociology.
- He was the figurehead for functionalism as an intellectual paradigm.
- Critical responses to his work have provided the basis for equally important innovations in thinking about culture. Knowing Parsons's work is therefore an important platform for understanding more contemporary cultural theory.

Parson:
- He is more on philosophy than sociology
- He was not drawn to empirical research
- He once described himself as an "incurable theorist"
- His style of working. too, is rather like that of a philosopher
- He tends to think through a problem or issue in abstract ways. making logical deductions about what had to be going on in order for something to happen or exist.

Parsons's work can be conveniently divided into phases.
Early Work in Social Action:
* The· Structure of Social Action in 1937 Parsons (1968) became a leading figure in American sociology
- rational actor models
- "enemy" for all cultural approaches
1. Behaviorist models in psychology emphasizing stimulus and reward
2. The sociological exchange theory of Homans and Blau that was developed in the 1950s and I960s
3. Game theory which was very popular in sociology during the 1970s and 1980s
4. The model of "economic man" advanced by neoclassical economics going back to the time of the Enlightenment

Parsons made a detailed synthesis of four previous theorists: Marshall. Pareto, Durkheim. and Weber.