Date: 22/09/2024
Author: Charles Ganbaatar
Functionalist theorist Talcott Parsons’ research studies and analyses on sociology laid the foundations for the rest of social system theory. His theory of social action influenced the intellectual bases of other disciplines of modern social sciences, which provided ideas for various social system frameworks to be built and different theories of social systems to be formulated. Parson states that a social system is a system of processes of social interaction and its interactive process is the structure of the social system (Parsons, 1964). However, some argued that Parsons was irremediably trapped by theoretical problems and did not offer final solutions to the dilemma in the set of dichotomies between materialism and idealism or determinism and idealism (Giddens, 1968; Dawe, 1970). For example, Habermas noticed logical incoherence and inconsistence in Parson’s general theory and argued that Parson’s action theory was overwhelmed by his own systems theory which could not cope with the communicative nature of social interaction (Habermas, 1987). From both criticisms and looking at Parsons’ early theory on sociology, it has become apparent that his works were heavily influenced by the issues of biological sciences and religious values. His theory in The Social System was based on value-orientations and more in line with the impact of political, economic issues and religious values. There might be many more critical objections to Parsons’ vision of sociology and his defence of American civilisation, this research study is not concerned with criticisms of some of Parsons’ works. The purpose is to establish the connection between professional services and today’s social system by discerning different theories and apprehending the influence of commercialisation of professional services on our current social system.
The AGIL paradigm
Parson developed a sociological scheme in the 1950s called The AGIL Paradigm, for every society to maintain its stable social life, the scheme is a systematic depiction of some society functions (Ritzer, 2011). The AGIL Paradigm is part of Parsons’ action theory mentioned in The Structure of Social Action and The Social System, it has four sub-systems of the social system in relation to its environment. They are adaptation (the economy), Goal Attainment (the politics), Integration (law and social control), and Latency (social challenges) (Parson, 1964). Parson believed that social economy was about allocating scarce resources, adaptation between the social system and the environment, and circulating media of exchange such as influence, power and commitment. Influence is an integrative sub-system; power is the generalised medium of politics and commitment is part of the latency sub-system (Parson, 1970).
In Parsons’ view of social system, the orderly systems of the society are promoted and analysed by mostly utilitarian social scientists who tend to neglect the role of values and ideas; these orderly systems are based on compatibility of interests through mutual agreements, such as the market system which is based on mutual and contractual relationships of economic interests. On the other hand, idealists place too much emphasis on values and ideas rather than focusing on the practical parts of the social system. Max Weber also discussed about the similar idealism that capitalism was initially aided by the Protestant ethic, he elaborated at length on certain social values such as rational asceticism (Albrow, 1990). Weber further insisted that all human desires were somewhat suppressed solely to the rational natural purpose. Overall, the utilitarians strongly emphasise the individual self-interests and rational choice and disregard the collective activities and behaviours. Parsons’ theory social action considers the action of both the individual and the collectives, his approach is integrative in nature as he brings out the significance of values and motivational factors in the social system (Parsons, 1970). Parsons’ intrinsic element of the social system is formulated through his theory of social action, these systems of action include four modes of organisation, they are Behavioural System, Personality System, Social System and Cultural System. I have integrated these modes into the four sub-systems of the social system as described and explained below:
- Adaptation (Behavioural System): The capacity of society to interact with the environment, such as gathering, allocating resources and producing commodities for redistribution.
- Goal Attainment (Personality System): The capacity to establish goals and make decisions accordingly, such as political determinations and social objectives.
- Integration (Social System): The capacity to maintain a harmonised society, such as convergence of social values and norms and fairness in religious system.
- Latency (Cultural System): The capacity to maintain the integrative elements of the above integration, such as obligation and responsibility of the society.
Adaptation/Behavioural System
In 1931, the first prominent sociology department was established at Harvard University. Parsons was transferred to this new sociology department and joined Lawrence J. Henderson’s Vilfredo Pareto study group. Most of Parsons’ research studies therefore drew on Paretian sociology by stating that sociological action is based on ethical concerns rather than self-regarding utilitarian choice, he subsequently developed a subtle theory of social norms, social values, role-actor model and social subsystems. Adaptation is the process based on the reaction of social systems to their surroundings, such as families, businesses and governments. In other words, it is the process of adapting one’s behaviour and conduct to fit the social standards and ideals of a particular environment or social group. For examples, under the social control mechanisms, most people face peer pressure and consider laws and regulations before taking certain actions. According to Parsons’ structural functionalism, adaptation explains how society modifies its external environments to achieve its objectives. Civilizations advance and fulfill their social duties by being adaptable to the surroundings much more like biological organisms do. The concept of adaptation is also part of Parsons’ theory of social system survival, which is characterised as heritable behavioural feature to improve one’s chances of survival in a social setting (Williams, 1996). However, sometimes survival can be mistaken as adaptation in the functional aspects of groups. Goerge Williams provides an analogy with human behaviour that illustrates the nature of this misconception. Suppose an alien observes the social behaviour of a group of terrified people rushing out from a burning building. If the alien cannot tell the difference between survival and adaptation, he may assume that the group of people running together must exhibit an adaptive organisation for the benefit of the group. The alien obviously misses the conclusion that the observed behaviour of the group is caused by total survival, and they are simply running away from the burning building in order to survive. The alien might be impressed by the fact that these terrified people’s rapid response to the stimulus of burning building. However, this behaviour can also be adaptive from the aspect of individual genetic survival and the behaviour of this group of people can be seen as the statistical summation of individual adaptation (Williams, 1996). Social adaptation seems to be increasingly imperative when huge parts of our life are impacted by social change in reasonably short periods.
Goal Attainment (Personality System)
Social system needs to define and achieve its objectives, individuals always have targets to achieve in their life. If individuals do not have targets, they might not be able to survive (Parsons, 1964). The goals of individuals, institutions, and societies must be defined, and resource allocations need to be determined. Therefore, goal attainment involves the pursuit and establishment of collective goals within the social system. It is the process of defining and achieving certain objectives, its attainment functions are achieved through mobilisation and political activities in a social system. The personality system affects the individual’s social functioning and outlines the motivation that governs human behaviour. Parsons further suggested that the structure of personality is established from a young age through the process of socialisation, this process is influenced and governed through social interaction. In the personality system, young people develop expectations from their parents or other adults, which is called roles-expectation. Order in the social system is strongly dependent on the personality system, Parsons put much importance on social control and the role of socialisation in governing the motivations of individuals, while the personality of individuals is classified under the category of social objects.
Integration (Social System)
There is a necessity for the society to adjust, regulate, coordinate relationships among various units and actors within the social system to keep the system functioning (Wallace & Wolf, 1995). Social conflicts and tensions may occur during social processes; however, individuals are likely to carry out their duties to manage these tensions, diffuse and resolve various conflicts and ensure orderly society. Integration in the social system refers to the modes and forms of interaction between organisations and individuals, which involves the interaction process among actors, these actors are objects of emotion and value judgment; through them goals can be achieved. For Parson, our society has its own self-sufficient systems, and the unit of social structure is the collective role rather than the individual. The role outlines the harmonising expectations with whom the individual interacts. The social system is mainly about the role interaction between people, people become institutionalised when they agree with each other, harmonise with cultural patterns and confirms with the moral norms shared by those people in the society. Therefore, there appears to be role expectation and shared reality in the current system. Parson further suggested that the social system may have common cultural orientations, but different individuals can have various value-orientations. Common culture can help to address the problems of integration, because there is a set of roles which work in harmony and collaboration with others.
Latency (Cultural System)
According to Parsons, latency is the normative problem of motivation to fulfil positions in our social system. Money is the medium of exchange in the adaptive subsystems whose function consists in measuring value (Parsons, 1964). Each subsystem requires input from the neighbouring subsystems in order to continue functioning correctly (Tittenbrun, 2014). Sale and purchase of goods and services is communicated through the medium of money, which motivates acceptance of the medium in exchange. However, Parson’s view of power as another medium of exchange, and his approach to money have been previously criticized by other researchers (Ganssmann, 1988). To maintain social equilibrium with respect to such environment, all subsystems must adapt that environment to some degree, attain goals, integrate components and maintain latent pattern. The pattern of latency maintains or challenges society to maintain its integrative elements of the integration, and sustains the motivational energy of actors. The cultural system simultaneously encompasses beliefs, systems of values and symbolic means of communication. It also emphasises on the interaction between individuals and a culture setting, the cultural system is classified into three components. (1) beliefs and ideas. (2) expressive symbols. (3) value orientation. The subsystem of ideas addresses the cognitive issue, expressive symbols address expression of feelings and value orientation performs the function evaluation. Value orientation also involves in performing obligations and reciprocity, which further fulfils the role expectations and sanctions. All the above systems and subsystems help to maintain the social order.
Systems of communication
In 1960, The sociologist and social theorist Niklas Luhmann obtained a leave of absence from his law firm and went to study with Talcott Parsons at Harvard. Luhmann was subsequently influenced by Parsons’ structural functionalist theory of social systems (Suhrkamp, 2023). In modern societies the systems function autonomously, and they differentiate functionally. Luhmann was influenced by second-order cybernetics, he gradually moved away from Parsons’ systems theory of treating all interactive systems as operationally open through an input and output schema (Luhmann, 1995). The core element of Luhmann’s social theory is communication, as the unity of information and understanding (Teubner, 1988). Every social system has many meaningful communications, and our society is only possible where communication is possible. Luhmann stated that communication is a continuous and sustained operation, and social systems are gradually developed through ongoing juxtapositions of operations of communication (Luhmann, 1995). However social systems are not stable, they consist of a multiplicity of changeable events. It is worth mentioning that all systems and subsystems of the society are autopoietic systems of recursive communications. Luhmann refers the self-producing communications and autopoiesis in biology as a circular self-production. Autopoietic systems operate in a closed environment and can differentiate from all other systems, a system can reproduce itself in accordance with its own programs and rules through system specific communications. However, autopoietic systems are not resistant to change, learning and evolution outside the boundaries of the system.
Legal and political systems
According to Luhman, the legal system has its own autopoietic systems and subsystems within our society (Luhmann, 1995). The important elements of the legal system are neither legal norms nor organisations and actors, but communications. Law is mainly a system of communication like all other subsystems. However, it is regarded as a specific communication in the social system, which is self-reproducing and self-establishing (Fischer-Lescano, 2003). Acts of communication and social events can ultimately change legal structure, as the structure of our social system is based on generalisation of normative behavioural expectation (Rottleuthner, 1989). The legal system operates within the code of right and wrong, meaning that no other system can state what is right or wrong. Legal rules and codes cannot be justified by natural law. Instead, the stability of the legal rules is based on the principle and possibility of variation. Therefore, the legal system can adapt as a reaction to the changing environment and the operational closure prevents the dissolution of the legal system. The change of the law is subject to the social communication and changes in the political and environmental systems. On the other hand, the political system reacts to collectively binding decisions for the society. It involves legal and legitimate authority to safeguard all decisions are being made (Luhmann, 1995). The public confidence in the political system and its decision makers must be strong, every legal decision must be legitimate. Political power is the capability to make self-selected decisions on behalf of others in order to reduce complexity for the people in the society. Autonomy and functional differentiation are the precondition of having the ability to make binding decisions.
Media
According to Luhman, the operation of the mass media is subject to external structural conditions, which has its own limitation (Luhmann, 1996). Mass media generates unnatural illusion, and its activity is regarded as a sequence of operations and a sequence of observations, in other words, observation of operations. Observing is also an operation, but a highly complex operation cannot be observed, and what is not being observed is always the operation of observing itself. So, the operation of observing has its own blind spot. Which means we cannot clearly comprehend the reality of the mass media, its distortion of reality and manipulation of opinion. The mass media social system can be categorised as a subsystem within the larger system of our society (Palmieri, 2020). The society is built upon the process of the communication and constant reproduction of recursive social communication (Luhmann, 1996). This subsystem can include institutions like advertising, journalism, literature and social media. Luhmann identifies three areas of coding: advertising, news and entertainment. I will not go into each of them and write a detailed analysis on them, but I would like to mention that mass media social system allows our modern society to self-observe (Luhmann, 1996). Mass media is not a social media in the sense of conveying information between individuals, it is to make knowledge available as a medium. The medium provides a large amount of information but limited range of knowledge and possibilities. Advertising, news and entertainment contribute in very different ways (Palmieri, 2020). In the modern society we must deal with the reality that is constructed and operated by the mass media social system (Luhmann, 1996). It operates its own social reality constructions and can build a real or a false reality. Therefore, mass media can raise suspicions of manipulation, and its subsystem cannot be fully understood from the distinction between real and fake.
Class and Status
Max Weber argued that a social class is not a community, it is merely a group of people who share the same social situation. These people have a specific causal component of life in common, such component is represented exclusively by opportunities for income and economic interests in the possession of goods, they are also represented under the conditions of labour markets and commodity (Smith, 2007). Weber called it the “class situation”, any group of people identified in the same class situation cannot create a community but merely a group of people who happen to be in the same economic situation. On the other hand, status is associated with the community and a style of life (Weber, 1968). For example, people at the top of the social hierarchy have a different lifestyle than do those at the bottom. Class and status are not necessarily interrelated to each other, money is not in itself status recognition or qualification, although it may lead to status. Therefore, class and status appear to have a complex set of relationships. Social classes belong to the economic order, but status exists in the social order.
Mechanical and organic solidarity
In the Rules of Sociological Method, Emile Durkheim suggests that the division of labour is an economic necessity that can gradually erode the feeling of solidarity among people, the function of economics seem to be insignificant compared with the moral effect it can ultimately produce, its true function should be about creating a feeling of solidarity between people (Durkheim, 1982). The social action needs to be governed through the collective consciousness and maintained through the norms of the society. According to Durkheim there are two types of solidarity in our society, mechanical and organic. A society with mechanical solidarity is unified as everyone is a generalist and people are bond by engagement of similar daily activities and responsibilities. There is a strong collective conscience throughout the entire society with great intensity and its content is religious in character. For example, people feel connected through similar religious or educational backgrounds and lifestyle. It normally operates in more traditional way, and it is generally based on kinship ties of familial networks. On the contrary, a society with organic solidarity is formed by the differences in people and various tasks and responsibilities. The collective conscience is limited to certain groups of people with less intensity, and elevated self-importance. For example, social solidarity is maintained in complex societies through the interdependence of component parts. Diesel mechanics service and repair heavy duty trucks, trucks are used for long-haul transportation. This interdependent relationship allows trucks to carry hefty loads, travel longer distance and deliver goods on time for the consumers. These two types of social solidarity are distinguished by demographic and formal features, the content and intensity of the collective conscience.
Objective and subjective cultures
In Georg Simmel’s opinion, we are influenced and endangered by the things we produce and social structures. Objective culture refers to the things we produce such as products, services, philosophy, art and literatures etc. Subjective culture refers to our ability and capacity of producing those things and controlling the elements in the objective culture (Simmel, 2005). In other words, subjective culture can shape and be shaped by objective culture. However, the problem is that objective culture can eventually become a life of its own and it acquires a lawfulness and logic of its own. Therefore, the existence of these two types of cultures creates a contradiction between people in the society. This contradiction is especially specific to capitalism, which is caused by the increasing helplessness of the individual in the face of the growing objective culture. For example, money in today’s economic realm serves both to create distance from our objects and to provide the means to overcome them. The value of money attached to the things we produce creates distance from ourselves, we must purchase them with money. The difficulty of obtaining the money to purchase those things make them even more valuable to us. Therefore, once we have the money, we can subsequently overcome the distance between the things we want and ourselves. When we obtain more money than we need, we tend to lose a sense of the total culture and the ability to control both objective and subjective cultures. With the rapid growth of modern technology, the skills and abilities of the individual worker are declining dramatically. The objective culture and components of the cultural realm expand and grow rather quickly in many ways, such as our current scientific knowledge. The elements and objects of the cultural world are becoming more and more interdependent and intertwined in an extremely self-contained world that is increasingly beyond our control (Oak, 1984). Thus, the speedy growth of objective culture and the gradual decline of subjective (individual) culture have become a worrisome problem in our society (Vidler, 1991). Genuine human relationship is hard to be found these days and social relationships are mostly dominated by a reserved and rather indifferent attitude. Money has become an end in itself; and its negative effect is causing more and more impersonal relations among people (Beilharz, 1996). People are constantly dealing with each other’s personalities and positions in the society; managers and employees, company officials and consumers, doctors and patients.
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