SOC 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Social Actions, Talcott Parsons

• School: Irvine Valley College
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1
• Professor: brown

Document Summary

American functionalist who spent virtually his entire academic career teaching and writing at harvard university. His first major work, the structure of social. Action (1937), was america"s introduction to the writings of max weber and began to establish parsons"s intellectual reputation. Social action theory: was an attempt to separate behaviours, which he saw as almost mechanical responses to specific stimuli, from actions, which he viewed as the results of an active and inventive process. Parsons viewed people as actors in that they played roles either as individuals or as collectives, and he outlined a four-step process to explain their motivations and goals. First, actors are motivated to achieve a goal or end as defined by the cultural system in which they live. For example, your decision to attend university or college and achieve good grades occurred because you are motivated to have a productive and satisfying career, which you believe requires a postsecondary education.