At the turn of the century Durkheim was virtually unknown to American audiences. His work remained untranslated until well into the  20th  century; and particularly among American sociologists, his ideas had little impact until 1937, when Talcott Parsons, who eventually was to carry functional thought to its culmination, published his first major work, The Structure of  Social  Action.

Parsons functionalism moves through two distinct phases: the mechanism-equilibrium phase, and the functional requisite phase. Since the second phase grows out of the first and incorporates the mechanism-equilibrium analysis, it is best to examine each phase separately, especially if we are to appreciate the criticisms that Parsons’ scheme inspired.

The Mechanism-Equilibrium Phase

 In 1951 two major works by Parsons and collaborators appeared his. The Social System and the collaborative effort, Toward a General Theory of Action. In these works Parsons analytically separates the cultural systems, the social, personality and the Organismic system. Parsons now visualizes human organization as composed of four analytically distinct systems: cultural, social, Organismic and personality. As a sociologist, he views the social system as the focal target of sociological analysis, but he recognizes that cultural symbols (ideas, beliefs, dogmas, technologies, language, and other symbolic components) and personality states (motives, cognition, commitments, and skills) influence how actors interact in the social system. Thus, while the major task of sociological theory is to understand the process of institutionalization or the formation of stabilized social relations (that is, “social systems”); this understanding cannot occur without recognition of the impact of cultural symbols, Organismic and personality components.

Much of The Social System therefore, addresses the issue of how actors become committed and able to interact and how cultural patterns regulate interaction. Implicit in his analysis are two concerns. (1) The social system must have “a  sufficient proportion of its component actors adequately motivated to act in accordance with the requirements of its role system (2) The social system must seek to avoid a situation in which cultural patterns “either fail to define a minimum of order of place  impossible demands on people and thereby generate deviance and conflict.”

This concern leads Parsons to the analysis of “mechanisms.” that assure that these two concerns are met. For Parsons, the operation of these mechanisms is what makes social systems possible. Conversely, the breakdown of these mechanisms will create instability and change in social systems.

Parsons begins by asserting that for analytical purposes, a social system can be conceptualized as in “equilibrium.” Analysis must then focus on the “mechanisms” that operate to maintain this equilibrium. One set of mechanisms revolves around the integration of the personality system into the social system. There are two general classes of such mechanism.

1. Mechanisms of socialization and
2. Mechanisms of social control

•    Mechanisms of socialization involve those processes in which key cultural symbols are internalized by the personality system
•  motives and skills for playing roles in the social system are acquired, and
• strain and anxiety associated with learning and personality growth are mitigated.

Mechanisms of social control include the varied was that positions and roles in the social system are organize so as to reduce conflict and tension. These mechanisms include: (a) institutionalization so that normative expectations on positions are clear  and potentially  contradictory roles are segregated in time and space b) informal inter personal sanctions to reduce deviance from expected behaviors; (c) ritual performances, from gestures of courtesy (such as handshakes) to symbolic enactment of religious  rites that release tensions and/or regularize interaction; (d) safety-valve organizations which allow widespread deviant dispositions to be enacted outside conventional of power and the capacity for coercion so that order can be enforced.

These  two  general  types  of  mechanisms for socialization and social control thus “resolve” the problem of assuring that actors are committed and able to play roles in the social system, and that they will continue  to  conform  to  normative  expectations. Naturally, to the degree that these mechanisms are ineffective, the social equilibrium will be disrupted and social change will ensue. The other major requisite in Parsons’ early functionalism’ concerns the integration of cultural patterns-values beliefs, and other symbolic components-into the social system. Parsons does not explicitly name these processes as “mechanisms,” but he clearly views systems of cultural symbols as operating as “mechanisms” to maintain the social equilibrium.

Parsons discusses two ways in which the cultural system performs this function, first, many components of culture, such as language, serve as resources for interaction. Without common symbolic resources, such as language, interaction in the social system could not occur. In this sense culture is a “facility.” Second, following Durkheim’s emphasis on “the collective conscience” and Max Weber’s analysis of the impact of ideas on “social action, Parsons visualizes certain symbol systems as constraining and shaping the course of interaction. Such constraint occurs in at least two ways: Values, beliefs, and other symbolic components

•  give actors common assumptions with which to define situations and
•  provide them with instructions about how to act and interact.

Thus, Parsons’ early functionalism follows Malinowski’s and Radcliffe-Brown’s distinction between social structure (the social system) and symbol systems (cultural system), and then, introduces a third action system, the personality.

Parsons’ later functionalism retains this concern, but the place of requisites becomes more prominent and the scope of the scheme greatly expands.

The Requisite Functionalism Phase

Parsons’ functional approach develops rapidly after the 1951 publication of The Social system and Toward a General Theory of Action. The most important development involves the elaboration of four system requisites that all action system-whether the cultural social, personality, or organismic -must meet if they are to survive.

The elaboration of these requisites (abbreviated A, G, I, and L) simply represents extensions of ideas implicit in The Social System, and of course, ideas evident as early as 1937 in Malinowski’s work. Yet, Parsons uses the concept of requisites to create an elaborate functional scheme. For any action system, substructures of the system can be analyzed in terms of which of the four requisites they meet. Since the social system is the primary concern of sociologists the task of inquiry is to determine how various social structures (social systems) meet their adaptive, goal attainment, integration, and latency needs. At the societal level, for example, dominant institutions would be first categorized in terms of which requisite they are most involved in meeting Such  an analysis would, of course, closely resemble Malinowski’s analysis of “institutions” in relation to “derived needs.”

Parsons goes much further than Malinowski, however. He begins to use diagrams for mapping the functional sectors of substructures within action system and for tracing interrelations among and within structures of various sectors.

Then, Parsons would ask how, at the most analytical level, sectors involved in meeting one of the four requisites are interrelated with each other. Here/Parsons is seeking to discern the way subsystems interact, within a more inclusive social system.

Actually, any social structure, such as the economy, also needs to meet the four functional problems. Thus, in an elaborate economy, one could expect to find discrete industries or corporations that are primarily involved in adaptation, goal attainment, integration, or latency. But of course each of these corporations, as discrete social systems in their own  right,  would  also reveal A,G,I, L problems, and thus, if analysis were to focus on any one corporation, its different subparts-divisions, offices, etc.-could also be viewed as meeting primarily one or the other of the four requisites. The same would be true of a division within a corporation it too could be analyzed in terms of the A, G, I, L framework. So could groups within divisions. Thus, whether a society or some other system, such as a corporation-each constituent part is, in its own right also a social system, and thus amenable to analysis with the A, G, I, L scheme.

As  can  be  seen,  then,  Parsons’  requisite scheme argues for the utility of locating a subsystem’s function, analyzing its relation to subsystems in other functional sectors, as well as discerning the A,G,I,L  exchanges  among  its  own  constituent  parts. Sociological theory, in this view, thus becomes an elaborate taxonomic and mapping operation in which the functions of structures are first classified and then interactions among functionally distinguished parts are traced.

Parsons visualizes that social systems as well as cultural, psychological, and organismic action systems can be analyzed in this way. Moreover, Parsons retains the thrust of his first work, The Structure of Social Action, and the first functional  work,  The Social System, by using the A,G,I,L scheme to visualize an overall action system with the cultural, social personality, and organismic systems as its constituent subsystems.

In this scheme, the organismic system (as the system providing energy to humans) resolves adaptive problems the personality system (as the decision maker) deals with goal attainment problems the social system (as sets of relationships among actors) meets integrative problems, and the cultural system (as a system of symbols) handles latency problems. As with other analyses using the A, G, I, L scheme, Parsons then seeks to explore the relationships among all four systems (recall in The Social System that Parsons examined how mechanisms integrated culture and personality systems into the social system).

Adaptation as a functional prerequisite implies generation and acquisition of resources from outside the system, its external environment and to effect its distribution in the system. External environment in this case means land, water, etc. As an example we can mention the economic system, which involves resource utilization, production and distribution in the society. Adaptation is oriented to factors external to the system and it has an instrument character.

Goal-Attainment is that functional prerequisite which involves, firstly, the determination of goals, secondly, the motivating of members of the system to attain these goals, and thirdly, the mobilizing of the members and of their energies for the achievements of these goals. Its processes are consummatory in character although it does involve external interaction.

The organisation of the power and authority structure in a social system is an example of an institution where goal attainment is the primary thrust. The political processes are its examples. It needs to be remembered that goal attainment is related to the ideological and organizational set up of the social system.

Integration is that functional prerequisite which helps to maintain coherence, solidarity and coordination in the system. In the social system this function in mainly performed by culture and values. Therefore, the cultural system and its associated institutions and practices constitute elements of integration. Integration ensures continuity, coordination and solidarity with the system; it also helps in safeguarding the system from breakdown on disruption. This functional prerequisite in internal to the system and has a consummatory character.

Finally, latency is that functional prerequisite of the social system, which stores, organizes and maintains the motivational energy of elements in the social system. Its main functions are pattern maintenance and tension management within the system.

This function is performed by the socialization process of the members of the social system. The process of socialization helps in internalization of the symbols, values, tastes and habits specific to the social system in the personality of the actors who are members of the system. It needs also to be added that in Parsons’ view the function of tension management must task place internally in all institutions. This is how it can be differentiated from the function of “integration” which refers primarily to the integration between different systems in society. The functional prerequisite of latency also bears an instrumental character.

Much of the work of Comte, Spencer, Durkheim Radcliffe Brown, and Malinowski is embraced by Parsonian functionalism. The organismic analogy is retained in Parsons tendency to employ taxonomies[1] to analyze a structure in relation to function and to map relations through the use of distinctive, symbolic (instead of chemical substances) media. Malinowski’s concern with “basic needs” of the organism is given new life as the organismic system of an overall action system. Malinowski’s and Radcliffe Brown’s separation of structures and symbols is incorporated into a distinction between the cultural and social systems. Malinowski’s distinctions among system levels, and Durkheim’s conception of society as a reality, sui generis is preserved in the cybernetic hierarchy of control consisting  of  separable organismic, personality, social, and cultural system. The emphasis of Durkheim and Radcliffe Brown on integration is retained in the cybernetic hierarchy but it is also emphasized in the integrative requisite of all action systems ,  Malinowski’s analysis of four basic “derived need is borrowed and expanded to not just social systems but to a action systems and to an overall action system.

In all of his analyses, of course, Parsons has merged other intellectual traditions from economics psychology, anthropology, and sociology. More than any other social scientist of this century, Parsons has sought to cut across disciplines in order to unravel the mysteries of human action and organization. He has visualized functional analysis as the most fruitful perspective in this endeavor and his collective theoretical work represents the most complex and elaborate compendium of the functional schemes.

Parsons, we can argue, has taken functionalism to its logical conclusion as a theoretical strategy. And if this conclusion is found deficient, then functionalism as a theory building strategy is also deficient. . In contrast to its use in sociology, anthropological functionalism took a much different tack. Functionalism in anthropology concentrated on its use as a method for collecting and organizing the data base from which theory could be inducted and tested.

But his theory of social system has been criticized widely as his understanding of social system do not have any empirical basis. Secondly, he has not generated any tangible methodology. He has also overemphasized the consensus and gave a pre-conceived notion that society will remain in equilibrium but Marx says that in reality at present, there is no equilibrium. Parsons has also overemphasized a socialized conception of man. Dahrendorf says that it is out of utopia that Individual is totally confining to norms and values. According to Dennis Wrong – Parsons was having over socialized conception of man’s behavior. Further Parsons has not given any clue regarding how to take any preventive action in order to meet survival condition. Parson has been regarded positive as he has generated a grand theory because it is just an abstract theorization, which is divorced from empirical reality.

In short, despite of wide usage of concept of social system by other sociologist its development by Parsons on many levels abstraction and its application by him to wide range of human interaction not only gives him undisputed primacy in its use but also has provided basis for an extensive secondary literature.