Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory PDF Download

Author: Talcott Parsons
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Author: Talcott Parsons
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description

Author: Talcott Parsons
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226647498
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Offering a diverse set of contributions to current social contracting research, this volume illustrates how social contracts necessarily underlie and facilitate all forms of capitalist production and exchange. The editors bring together novel contributions from fields as diverse as economics, evolutionary game theory, contract law, business ethics, moral philosophy and anthropology to offer multifaceted but subtly intertwined perspectives on fundamental questions concerning human cooperation.

Author: Talcott Parsons
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Author: Kenneth C. Bausch
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461512638
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 551

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Book Description
In The Emerging Consensus of Social Systems Theory Bausch summarizes the works of over 30 major systemic theorists. He then goes on to show the converging areas of consensus among these out-standing thinkers. Bausch categorizes the social aspects of current systemic thinking as falling into five broadly thematic areas: designing social systems, the structure of the social world, communication, cognition and epistemology. These five areas are foundational for a theoretic and practical systemic synthesis. They were topics of contention in a historic debate between Habermas and Luhmann in the early 1970's. They continue to be contentious topics within the study of social philosophy. Since the 1970's, systemic thinking has taken great strides in the areas of mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, and sociology. This book presents a spectrum of those theoretical advances. It synthesizes what various strains of contemporary systems science have to say about social processes and assesses the quality of the resulting integrated explanations. Bausch gives a detailed study of the works of many present-day systems theorists, both in general terms, and with regard to social processes. He then creates and validates integrated representations of their thoughts with respect to his own thematic classifications. He provides a background of systemic thinking from an historical context, as well as detailed studies of developments in sociological, cognitive and evolutionary theory. This book presents a coherent, dynamic model of a self-organizing world. It proposes a creative and ethical method of decision-making and design. It makes explicit the relations between structure and process in the realms of knowledge and being. The new methodology that evolves in this book allows us to deal with enormous complexity, and to relate ideas so as to draw out previously unsuspected conclusions and syntheses. Therein lies the elegance and utility of this model.

Author: Helmut Staubmann
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 9783825875022
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The volume explores the legacy of the general theory of action in order to exploit it for contemporary debates on the methodology of the social sciences. It includes the important but so far unpublished Parsons manuscript "The Sociology of Knowledge and the History of Ideas" and essays by Thomas Fararo (University of Pittsburgh): "On the Foundations of Action Theory"; Victor Lidz (Drexel University) and Harold Bershady (University of Pennsylvania): "Parsons' Tacit Metatheory"; Giuseppe Sciortino (Universitß degli studi di Trento): "Toward a Structural Theory of Social Pluralism"; David Sciulli (Texas A&M University): "Reformulating Parsons' Theory for Comparative Research Today"; Helmut Staubmann (University of Innsbruck): "The Affective Structure of the Social World." Helmut Staubmann is professor at the Institute for Sociology at the Leopold-Franzens-University, Innsbruck (Austria).

Author: Thomas J. Fararo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313074119
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Fararo studies general theoretical sociology as a time-extended tradition with three phases: classical, postclassical, and recent. Employing a process philosophical approach, the author seeks to examine these three phases in an effort to provide a synthesis of the theories that seek to lay the foundations of theoretical sociology. The author especially focuses on the work of Talcott Parsons and George Homans, two contemporary theorists whose common aspiration was to forge a theoretical foundation for sociology that would serve to unify and integrate all theories growing out of sociological research in much the same way that the theory of evolution guides and integrates all other biological theories. To begin, the author provides a history and overview of the key classical theoretical frameworks from the perspective of process philosophy, which he applies to all three phases of the study. Fararo then carefully analyzes two major postclassical bodies of general theory, namely the evolving and intertwined frameworks of Parsons and Homans from their early theories of social systems to their later divergent perspectives on foundation and synthesis in sociological theory. Finally, the discussion turns to the recent phase of general theoretical sociology, where more recent foundation strategies -- rational choice theory and generative structuralism -- are analyzed in relation to the postclassical phase of the tradition. This important and sophisticated new work is essential for all those interested in sociological theory in particular and sociology in general.

Author: Richard Münch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113682068X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
Modern sociology owes its existence and the progress it has made to the integration of differing kinds of orientations. In this work, first published 1987, Professor Richard Münch sets out to reformulate the theory of action, a notion central to sociology and one to which all schools of thought within sociology have contributed. He gives an exposition of the voluntaristic theory of action as found in Talcott Parson's work, reconstructing and extending Parson's theory from the perspective of the present-day level of development. In this way he both integrates opposing orientations to action theory and presents the voluntaristic theory of action in a readable and teachable from.

Author: Renee C. Fox
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610442156
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Esteemed twentieth-century sociologist Talcott Parsons sought to develop a comprehensive and coherent scheme for sociology that could be applied to every society and historical epoch, and address every aspect of human social organization and culture. His theory of social action has exerted enormous influence across a wide range of social science disciplines. After Parsons, edited by Renée Fox, Victor Lidz, and Harold Bershady, provides a critical reexamination of Parsons' theory in light of historical changes in the world and advances in sociological thought since his death. After Parsons is a fresh examination of Parsons' theoretical undertaking, its significance for social scientific thought, and its implications for present-day empirical research. The book is divided into four parts: Social Institutions and Social Processes; Societal Community and Modernization; Sociology and Culture; and the Human Condition. The chapters deal with Parsons' notions of societal community, societal evolution, and modernization and modernity. After Parsons addresses major themes of enduring relevance, including social differentiation and cultural diversity, social solidarity, universalism and particularism, and trust and affect in social life. The contributors explore these topics in a wide range of social institutions—family and kinship, economy, polity, the law, medicine, art, and religion—and within the context of contemporary developments such as globalization, the power of the United States as an "empireless empire," the emergence of forms of fundamentalism, the upsurge of racial, tribal, and ethnic conflicts, and the increasing occurence of deterministic and positivistic thought. Rather than simply celebrating Parsons and his accomplishments, the contributors to After Parsons rethink and reformulate his ideas to place them on more solid foundations, extend their scope, and strengthen their empirical insights. After Parsons constitutes the work of a distinguished roster of American and European sociologists who find Parsons' theory of action a valuable resource for addressing contemporary issues in sociological theory. All of the essays in this volume take elements of Parsons' theory and critique, adapt, refine, or extend them to gain fresh purchase on problems that confront sociologists today.

Author: Talcott Parsons
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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