: 826 They exposed him to literature by authors such as Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, and William Graham Sumner. Hamilton, in particular, drew Parsons toward social science. Parsons also took courses with Walton Hale Hamilton and the philosopher Clarence Edwin Ayres, both known as "institutional economists". Gently mocked as "Little Talcott, the gilded cherub," Parsons became one of the student leaders at Amherst. Parsons' biology professors at Amherst were Otto C. Initially, Parsons was attracted to a career in medicine, as he was inspired by his elder brother : 826 so he studied a great deal of biology and spent a summer working at the Oceanographic Institution at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Amherst College had become the Parsons' family college by tradition his father and his uncle Frank had attended it, as had his elder brother, Charles Edward. On his mother's side, the Ingersoll line was connected with Edwards and from Edwards on would be a new, independent Parsons line because Edwards' eldest daughter, Sarah, married Elihu Parsons on June 11, 1750.Įducation Amherst College Īs an undergraduate, Parsons studied biology and philosophy at Amherst College and received his BA in 1924. On his father's side, the family could be traced back to the Parsons of York, Maine. The family's heritage had two separate and independently developed Parsons lines, both to the early days of American history deeper into British history. His ancestors were some of the first to arrive from England in the first half of the 17th century. Parsons' family is one of the oldest families in American history. The father would later become the president of Marietta College in Ohio. Also, both he and Talcott would be familiar with the theology of Jonathan Edwards. During his Congregational ministry in Greeley, Edward had become sympathetic to the Social Gospel movement but tended to view it from a higher theological position and was hostile to the ideology of socialism. At the time of Parsons' birth, his father was a professor in English and vice-president at Colorado College. His father had attended Yale Divinity School, was ordained as a Congregationalist minister, and served first as a minister for a pioneer community in Greeley, Colorado. He was the son of Edward Smith Parsons (1863–1943) and Mary Augusta Ingersoll (1863–1949). He was born on December 13, 1902, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was elected president of the American Sociological Association in 1949 and served as its secretary from 1960 to 1965. Parsons was a strong advocate for the professionalization of sociology and its expansion in American academia. However, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in his ideas. Sociology courses have placed less emphasis on his theories than at the peak of his popularity (from the 1940s to the 1970s). įrom the 1970s on, a new generation of sociologists criticized Parsons' theories as socially conservative and his writings as unnecessarily complex. Īlthough Parsons is generally considered a structural functionalist, towards the end of his career, in 1975, he published an article that stated that "functional" and "structural functionalist" were inappropriate ways to describe the character of his theory. Parsons viewed voluntaristic action through the lens of the cultural values and social structures that constrain choices and ultimately determine all social actions, as opposed to actions that are determined based on internal psychological processes. Their work heavily influenced Parsons' view and was the foundation for his social action theory. Some of Parsons' largest contributions to sociology in the English-speaking world were his translations of Max Weber's work and his analyses of works by Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Vilfredo Pareto. Later, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard.īased on empirical data, Parsons' social action theory was the first broad, systematic, and generalizable theory of social systems developed in the United States and Europe. In 1930, he was among the first professors in its new sociology department. After earning a PhD in economics, he served on the faculty at Harvard University from 1927 to 1973. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in sociology in the 20th century. Talcott Parsons (Decem– May 8, 1979) was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism.
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