Tell Me About Talcott Parsons

Cafe Society
1

I will be making small talk for several hours Saturday night with a Professor of Sociology I have never met before. The only thing I know about him is that he admires a famous Harvard sociologist, Talcott Parsons.

In order to have at least one topic of conversation, I have read some stuff on-line about Parsons. He is a “structural functionalist,” which apparently means that he was interested in social insitutions as part of an overall social system. He was American-born, but studied in Germany and followed and translated Max Weber. The idea that school “socializes” children apparently originates with him.

Can anyone share any anecdotes about Parsons? Do you know what kind of a reputation he has today? Can you link me to a short piece of his I could read (short please, I only want to be a poseur, not a real scholar)?

Know any good jokes about sociologists?

2

Ask the sociologist if the kind of theoretical thinking espoused by Parsons (yeah, structural-functionalism) is inherently conservative (i.e., justifying existing social structures) or if instead it’s just that strux/funx has been used a lot by social conservatives to make those kinds of arguments, and that you could use Parsonian analysis to make more radical points about the need (or inevitability) of certain types of social change.

That oughta be good for a couple hours :slight_smile:

3

Thank you sincerely for the response. This is just the type of jargon that I can drop into the conversation with a smile.

Also, it sounds like a Parliament/Funkadelic spin-off band.:slight_smile: