WHAT IS ACTION SYSTEM?

DISCUSS PARSON'S THEORY OF SOCIAL

ACTION WITH SUITABLE EXAMPLES.
Talcott Parsons was an American Sociologist who established the sociology
department at Harvard University. Parsons championed the "grand theory"
approach, encompassing not only Sociology but also all the social sciences. His
work provided a positive image of human society and social action as evolving
towards greater harmony and the possibility of a peaceful world. Parson comes
from an upper middle class family, with a conservative socialisation and a
Protestant culture. His father was a Congregational minister and a professor of
English, while his mother was a housewife. Parsons is known in the field of
sociology mostly for his theory of social action &action system which he built
using parts of the action approach of Max Weber.
In his seminal work The Structure of Social Action' 1937, Parsons define Social
Action as 'any act consciously performed' under four conditions : 1. It occurs in
a social situation. 2. It is oriented towards attainment of a particular goal. 3.
Action is regulated by norms and values. 4. It involves investment of energy.
"Action" is aprocess in the actor-situation system which has motivational
significance to the individual actor, or, in the case of a collectivity, its
component individuals. This means that the orientation of the corresponding
action processes has a bearing on the attainment of gratifications or the
avoidance of deprivations of the relevant actor.

There are three components of a situation in which an actor acts: 1. Physical

(things), 2. Cultural (artifacts, value systems, symbols, language), and 3. Social
(collectivities). Both physical and cultural components can be clubbed as non
social objects. Action has an orientation when it is guided by the meaning
which the actor attaches to it in its relationship to his goals and interests.
(Parsons, 1951).

There are mainly two types of action-orientation:- Motivational Orientation

and Value Orientation. Parson argues that the description of a systemn of
action must employ three categories of motivational orientation: cognition,
cathexis, and evaluation.
1. Cognitive -one makes choices through selection based on cognitive
discriminations, positionality and characteristics of available objects in
the situation.
2. Cathectic- selection is also made by attaching positive or negative value
to objects depending on the goals of the actor and their relevance in
gratification of these goals.
3. Evaluation -The process of ordered selection among alternatives is
called the evaluation. It is the more complex process of selection which
is built upon the discriminations which make up the cognitive-cathectic
orientation. Through this process, which operates unconsciously as well
as deliberately, actor often reaches to some sort of compromise (to
minimise deprivation) among his conflicting need-dispositions. The
complete analysis of a system of action would comprise description both
of the state of the system at the given moment and of the changes in the
system through time, involving changes in the relations of the
constituent variables.

Apart from motivational orientation, there's also a value orientation of action.

Value Orientation refers to the influence of norms and values of society. It
defines patterns of reciprocal rights and obligations in role expectations and
sanctions. Value orientation is inherent in an action system that action is
"normatively oriented." Value Orientation consists of mainly 3 modes:- 1.
Cognitive, 2. Appreciative, and 3. Moral. Internalisation of value orientations
is crucial as it then becomes a part of internalized role expectations. Thus,
both the motivational orientations and the value-orientations are modes of
distinguishing, testing, sorting and selecting actions. They are, in short, the
categories for the description, on the most elementary level, of the orientation
of action, which is a constellation of selections from alternatives. A concrete
action system, thus, is an integrated structure of action elements in relation to
a situation. This means essentially integration of motivational and cultural or
symbolicor normative elements, brought together in a certain kind of ordered
system.

Furthermore, Parsons model emphasizes on the analysis of three levels of

action systems:Personality, Social system and Culture. Personality includes
organized system of the orientation and motivation of action of one individual
actor. Autonomous and socialised, the structure of human personality ascribes
to cultural traditions through learning and interactive experience. Once the
interaction between ego and the alter becomes stabilized, they build up
reciprocal expectations of each other's actions and attitudes, which in turn
leads to formation of role expectations. Secondly, Parson focuses on the
theory of action in relation to social systems and argues that "actions do not
occur in isolation rather occurs in the forms of institutionalized social
interactions and this is called the social system". (Parsons, 1951). Social
interaction is a prerequisite for social system to emerge, thus it is defined as
any system of interactive relationships of a plurality of individual actors
oriented to a given situation, where the action includes a commonly
understood system of cultural symbols. Social system is a network of such
relationships and individual actor involved in a plurality of such interactive
relationships each with one or more partners in the complementary role. This
participation in turn has two principal aspects: positional aspect-that of
where the actor in question is "located" in the social system relative to other
actors which is called his status, and other is the processual aspect, that of
what the actor does in his relations with others seen in the context of its
functional significance for the social system which is called his role.

Furthermore, social system consists of three major institutions, i.e., Relational

institutions (defining reciprocal role-expectations as such, independent of
interest content), Regulative institutions (defining limits of the legitimacy of
"private" interest-pursuit with respect to goals and means), and Cultural
institutions (defining obligations to acceptance of culture patterns-
converting private acceptance into institutionalized commitment).
Personality and social system are very intimately interrelated, but they are
neither identical with one another nor explicable by one another; the social
system is not a plurality of personalities. (Parsons, 1951). Concrete systems of
action that is, personalities and social systems-have psychological, social,
and cultural aspects. Most emphatically interaction is just as much
constitutive of personality as it is or a social system. For Example: a child's
development of a "personality" (or an "ego structure") is to be viewed as the
establishment of a relatively specific, definite, and consistent system of need
dispositions operating as selective reactions to the alternatives which are
presented to him by his object situation or which he organizes for himself by
seeking out new object situations and formulating new goals.

Thirdly, Culture, as a system of orientation, includes the system of signs,

symbols through which any particular activity is shared, ideas, beliefs, norms
(value orientations). When symbolic systemns which can mediate
communication have emerged, there's a beginnings of a "culture" which
becomes part of the action systems of the relevant actors. Through
integrations come the cultural systems through which we all have our symbolic
universe- we have certain symbols together, certain meanings, certain objects
which are sacred through which we affiliate and associate with each other.
Cultural patterns organized into systems showcase a consistency of the
pattern and internalized cultural patterns are constitutive elements of
personality and social systems.

Furthermore, Parsons emphasizes on the function of signs and symbols in the

system of social interaction where signs and symbols acquire common
meanings and serve as media of communication between actors. Parson
emphasizes on the role of signs and symbols in system of social interaction
where signs and symbols acquire common meanings and serve as media of
communication between actors. When symbolic systems which can mediate
communication have emerged, there's a beginnings of a "culture" which
becomes part of the action systems of the relevant actors. The term social
system in Parson's theory is confined to systems of interaction of a plurality of
individual actors oriented to a situation and where the system includes a
commonly understood system of cultural symbols and it is defined and
mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols.
Without signs the whole "orientational" aspect of action would be
meaningless, including the conceptions of "selection" and underlying it, of
"alternatives." On the human level certainly the step is taken from sign
orientation to true symbolization. Parsons argues that this is the necessary
condition for the emergence of culture. High elaboration of human action
systems is not possible without relatively stable symbolic systems where
meaning is not predominantly contingent on highly particularized situations.
Thus, with the institutionalization of culture patterns, especially value
orientation patterns, in the social structure, the threefold reciprocal
integration of personality, social system, and culture comes full circle.
Moreover, by breaking down analysis of action into three levels, Parsons
attempts to locate the individual within the institution. Individuals adopt the
way one is supposed to act according to the given status and role. An
institution is the patterning of rights and obligations around certain functional
focus.

Moreover, Parsons emphasizes on the role of socialization and argues that

through the process of socialization expectation systems become organized
into patterns of selection in which the effective criterion is the differential
significance of the various alternatives for the gratification-deprivation balance
of the actor. The process of socialization is dependent upon social interaction.

Parsons further focuses on the process of learning in action system. Learning

becomes relevant at this point in the development of the frame of reference of
the theory of action. Learning is not merely the acquisition of "information"
about the properties of the object world; it is also the acquisition of new
"patterns of orientation." That is, it involves acquiring new ways of seeing,
wanting, and evaluating. Generalizations are modes of defining the actor's
orientations to particular objects of which he has not yet had experience. This
entails the categorization of the particular, concrete objects of his situation
into general classes. In the acquisition of systems of cultural symbols,
generalization is perhaps the most important of the learning mechanisms. The
learning of the behavior patterns characteristic of the adult culture requires
new kinds of generalization, including symbols which abstract from particular
situations and which refer to classes of o bjects by means of language

Parsons in the end iscusses about order, integration and equilibrium, key
elements in his thinking. He postulated an equilibrium seeking tendency as
part of the social systems, as a generalisation from experience. This might be
seen as things automatically adjusting and integrating, but Parsons would say it
actually reflects the way society represents a set of conflicting forces pushing
and hurling at one another at one time. He wants to see it as a central problem
as to how society works. Moreover, there are different sub -systems attached
to each other and they are attached in terms of interdependence and
interpenetration. Any concrete patterns of action have concrete consequences
for many different sorts of system reference but no particular course ofactivity
can serve with maximum effectiveness. Thus, with too much emphasis on
order, equilibrium, function, Parson's theory fails to address social change,
which is one of the most crucial critiques of his theory.