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The General Action System and Evolution Theory

A presentation about the General Action System of Talcott Parson and his use of the Evolution Theory in explaining Social Evolution.

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Maryam Elizabeth P. Obalan
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71 views

The General Action System and Evolution Theory

A presentation about the General Action System of Talcott Parson and his use of the Evolution Theory in explaining Social Evolution.

Uploaded by

Maryam Elizabeth P. Obalan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The General

Action System and


The Evolution
Theory
BY: Maryam Obalan and Jamila Menor
System levels of the Action System

01 Cultural System Social System 02

03 Personality System Behavioral


Organism
04
As a system
01
Cultural System
Cultural System
★ In this system, we use “meanings” as our
units of measurement. Not PEOPLE.

★ Meanings: language, morals, values

★ These meanings in the socialization


process help us to maintain social control.
That social control is what holds our
society together.
Social Control
Is the active or passive process of a group
regulating itself according to its beliefs,
principles, and values.
Culture
★ Parson conceived culture as the major force
binding the various elements of the social
world or the action system.

★ Culture has the peculiar capacity to become a


component of the other systems.

★ In the social system, it is embodied in norms


and values. And in the personality system, it
is internalized by the actor.
Culture
★ Because it is largely symbolic and subjective,
culture is readily transmitted from one system
to another.

★ Culture can move from one social system to


another through diffusion.

★ Culture can move from one personality


system to another through learning and
socialization.
02
Social System
Social System
★ In this system, we use “role interactions” as
our units of measurement. Not
INDIVIDUALS.

★ Role interactions include 2 or more people.

★ These interactions helps us to have a


foundation to exist together because we
understand the expectations that those roles
has.

★ It also motivates us to have a “shared”


reality.
Social System

★ Parson used the status-role complex as the


basic unit of the system.

★ Status refers to a structural position within


the social system. Role is what the actor does
in such a position.
Social System

★ Parson called the integration of value patterns


and need-dispositions “the fundamental dynamic
theorem of sociology”.

★ If the socialization process is successful, then


these norms and values become part of the
actor’s “conscience”.
Socialization must be
supplemented throughout the life
cycle of a human with a series of
more specific socializing
experience.
03
Personality
System
Personality System
★ In this system, we use “individuals” as our units
of measurement.

★ Individuals acts based on their needs, motives,


attitudes, beliefs about other people and
ourselves.

★ We gravitate toward self-gratification and


personal profit maximization.

★ For the most part, we are somehow using our


own individual motivation as part of the decision
making process.
Personality System
★ The personality system is controlled by the
cultural and social system.

★ The personality is defined as the organized


system of orientation and motivation of action of
the individual.

★ The basic component of personality is the “need


disposition”
Need-Disposition
They are what people seek out of their
environment to provide them with their
needs. If something adequate is not
presented, they will find something more
suitable.
“It seems fair to say that Parson fails in his theory to
provide the personality with a reasonable set of properties
or mechanisms aside from need-dispositions, and gets
himself into trouble by not endowing the personality with
enough characteristics and enough different kinds of
mechanisms for it to be able to function.”

—Alfred Baldwin
Behavioral
04 Organism
As a system
Behavioral
Organism
★ Use “biology”

★ The environment and the body are our units of


measurement.

★ Where we live and the body that we have is


important to how we exist in society
Behavioral
Organism
★ This system is close to the ideas of sociobiology.

★ This system supplies us with the biological


“equipment” to live and interact with society.
Evolution
Theory
Evolution Theory in the Study of Social
Evolution
Parson’s work with conceptual tools such as the four action systems and
the functional imperatives led to the accusation that he offered a
structural theory that was unable to deal with social change. By 1960’s,
Parson shifted his work to the study of social change, particularly the
study of social evolution.
“A Paradigm of Evolutionary Change”

The first component of that paradigm is the process of differentiation.


Parson assumed that any society is composed of a series of subsystems
that differ in terms of both their structure and their functional
significance for the larger society. As society evolves, new subsystems
are differentiated. This is not enough, however, they must be more
adaptive than earlier subsystems. Thus, the essential aspect of Parson’s
evolutionary paradigm was the idea of adaptive upgrading.
Adaptive Upgrading

If differentiation is to yield a balanced, more evolved system, each newly


differentiated substructure… must have increased adaptive capacity for
performing its primary function, as compared to the performance of that
function in the previous, more diffuse structure… We may call this
process the adaptive upgrading aspect of the evolutionary cycle.
As subsystems proliferate,
the society is confronted
with new problems in
coordinating the operations
of this unit.
A society undergoing evolution must move from a
system of ascription to a system of achievement.

• A wider array of skills and abilities is needed to handle the more diffuse subsystems.

• The generalized abilities of people must be freed from their ascriptive bonds so that they
can be utilized by society.

• This means that groups formerly excluded from contributing to the system must be freed
for inclusion as full members of the society.
The value system of the society as a whole must undergo
change as social structures and functions grow increasingly
differentiated.
• A more differentiated society requires a value system that is “couched at a higher level
of generality in order to legitimize the wider variety of goals and functions of its
subunits.

• However, this process of generalization of values often does not proceed smoothly as it
meets resistance from groups committed to their own narrow systems.
3 Broad Evolutionary Stages

01 02 03
Primitive Intermediate Modern
Done na bye

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