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In the last decades of his life, Talcott Parsons was often indicted as conservative. More recently, his analyses of contemporary society have been perceived as obsolete. In the present paper, I argue that both these accounts are wrong. Parsons’s biographical and intellectual profile is clearly – and rather consistently – that of a New Deal liberal. His “ate” works, moreover, articulate an original view of the integrative processes in modern societies that is still both theoretically compelling and politically relevant. Parsons’s view of modernity has made possible the development of a sophisticated theory of societal pluralism, able to deal analytically with the astonishing variety of structural strains (and resources) arising from an increasingly diverse – in racial, religious, ethnic, sexual and moral terms - membership in contemporary societies. His sociological enthusiasm for inclusion has never been blind to the likelihood of backlashes and the strength of discontent such inclusion may bring. His work provides thus some important directions in the current storm.

This articles questions some of the basic assumptions of sociological aesthetics. Taking the “linguistic turn” with Susanne Langer, it assumes throughout that art is a social phenomenon that involves body, emotions and symbolism. To understand the experience of art today, it takes an articulation between phenomenology, hermeneutics and critical theory. The synthesis of Georg Simmel, Talcott Parsons and Theodor Adorno can only work if the social forms are explicitly brought into the cultural system and meanings and power are not evacuated.

This article addresses the interpretation and criticism of theoretical systems. Its particular focus is on how to assess the success of theories in dealing with some specific phenomenon. We are interested in how to differentiate between cases where a theory offers an unsatisfactory acknowledgment of a specified phenomenon and those where a theory offers a deeper, more systematic understanding. We address these metatheoretical issues by developing Parsons’s analysis of positive and residual categories in various respects, including a focus on mutual support as the basis of positivity, differentiating synectic (reconcilable) and antinomic (irreconcilable) residual categories, and distinguishing divisions that are central to systems from those between center and periphery. We also consider how this conceptual toolkit can be put into practice.

Many social scientists still resist Darwinian insights. A possible reason for this is a fear of being associated with Social Darwinism. This article updates a 2002 search for appearances of Social Darwinism in articles and reviews on the JSTOR database. This database has since increased substantially in size, and it now includes far more publications in languages other than English. Use of the term Social Darwinism was rare before the 1940s. Talcott Parsons used it in 1932 to criticise the analytic use of the core Darwinian concepts in social science. Subsequently, and for the first time, Herbert Spencer and Willam Graham Sumner were described as Social Darwinists. This led to a major change of meaning of the term, where it was associated more, but not entirely, with free market individualism. With this reconstructed meaning, a 1944 bestselling book by Richard Hofstadter provoked an explosion of usage of the term in postwar years. The continuing use of the term is partly ideologically motivated and has served to deter consideration of Darwinian ideas in social science.

Clifford Geertz was a key protagonist in the development of “interpretive social science,” but much of our understanding of his position as an intellectual neglects the crucial years before the publication of The Interpretation of Cultures. In this article, I argue that there is a common thread in Geertz’s early work and that it addressed, quite sophisticatedly, the reworking of the concept of cultural system, which he wrote on from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s. This research program was first developed in the context of the “basic social science” that characterized Harvard’s Department of Social Relations, and it had the support of key figures in that network. Geertz’s position in that intellectual debate was as a contributor to the development of a theory of culture that could address issues left unsolved by structural-functionalism and action theory. In that process, Geertz gradually developed a more interpretivist reading of the cultural system, while maintaining the support of his original network. The article offers some conclusions about the role of support within attention spaces in cases in which emergent intellectual positions can lead to the definition of new research programs.

Classic theoretical arguments by seven Black and Jewish sociologists—informed by their experience of “double-consciousness”—comprise an important legacy in sociology. Approaches that ignore the role of racism and slavery in the rise of Western societies suppress and distort this legacy in favor of a White Christian Hero narrative. By contrast, Durkheim, a Jewish sociologist, took Roman enslaved and immigrant guild-workers as a starting point, positing the “constitutive practices” of their occupations as media of cooperation for achieving solidarity across diversity. His argument marks a transition from the treatment of social facts as durable symbolic residue in homogeneous cultures, to the qualitative study of constitutive social fact making in interaction in diverse social situations. Because making social facts in interaction requires mutual reciprocity, troubles occur frequently in contexts of inequality. Like W.E.B. DuBois, who first theorized double consciousness as a heightened awareness produced by racial exclusion, Harold Garfinkel looked to troubles experienced by the marginalized as clues to the taken-for-granted practices for making social order, calling them “ethno-methods.” Together with other Black and Jewish sociologists—Eric Williams, Oliver Cromwell Cox, Erving Goffman, and Harvey Sacks—they challenge popular interpretations of classical social theory, center Race and marginality, and explain how features of practice that unite/divide can be both interactional and institutionalized.

The paper provides insights on the contemporary relevance of Talcott Parsons’s writings by analyzing 20 textbooks from Austria, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, published in 1999–2019. Whether having knowledge of Parsons is helpful to today’s students and other interested readers, and what knowledge, deserves consideration. Therefore, the paper asks: Which future gains of readers did textbook authors envision when they chose, in their own present, to discuss (or not) sociological writings from long ago? In order to understand what future opportunities authors wanted to create for readers, as well as how they chose to discuss Parsons to this end, the paper draws on Niklas Luhmann’s notion of memory. The analysis reveals several key competencies that student and other interested readers might acquire through having knowledge of Parsons’ writings and its critiques. These potentials would have gone unnoticed if authors had assessed Parsons’s relevance only according to whether he adequately considered conflict or not, as has been done in many debates about his work until today. Moreover, through analyzing how authors remembered Parsons, I distilled two key selective criteria: First, what must be remembered in order to enable readers to acquire those competencies? Second, which memories would be impeding for readers and thus be better left out? These criteria are relevant for research, as well. Looking at the future, it would be desirable that sociologists let Parsons assist them in their research in many different ways, if possible. As a result, we might see a revival of Parsons that enables genuine advancement.

In this article, we propose a brief reconstruction of Talcott Parsons’ writings – from his first major book, The Structure of Social Action, to his later writing on the 1960s and 1970s – in order to clarify his main contributions to a sociological discussion of morality. In so doing, we hope to place Talcott Parsons as one of the forerunners of the sociology of morality conceived as an emerging area of research in the social sciences. Throughout this reconstruction, we also try to situate Parsons in terms of his intellectual lineage pointing out that his formulations reveal important affinities with the theoretical perspective of morality that began with Émile Durkheim. Based on these assumptions, we aim to show, albeit on a preliminary basis, how this dialogue contributes to a more precise delineation of a research program in the field.

Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) is one of the most influential and best-known sociologists of the past century. This introduction dwells on Parsons' conceptual apparatus and offers a compendium of his research. His works are subdivided into three distinct periods, each characterized by specific concepts and theoretical developments. Parsons utilized his conceptual and theoretical frameworks to conduct several studies, which are presented here in detail. These studies focus on major sociological themes, such as power and influence, social stratification, ethnic groups, and the American educational system. Segre also closely evaluates the numerous receptions of Parsons' writings. Particular attention is devoted to the controversies and divergent interpretations his works have inspired. Throughout Talcott Parsons: An Introduction, Segre skillfully examines Parsons' life work and critical reception-both before and after his death-with a straightforward and precise approach.

Since the early 1980s, specialized problem-solving courts known as drug courts emerged in the United States as a response to the backlog of drug and alcohol-related cases plaguing the U.S. criminal justice system. In a few decades, with the seeming success of the drug court in helping AOD defendants achieve sobriety while reducing recidivism, the drug court model has achieved international prominence as well. This paper discusses a pilot study which seeks to analyze the feasibility of connecting a website, drughelp.care, developed at the host institution of the co-authors, to the everyday operations of local drug courts. Talcott Parsons’ AGIL schema is utilized as a conceptual template for organizing our thinking about how the website could improve services to administrators and clients according to the unique functional elements of the drug court.