Talcott Parsons
From Geography
Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) was born on december 13th in Colorado Springs. He grew up to attend Amherst College with a major in Biology and Philosophy and then continued to the London School of Economics where he was greatly influenced by the works of Bronislaw Malinowski and Leonard Hobhouse, among others. Het received his PhD in Sociology and Economics at the university of Heidelberg in Germany. In 1927 he became a professor at Harvard.
Talcott Parsons is best known for being a sociologist, making huge leaps in social evolutionism and a meta-theorist. Also becoming a contributor to ‘The Grand Theory”. The grand theory is an attempt to integrate the social sciences into one theorectical framework. Hereby, a highly abstract theorizing of concepts takes priority over understanding the social world. Parsons insisted that the grand theory does not exist in the sense of one universal scheme to understand the unity of social structures. He saw this theory more in a psychological, economic, political, and religious or philosophical way, instead of only a sociological way.
The majority of Parsons work focused on the general theoretical system for the analysis of society, better known as structural functionalism. Many of his important publications were developed out of this idea. Parsons also came up with the theory that every member of society fulfills these four functional imperatives, wich include: adaption, goal attainment, latency and integration. The main goal of his work, was to create one general theory about human social relationships, by combining the ideas of different disciplines. Parsons has a very large list of influential accomplishments to his name, among wich included contributions such as: Pattern Variables, Functionalism and Neo-Evolutionism. He has published more than 150 articles and books.
References:
Johnston, R., Gregory, D. Pratt, G. & Watts, M. (2000) The Dictionary of Human Geography, 4th edition. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing;
Hamilton, Peter.(1983) Readings from Talcott Parsons, 33-55, London: Tavistock Publications
Wikipedia (n.d.) Grand theory. 17-10-2012, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_theory
Contributors:
Published by Mike van der Linden and Paul Cuijpers
Edited by Malou van Woerkum, 17-10-2012
Category edited by Rens Mennen, 23 October 2012
