(1995). Toward a Reconceptualization of Scholarship. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 66, No. 6, pp. 615-640.

Toward a Reconceptualization of Scholarship: A Human Action System with Functional Imperatives

This article reexamines, in historical context, the “problem of order” and change in sociological theory in the light of the findings of Chaos Theory. The value of this new perspective is that order and disorder, order and change, are no longer presented as irreconcilable opposites but as dimensions of the same process. Order generates chaos, and chaos generates order. These ideas are linked into a holistic perspective in which “centriphery” is seen as an attractor that accounts for order and change in human social life and entropy as an equal partner to information/energy in the creative thrust of human social life.

Chaos, Order, and Sociological Theoy*

http://library.um.ac.id/free-contents/downloadpdf.php/buku/the-structure-of-social-action-a-study-in-social-theory-with-special-reference-to-a-group-of-recent-european-writers-by-talcott-parsons-30104.pdf

The Structure of Social Action : A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers/ By Talcott Parsons

This article illustrates the important scientific role that a systems approach might play within the social sciences and humanities, above all through its contribution to a common language, shared conceptualizations, and theoretical integration in the face of the extreme (and growing) fragmentation among the social sciences (and between the social sciences and the natural sciences). The article outlines a systems theoretic approach, actor-system-dynamics (ASD), whose authors have strived to re-establish systems theorizing in the social sciences (after a period of marginalization since the late 1960s). This is done, in part, by showing how key social science concepts are readily incorporated and applied in social system analysis.

The Sociology of Complex Systems: An Overview of Actor-System-Dynamics Theory

Unternehmenskultur und ökonomische Theorie

In recent years a revival has occurred in analytical and empirical studies related to the social theory of Talcott Parsons. The newer analytical work addresses the whole of Parsons' effort in the context of general questions that bear on all social theory. Especially important works by Bershady, Habermas, Munch, and Alexander establish a new baseline for future analytical assessments of the theory. Much of the empirical work focuses on specification and assessment of theoretical propositions, particularly concerning the more normative components of social systems, and on "general action complexes" that synthesize social, cultural, personality, and behavioral aspects of major phenomena in modern societies.

D Gerstein

Papers

Social Theory and Talcott Parsons in the 1980