Talcott Parsons’ sociology of the nation-state (original) (raw)
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Classical sociology and the nation-state: A re-interpretation
Journal of Classical Sociology, 2008
This article revisits the claim, largely accepted within the sociological community for over thirty years now, that classical sociologists had no clear concept of the nation-state and thus were unable to conceptualise its rise, main features and further development in modernity. In contradistinction to this standard view, which in current debates receives the name of methodological nationalism, I advance a re-interpretation of classical sociology's conceptualisation of the nation-state that points towards what can be called the opacity of its position in modernity. Marx understood the historical elusiveness of the nation-state as he believed that it had already passed its heyday as political struggles were fought between Empires and the Commune. Weber captured the sociological equivocations that arose from the historical disjuncture between the nation and the state. And Durkheim, finally, tried to come to terms with the nationstate's normative ambiguity via the immanent tension between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The conclusion is that, even if not thoroughly unproblematic, classical sociologists were able to avoid the reification nation-state's position in modernity precisely because they were not obsessed with conceptualising modernity as such from the viewpoint of the nation-state.
Classical Sociology and the Nation-State
Journal of Classical Sociology, 2008
This article revisits the claim, largely accepted within the sociological community for over thirty years now, that classical sociologists had no clear concept of the nation-state and thus were unable to conceptualise its rise, main features and further development in modernity. In contradistinction to this standard view, which in current debates receives the name of methodological nationalism, I advance a re-interpretation of classical sociology's conceptualisation of the nation-state that points towards what can be called the opacity of its position in modernity. Marx understood the historical elusiveness of the nation-state as he believed that it had already passed its heyday as political struggles were fought between Empires and the Commune. Weber captured the sociological equivocations that arose from the historical disjuncture between the nation and the state. And Durkheim, finally, tried to come to terms with the nation-state's normative ambiguity via the immanent tension between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The conclusion is that, even if not thoroughly unproblematic, classical sociologists were able to avoid the reification nationstate's position in modernity precisely because they were not obsessed with conceptualising modernity as such from the viewpoint of the nation-state.
The American Sociologist
C. Wright Mills was one of the most important critics of Talcott Parsons who succeeded in establishing the image of Parsons as a conservative “grand theorist” out of touch with the real world and its real problems, as passed on in sociological textbooks. In this essay, it is argued that Mills’ “translation of Parsons into English” is a one-sided interpretation based on his own theoretical premises, which he called the sociological imagination. The way Mills conceptualized sociological imagination leans towards an ideological world-view with political ambitions but lacks the necessary theoretical differentiation for an adequate evaluation of Parsons’ general theory of action and the conceptualization of the social system in particular. Given Mills’ premises, it appeared to him as if Parsons could not deal with social conflict, social change, domination and power relationships, which laid the foundations of a narrative quite distinct from the “real” Parsons. The conceptual deficiencie...
What’s So American about Talcott Parsons’s Sociology?
The American Sociologist, 2020
What is available here is a draft of my contribution to consideration of “Talcott Parsons and Politics” that would be published in The American Sociologist. The essay explores the emergence of the scientific and cultural optimism of sociology’s “incurable theorist”, evident in his mature view of the USA as the world’s “New Lead” society. This concept is not unrelated to views about the USA (manifest destiny or American exceptionalism). Maybe his work should be viewed as an attempt to ground such views historically and scientifically. Statements related to American optimism can be identified in his extensive writings and this essay was written to focus upon how it came to its initial expression when as an “early career academic” in the late 1920s and 1930s he laid the foundations for his life-long work in sociology through his configuration of the "convergence" in recent European social thought. Parsons’ sociology developed as the USA’s twentieth century contribution unfolded. His “moderate optimism” about the viability of the American experiment shares deeply and intimately in his claim that sociology had finally emerged as an analytical social science oriented by the theory of social action. His mature work considers the “societal community” to be the peculiar focus for sociology’s special scientific attention. In that sense it may be asked whether the social system of the USA in this “New Lead” role is a defining feature for sociological study per se. The discussion here is as much a personal memoire of the author, revisiting efforts to understand how the earliest stages of Parsons’ sociology were maintained by him over a long career. Parsons' sociological scholarship exhibited persistent American characteristics as he acknowledged. As sociology’s “incurable theorist” he sought understanding of his own (American) situation, and its context, past and present, seeking to promote a social science that contributed positively to global society and in that it was also very much an American contribution. The published article is found at https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12108-020-09458-w.pdf
Politics and the Academic Social Scientist; The Record of Talcott Parsons
The American Sociologist
The decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons’ major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the J...