Agency and Freedom in Neo-Functionalist Action

786 SOCIAL RESEARCH

in fact an attempt to rescue the category of condition. In resolving upon the unity of subject and ob According to Parsons, although e the normative system is not exter Parsons writes: ... for what are, to one actor, non-normative means and conditions, are explicable in part, at least, only in terms of the action of others in the system.26 But for Alexander, this is a fallacious argument. He argues that all collective elements, both material and ideal ones, at some point originated from the activities of individual human beings. The second attempt of the resolution of the problems of freedom in Parsons is fully approved by Alexander. This is the ultimate solution of voluntarism in Alexander's words: Although any ideal element may be external to the individual, in the sense that it is part of the extra individual environment, it is not external in the concrete sense. For the concrete empirical actor, the location of determinate ideal elements is within: they are internal to action. This is the reason norms can affect action in a non-instrumental, non-coercive manner.27 At this point, the problem of freedom is solved for neofunctionalism. Normative elements are internal, they are internalized by the individual actor so that the individual performs his roles willingly and not through external coercion. Freedom is defined as internal commitment and lack of external coercion. But this is by no means a satisfactory solution to the problem of agency and freedom. The fact that order is partly based upon the internal commitments and normative beliefs of the actor does not preclude the existence of domination, power, and manipulation. The so-called debate between consensus

26 Parsons. Structure, d. 50. - m 27 Alexander, Modern Reconstruction, p. 37.

This content downloaded from 128.97.156.83 on Thu, 29 Dec 2016 18:18:10 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms