Agency and Freedom in Neo-Functionalist Action

ACTION THEORY 777

Parsons's early work, The Structu

I am departing from the pr

writings of Parsons, which incl

functional prerequisites and p

system and the network of

subsystems. This is a reflecti

Structure of Social Action ove

preference contrary to that o

early work of Parsons is the firs

voluntaristic theory of action,

recent neofunctionalism. This

masterpiece in sociological the

analytical realism7 and Halévy's

century British utilitarianis

philosophical radicalism), Pars

which analyzes the structure of

the aggregation of the unit acts

complexity. According to Par

four analytical elements. In his

By a theory of action is here m

reference of which is to a con

considered to be composed of the

acts." In a unit act there are identifiable as minimum

characteristics the following: (1) an end, (2) a situat

analyzable in turn into (a) means and (b) conditions, and (

least one selective standard in terms of which the end is related

to the situation.9

As Parsons points out, alternative social theories can be

classified in terms of their concept of the unit act and the

interrelationships among the elements of the unit act. In this

way Parsons distinguishes two grand action theories in the

history of modern social and political thought which he calls

6 Talco« Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1949).

7 Alfred N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1962).

8 Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism (London: Faber & Faber, 1928).

9 Parsons, Structure, p. 77.

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