toys in the attic: The Social System 191 4 The Social
System SOME MAJOR
FEATURES AND PREREQUISITES The
social system is made up of the actions of individuals. The actions which constitute the social system are also the same
actions which make up the personality systems of the individual
actors. The two systems are, however, analytically discrete
entitites, despite this identity of their basic components. The
difference lies in their foci of organization
as systems and hence in the substantive functional problems of their operation
as systems. The "individual"
actor as a concrete system of action is not usually the most important unit of a social system. For most purposes the conceptual unit of the social system is the role.
The role is a sector of the individual actor's total system of action. It is the point of contact between the
system of action of the individual actor and the social system. The individual then becomes a unity in the
sense that he is a composite of various action units which in turn are roles in
the relationships in which he is involved.
But this composite of roles is not
the same abstraction as personality as a system. It is a special type of abstraction from the concrete
totality of ego's system of action, with a highly selective inclusion of the dynamic processes and mechanisms, the
selection being made on the basis of an interest in ego as a composite of
action units relevant to various collectivities, no longer on the basis of an
interest in ego as an action system per se. These distinctions, segregating the
individual actor as a system, his unit of action an4 the role to which it
corresponds, and the social system, are a precondition of any fruitful
empirical analysis of social order and change, as well as of personality
adjustment and cultural change. The
primary ingredient of the role is the role-expectation. Role-expectations are
patterns of evaluation; their primary constituents are analytically derivable
from the pattern-variable combinations and from derivatives of the pattern variables
when these are combined with the specific types of situations.
Role-expectations Organize (in
accordance with general value-orientations) the reciprocities, expectations,
and responses to those expectations in the specific interaction systems of ego
and one or more alters. This reciprocal aspect must always be borne in mind
since the expectations of an ego always imply the expectations of one or more
alters. It is in this reciprocity or complementarity that sanctions enter and
acquire their place in systems of action.
What an actor is expected to do in a given situation both by himself and
by others constitutes the expectations of that role. What the relevant alters
are expected to do, contingent on ego's action, constitute the sanctions.1 Role expectations and sanctions are,
therefore, in terms of the content of action, the reciprocal of each other.
What are sanctions to ego are also role-expectations to alter, and vice versa.
However, the content of ego's and alter's expectations concerning ego's action
need not be identical with the content of the expectations of alter and ego
regarding alter's action in response to ego's. It may
further be noted that each actor is involved in the interaction process in a
dual capacity. On the one hand, he is an actor who as ego is oriented to
alter as an object. This aspect may be
called his orientation role. On the
other hand he is an object of alter's orientation (and in certain circumstances of his own) - This is his object role. When, for instance,
he is categorized relative to others, it is as object; but when he imposes on
himself the renunciation of an affective orientafion in favor of a neutral one,
he is acting in his orientation role. In a
social system, roles vary in the degree of their institutionalization. By institutionalization we mean the
integration of the complementary role-expectation and sanction patterns with a
generalized value system common to the members of the more inclusive
collectivity, of which the system of complementary role-actions may be a part.
Insofar as ego's set of role-expectations is institutionalized, the sanctions
which express the role-expectations of the other actors will tend to reinforce
his own need-dispositions to conform with these expectations by rewarding it and
by punishing deviance. The
sanctions will be rewards when they facilitate the realization of the goals
which are part of his action or when they add further gratifications upon the
completion of the action at certain levels of proficiency; they will be
punishments when they hinder his realization of the goals which are part o~ his action or when they add further deprivations during or
after the execution of the action. Conformity on the part of alter with ego's
expectations is a condition of ego's goal realization. In addition to the
conformity or divergence of alter's actions with respect to ego's expectations,
alter's attitudes of approval or disapproval toward ego's behavior are also
positive or negative sanctions. In
addition to these two immediate types of reward and punishment, there should be
mentioned alter's supplementary granting of gratifications for ego's conformity with expectations or transcendence of them and
alter's supplementary infliction of deprivations for deficiencies. Thus far we have been treating the social
system only in its most elemen- ================================================================ 1 Sanctions
is used here to indicate both positive and negative responses by alter to ego's response; i.e., to ego's conformity with or deviation
from alter's expectations. ============================================================== 192 Values, Motives, and Systems of Action tary form; namely, as the interaction in which the actions
of the incumbents of each role are regulated by the double contingency of
expectation Ii,,, Con~rete social sytems are, however, more than the simple
interaction of two r more individual actors with a common system of
values. Social systems give rise to, and often themselves constitute, collective actors in the
sense that the individual members interact with one another and with members of
other social systems for the achievement of shared collective goal~ By
collective goals we mean (1)
those which are either prescribed by persons acting in a
legitimate position of authority and in which the goal is expected to involve
gratifications for members other than but including the particular actor, or (2)
those goals which, without being specifically prescribed by
authority, have the same content as regards the recipients of their
gratifications. Shared collective goals
are goals which, having the content described in the preceding sentence, have
the further property of being simultaneously pursued by a plurality of persons
in the same system of interaction. A social system having the three
properties of collective goals, shared goals, and of being a single system of
interaction with boundaries defined by incumbency in the roles
constituting the system, will be called a collectivity.2 The action of the collectivity may be viewed
as the action in concert of a plurality of individual actors. Collectivities may act in concert toward
their own members or toward objects outside themselves. In the latter case,
complementarity of expectations and the associated shared value system exist
among the actors within the collectivity but it will not exist to the same
extent with the actors who are part of another social system. In the case of the former, complementarity
of expectations and the shared value system might well exist among all the
actors in the situation, with all reorganization of the action of the members being in accordance with shared general
value-orientations and with specifically complementary expectations. Even in this case, there will always be
involved some orientation toward social and/or nonsocial objects which are
outside the collectivity. The
concept of boundary is of crucial significance in the definition of a
collectivity. The boundary of a collectivity is that criterion whereby some
persons are included as members and others are excluded as nonmembers. The inclusion or exclusi6n of a' person
depends on whether or not he has a mem- bership role in the collectivity. Thus all persons who have such roles are members; they are within
the boundary. Thus, the boundary is
defined in terms of membership roles. The
location of the boundary of a collectivity will vary from situation to
situation. Accordingly, the
"concerted action" criterion must be interpreted with regard to a
defined system of action; that is, a limited range of action. ======================================================================= 2
A collectivity may be defined as the
integration of its members with a common value system. This integration implies that the members of the collectivity
will, under appropriate circumstances, act in "defense" of the
shared values. =========================================================== 193 The Social System It is only in a given situation that a specific
role-expectation becomes the focus of the orientation of behavior. The solidarity of a collectivity may,
therefore, be latent as long as certain types of situation which would activate
them fail to arise. In other words, the boundary may be latent or temporarily
inoperative. Thus, certain obligations to more distant kin might be activated
only if such a kinsman were in danger and the actor knew it. Here the boundary
of the kinship collectivity would be activated; otherwise it would not be
operative. The solidarity of a
collectivity might operate frequently and in a variety of situations, and
conversely, the situations in which a given plurality's actions are concerted
and thus solidary might be of infrequent occurrence. An aggregate of persons might be continuously solidary; that is,
whenever they are in a common situation, they will act in concert, but the
types of actions in which they are solidary might change continuously: for
example, a military unit which has been solidary from the beginning of basic
training, through combat, to the state of demobilized civilian life. To meet the definitional requirement of a
collectivity, however, an aggregate of persons need not be continuously
solidary; they need be solidary only when they are objects to one another in a
common situation and when the situation is one which is defined by the value patterns and more specifically by the system of
role-expectations as falling within the range of interest of the collectivity. The
criterion of action in concert, then, is another way of formulating the concept
of the primacy of collectivity.orientation over self-orientation or private
interest. It may be a purely negative, contingent solidarity, which consists in
the avoidance of actions that would, in their consequence, damage the other members of the collectivity. Here, too, there is
common value orientation, a conforming response to the expectation of other
collectivity members. A
collectivity, as the term is used here, should be clearly distinguished from
two other types of social aggregates.
The first is a category of persons who have some attribute or complex of
attributes in common, such as age, sex, education, which do not involve
"action in concert." It is true, of course, that such categories enter into the definitions of roles and
thus affect action in concert. But a
number of elements must be added before such a category of persons becomes a
collectivity. The second type of social
aggregate is a plurality of persons who are merely interdependent with one
another ecologically. The participants in an ideally perfect competitive market,
as that concept is used in pure economic theory, represent an ecologically
interdependent aggregate. A
collectivity differs from both these pluralities in being characterized by the
solidarity of its members. Solidarity
is characterized by the institutionalization of shared value-orientations; the
values being, of course, oriented toward collective gratifications. Acceptance of common value patterns permits the more differentiated institutionalization of the action
of the members of the collectivity in a wide range of specific situations. The
range may be broad or 194
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action narrow, but
in each specific situation institutionalization exists when each actor in the
situation does, and believes he should do, what the other actors whom he
confronts believe he should do. Thus
institutionalization is an articulation or integration of the actions of a
plurality of actors in a specific type of
situation in which the various actors accept jointly a set of harmonious rules
regarding goals and procedures. The
concrete content of these rules will differ, in the same situation, from actor
to actor and from role to role. But the
rules, if followed in such a situation of full institutionalization, will lead
to perfectly
articulated, conflictless action on the part of the several actors. These rules possess their harmonious
character by virtue of their derivation, by deliberation and less conscious
processes, from common value-orientations which are the same for all members of
the institution or the set of institutions in the
collectivity. These value-orientations
contain general standards in accordance with which objects of various classes
are judged, evaluated, and classified as worthy of various types of response of
rewards and punishments. Specific
institutional situations are differentiated by the concrete state of the
objects which each actor confronts and hence by the specific rules which are appropriate
in acting toward those objects. In institutionally highly integrated
collectivities, situations in which uncertainty prevails about the appropriate action can in principle be clarified by
closer scrutiny of the objects and more careful study of the implications of
the common value-orientation. (In
reality, however, new situations, because they are not always subject to this
treatment and because previous cognitive orientations prove inadequate, are
dealt with in a variety of ways.)
Those, therefore, who share common value-orientations as commitments to
action patterns in roles, constitute a collectivity. Some additional cfarification of
this definition is necessary. First,
with respect to the relationship of the collectivity to the properties of
aggregates (sexual qualities, beauty, etc.) : insofar as certain sexual
qualities become the foci of roles and thus become institutionalized in a
society, the relevant value patterns defining and regulating sexual roles,
along with other value patterns, are part of the constitution of a collectivity. But within this larger collectivity those
characterized by the same sexual characteristics do not necessarily act as a
collectivity with a preponderant focus on sexual qualities or activities in all
or even in any situation. Sex, among
many other object characteristics which serve as criteria of admission and
which evoke certain role-expectations, plays a constitutive part in many
collectivities. An example would be a
combat unit in the armed forces; but even though the demonstration of manliness
is here an important goal, it is not the chief goal on which the unit is
focused. There are few collectivities
in which ascription by sex does not figure to some extent in the determination
of admission to membership roles and in providing the chief focus of the
appropriate expectations. The extent
however to which any given object quality, such as sex, ethnic membership, or
beauty, will perform these functions varies.
The
Social System 195 Second, some further
remarks on the boundaries of collectivities are in order. Sub-collectivities within a larger inclusive
collectivity may be: (1) independent
of one another in the sense of having no overlapping members and having either
no contact with one another or being in contact with one another only as collectivities;
or (2) they may
overlap in the sense that they share certain members but not all; or (3) they may be
inclusive in the sense that one of the collectivities may be smaller than the
other and thus all of its members be in the latter. The inclusive type of collectivity is not, however,
distinguished merely by its relative size and the plural memberships of the
members of the smaller, included collectivity.
The smaller collectivity may be constituted by role-expectations and
actions which are specifically differentiated versions of the general
value-orientation of the larger inclusive collectivity. They may be oriented toward more specific
goals within the general class of goals pursued by the inclusive collectivity.
They may be confronted by a special class of objects within the general classes
of objects with which the inclusive collectivity is constitutively concerned,
including other parts of the inclusive collectivity. The role structure of the members of the smaller collectivity
within the inclusive collectivity will, figuratively speaking, be onion-like in
shape. One role will fit within another and so on. Thus a particular professor in a university department who
is a member of a departmental research group is simultaneously fulfilling, by a
given set of actions, three roles: (1) his
membership in the research group is part of (2) his role as
professor, and his role as professor of a certain subject is part of (3) his role as
a member of the university. The latter
role may include cognate roles such as service on committees, service in
representative roles, and so forth, which have nothing to do with the content
of his research role, but all of which fall within the common value system and
within the system of solidarity of the university as a collectivity. The same is true of the
market. Common values define general
roles for participation in market relations in our society. But it is only when there are common values
defining specific rights and obligations vis-a'-vis other collective units or
persons that, within the market
system, a collectivity would exist. The members
of a cartel are not merely interdependent, they constitute a collectivity, with
shared collective goals and concerted action within boundaries which define the
types of rights and obligations which are to be effective. The members of the cartel follow a set of
expectations vis-A-vis one another which are different from those which they
direct toward persons outside the boundaries.
But both sets are in the main derived from
or subsumable under the general expectations characteristic of
the market as a social system. 196
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action A social system, then, is a
system of interaction of a plurality of actors, in which the action is oriented
by rules which are complexes of complementary expectations concerning roles and
sanctions. As
a system, it has determinate internal organization and determinate
patterns of structural change. It has,
furthermore, as a system, a variety of mechanisms of adaptation to changes in
the external environment. Those mechanisms function to create one of the
important properties of a system; namely, the
tendency to maintain boundaries.
A total social system which, for practical purposes, may be treated as
self-subsistent - which, in other words, contains within approximately the
boundaries defined by membership all the functional mechanisms required for its
maintenance as a system - is here called a society. Any other
is a subsystem of a society. It
is of the greatest importance in connection with any specific problem to place
the subsystem in question explicitly in the context of those parts of the total
society which are outside the subsystem for the purposes at hand.3 The social system of which roles
4 are the elementary units will of necessity involve the differentiation and allocation of roles. The different individual actors
participating in the social system will each have different roles, and they
will accordingly differ in their specific goals and cognitive orientations.
Role-expectations bring into specific focus patterns of generalized
orientation. They
sharpen the edges of commitments and they impose further disciplines upon the
individual. They can do so only
as long as the conditions are present in the personality and the social system
which enable human beings to live up to these
kinds of expectations, which diminish or absorb the strains to
which people are subjected, including both the "internal strains"
connected with difficulty in fulfilling internalized norms and the strains
which are associated with divergence from expectation. Motivational orientations within
the personality system might vary among different individuals who conform
equally with the same set of expectations.
But in the analysis of the social system, particularly in its
descriptive analysis, we need be concerned only with
the motivational orientation toward the specific set of
role-expectations and toward the role itself - and may
tentatively disregard the "rootedness" and repercussions of this
orientation in the rest of the personality system of the actors involved. Of course, these motivational orientations
will not vary at random with respect to the types of personality systems in association
with which they are found, but for certain types of important problems, this
aspect may be passed over. There will
be for each social system, and for social systems in general, certain types of motivational
orientations which are preconditions of the working of the system. 3 It is probable that
the sociologist who deals with modern large-scale societies is more frequently
called upon to deal with partial systems than is the social anthropologist, who
studies smaller societies, or the psychologist, who in his analysis of
personality more frequently deals with the system as an integral unit. 4 Roles are
differentiated (1) with respect to value-orientation patterns and (2) with
respect to specific functional content. The latter can vary over considerable
ranges independently of patterns of value-orientation. The
Social System 197 The
motivational prerequisites of a social system, then, are the patterns made up
of the more elementary components of motivation - those which permit
fulfillment to an "adequate" degree of the role-expectations
characteristic of the social system in question. These necessary motivational patterns will not be the same for the different parts
of the social system, and they must therefore be properly distributed in
accordance with the role structure of the social system in question. THE FOCI OF ORGANIZATION A social system is a system of
the actions of individuals the principal units of which are roles and
constellations of roles It is a system
of differentiated actions, organized into a system of differentiated roles
Internal differentiation which is a fundamental property of all systems
requires integration It is a condition of the existence of the system that the differentiated
roles must be coordinated either negatively, in the sense of the
avoidance of disruptive interference with each other, or positively, in the
sense of contributing to the realization of certain shared collective goals
through collaborated activity. When a plurality of individual
actors are each oriented in a situation to gratify sets of need-dispositions,
certain resultant phenomena are inevitable.
By virtue of the primordial fact that the objects - social and nonsocial
- which are instrumentally useful or intrinsically
valuable are scarce in relation to the amount required for the
full gratification of the need-dispositions of every actor, there arises a
problem of allocation: the problem of who is to get what, who is to do what,
and the manner and conditions under which it is to be done. This is the fundamental problem which arises
from the interaction of two or more actors.
As a result of the scarcity of
the social and nonsocial objects of need-dispositions, the mutual
incompatibility of claims might extend theoretically in the extreme case to the
"state of nature." It would
be the war of "each against all"
in its Hobbesian formulation. The
function of allocation of roles, facilities, and rewards does not, however,
have to contend with this extreme possibility.
The process of socialization in the family, school, and play groups, and
in the community focuses need-dispositions in such a way that the degree of incompatibility of the
active aspirations and claims for social and nonsocial objects is reduced, in "normal
conditions," to the usually executable task of making allocations among sectors of the population, most of whose claims
will not too greatly exceed what they are receiving. Without a solution of this problem, there
can be no social system. It is indeed
one of the functions which makes the social system. It arises
in every social system, and though the solutions can vary within limits which
from the standpoint of ethical values might be very wide apart, yet every
allocative process must have certain properties which are common to all of
them. Where the allocative process is
not carried out successfully - where the allocative process either interferes
with effective collaboration or is not regarded as
sufficiently legitimate - the social system in
question will tend to disintegrate and to give way to another social
system. 198
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action The term allocation should not
be interpreted anthropomorphically.
Allocation is a resultant that is only in part a product of deliberate
decision; the total allocation in a social system especially may be the product
of many processes that culminate in a distribution which no individual or
collective actor in the system has sought.
A social system must possess a
minimum degree of integration; there must be, that is, a sufficient complementarity
of roles and clusters of roles for collective and private goals to be
effectively pursued. Although conflict
can exist within a social system and, in fact, always does, there are limits
beyond which it cannot go and still permit a social system
to exist. By definition the complementarity of expectations which is associated
with the complementarity of roles is destroyed by conflict. Consequently, when conflict becomes so far
reaching as to negate the complementarity of expectations, there the social system
has ceased to exist. Hence, for
conflict among individuals and groups to be kept within bounds, the roles and
role clusters must be brought into appropriately complementary relations with
one another. It is highly important to what
follows to distinguish here two functional problems of social systems: (1) What roles are to be institutionalized in the
social system? (2) Who is to
perform these roles? Every
social system has certain tasks imposed on it by the fact that its members are
mortal physiological organisms, with physiological and social needs, existing
in a physical environment together with other like organisms. Some variability is possible regarding the
tasks which are considered as worthy of being undertaken (in the light of the
prevailing value-orientations and the external situation of the social
system). This selection of tasks or
functions may be phrased as an answer to the question "what should be done
with the existing resources of the society?" in the sense of what jobs are to be done. The first allocative function of a social system,
therefore, is the allocation of human capacities
and human resources among tasks.
In addition to a distribution of resources among tasks or functions
which can be performed only by a complex of role, each social system, inasmuch
as its members are not born genetically destined to particular functional
roles, must allocate its members among those roles. Also, since tasks change, and with them the roles by which they
can be met, reallocation is a necessity quite in addition to that imposed by
man's birth, plasticity and mortality.
One of the ways in which this is done in some social systems is by
definition of the criteria of eligibility for incumbency of the role by
membership in solidary groups, thus regulatmg the flow of persons into such
roles. In all social systems access to
roles is regulated by the possession of qualifications
which might be, but are not always necessarily, memberships or qualities. The
Social System 199 A closely related allocative
problem in the social system concerns the allocation of facilities for the performance of roles. The concept of role has been defined as a
complementary set of expectations and the actions to be performed in accordance
with these expectations. It includes as
part of the expectations the rights to certain types of reaction which the
actor is entitled to expect from others and the obligations to perform certain
types of action which the actor believes others are entitled to expect from him. It is convenient to distinguish facilities from the other components in the
definition of role. The term refers to
those features of the situation, outside the actual actions entailed in the
performance of role itself, which are instrumentally important to the actor in
the fulfillment of the expectations concerning his role. Thus one cannot be a
scholar without the use of books or a farmer without the use of the land for
cultivation. Facilities thus are objects of
orientation which are actually or potentially of instrumental significance in
the fulfillment of role-expectations.
They may consist of
physical objects, but not necessarily. The
physical objects may, to varying degrees, be "natural" objects or
manmade objects, such as buildings or tools.
They may be the physical embodiments of cultural objects, such as
hooks. The cultural objects may be
accessible not through a physical but through a human agent; we may cite as an
illustration of such a facility the type of knowledge which must be secured
orally from another human being. In the same sense that we speak
of the rights to the action of others and the obligations to perform the actions expected by others, the facilities
which are necessary roles are likewise the objects of rights and obligations. When the facility is a social object - that
is, the action of another person - it becomes identical with the action to
which one has a right and concerning which one has certain obligations. It should, however, be stressed that not all
the complementary responses of alter are classifiable as facilities. Only those
which ego has the right to use in an instrumental manner, without specific 5 regulation by a shared
and collective value-orientation, are to be designated as facilities. When a
social object, either an individual or a collective action system, is a
facility, it may be called an opportunity; privileges are unequally distributed
opportunities. The
regulation of the relationship between the incumbent of a role or the
"possessor" of a facility and actual or potential claimants to
displace that possessor is part of the allocation problem. This is of course a major aspect of the
institution of "property."
The allocation of facilities, as of roles, is made on the basis of the
actor's possession of qualities or his manifestation of performances. Rights of access to facilities may, for
example, be contingent on the possession of a membership "quality" or
on certain performances. The peasant
may own his own land by virtue of his membership in a family; the factory
worker does not himself own his machine, and his access to it is dependent on
his fulfillment of certain performances specified in the "contract of
employment" with the company in which ownership is vested, and whose
claims are protected by the power of the state and the general
value-orientation prevailing in the culture.
5 The specificity
with respect to the concrete situation of action is important here. In nearly all cases short of the limits of
extreme brutality, instrumental use of the actors of others occurs within the
framework of a generalized shared
collective value-orientation, which, though not necessarily always conscious,
sets limits to the right of instrumental use while leaving an area of freedom
for the possessor of the right within those limits. 200
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action The allocation
of facilities in a social system may be viewed as an aspect of
the allocation of power. There are two
senses in which this is so. First
is the fact that, while the particular facilities appropriate to the attainment
of particular goals may have many singular characteristics, the widespread
competition for facilities
(which are used to reward collaborators)
gives an especially high value to those facilities which have the generalized
property of enabling more specific
facilities to be acquired. A facility is often such that it can be used to pursue quite a
wide variety of goals that might themselves be facilities or substantive
goals. This generalized potency is
enormously enhanced by the development of money, which is a general medium of
exchange, so that "having the price"
becomes in effect equivalent to having the concrete facility on the more
general level. To have the power to
command by virtue of the possession of money or any other qualification is
equivalent to having the concrete facility, since the latter can be purchased
with the former. Second, the achievement of goals is often possible in a
social system only through collaboration in complementary role situations. One of the means of ensuring collaboration
in the pursuit of goals is to control the actions of others in the relevant
respects - positively by commanding their services or negatively by at least
being in a position to prevent their interference. Therefore the degrees to
which and the ways in which an actor (individual or collective) is enabled to
control the action of others in the same social system is
dependent on the facilities which have been allocated to it (or him). Facilities are powers over objects, social and
nonsocial. Power,
by its very nature, is a relatively scarce object; its
possession by one actor in a relationship is a restriction of the other actor's
power. Its intrinsic
scarcity and its generalized instrumental status make it into one of the most
avidly and vigorously competed for of all objects - we pass over here its very
great importance as a direct cathectic object for the immediate gratification
of a variety of derivative need-dispositions.
It is therefore of the greatest urgency for the determinate allocation
of power and the derivative allocations of other facilities to be established
and generally accepted in a society.
Unless this allocation is well integrated internally and with the value
system so that its legitimacy is widely acknowledged, the amount of conflict
within the social system may very well rise to the point of disintegration. The
Social System 201 THE ALLOCATION OF REWARDS The allocation
of rewards is the systematic outcome of the gratification-orientation
of action. It is in the nature of
action for gratifications to be sought.
Here as much as in the preceding categories of allocation, the objects which gratify need-dispositions 6
are scarcer than would be necessary to satisfy the
demand - indeed, in the allocation of rewards, it is sometimes its very
scarcity which gives an object its function of gratifying a need-disposition,
that is, makes it into a reward. In a system of interaction each of the
actors will strive for rewards, the attainment of which might not only be
reciprocally contingent, but they might indeed actually come from the same
source. The amount one actor gets will
affect the amounts other actors get.
The resultant, in most societies, is a distribution of rewards that is deliberately controlled
only to a restricted extent.
It is a resultant of the prior distribution of facilities and is
effected by allocative mechanisms which work within the framework of a system
of value-orientation. In
the social system the allocation of rewards has the dual function of
maintaining or modifying motivation and of affecting the allocation of
facilities. Where allocations of
rewards diverge too widely from what is thought by the aspirant to be his right
in the light of his qualifications, his motivation for the performance of his
role will be affected. The effects
might range from the inhibition of the need-disposition underlying the previous
action to fixation and intensification of the attachment to the gratification
object, to the point of disregarding the obligations usually associated with
the rights to the object. The
maintenance or change of object-attachment is influenced not only by the degree
of congruity or discrepancy between expected (entitled) and received rewards
but also by the actor's beliefs about the prevailing congruities and
discrepancies between entitled and received rewards in the social system at
large. Hence, as a cognitive and
cathectic-evaluative object, the distribution of rewards plays a large independent
part in the motivation of action and particularly in the motivation of
conformity and alienation vis-a'-vis general value-orientations and specific
role-expectations. The distinction between rewards and facilities is by and large
not one between the “intrinsic" properties of the relevant objects, but
concerns rather their functional relation in systems of action. A
facility has instrumental significance; it is desired for the uses
to which it can be put. A
reward, on the other hand, is an object desired for its own
sake. The same concrete object may be,
and indeed often is, both facility and reward to an actor. Not only may an object which is useful as a
facility be accepted as a reward, but objects which have a high significance as
rewards might also be facilities leading to further rewards. Also, in the motivational system of the
actor, there is a tendency for particular facilities to acquire reward value.
Hence an object which is useful as a facility comes to be cathected directly so
that its possession is also interpreted by the actor and by others as a
reward. Nevertheless, it is proper to
distinguish these two phases of the allocative problem of the social system. 6 The interdependence
of the need-dispositions is one of the factors accounting for this
expansiveness of human demands. The
gratification of one need-disposition sets other need~dispositions into action,
and inhibition of one sets up a tendency to seek alternative gratifications. 202
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action Just as the problem of the
allocation of facilities raises the problem of the allocation of power, so the
allocation of rewards raises the problem of the allocation of prestige, and for similar reasons. Specific rewards, like specific facilities, may
have highly specific relations with certain actions which they reward. But the
very fact that they become the objects of competing claims - which is, of
course, the fact from which the "problem" of allocation derives - is
in part evidence of their generalizability to cover the claims of different individuals
and to reward the different types of performance. This generalizability intensifies the concentrations of reward
value on certain classes of valued objects: especially income, power, and
prestige. To possess this generalized
quality, each class of rewards must, in some sense,
constitute a single scale
rendering
equivalent different qualifications for the reward. There will also tend to be a common evaluative scale cutting
across the different classes of rewards; for example, a scale which enables
income to be roughly equated to prestige. This evaluative scale, of course, is seldom explicitly invoked. It should be made somewhat
clearer in just what senses income and power are to be treated as rewards and
not as facilities. Their generalized character is of significance to both functions. But the way in which income and power are integrated into systems
of instrumental orientation makes it inevitable that they should be valued; the
possession of anything valued -
the more so if comparison with others is, as it must be, involved - is a source
of prestige. Their acquisition, then,
can become a goal of action and success in
acquisition a measure of
achievement. Finally, the man with money or power is valued not only for what
he has done but for what he can do,
because possession of generalized facilities widens the range of capacity for
achievement. Thus the status of money
and power as rewards goes back fundamentally to the valuation of achievement
and to their acceptance as symbols
of achievement, whether actual or potential.
The allocation of power in a
society is the allocation of access to or control over the means of attaining
goals, whatever they may be. The
allocation of prestige, correspondingly, is the allocation of one of the most
generalized gratifications which is, at the same time, a very generalized
qualification for access to facilities and thus to further and other rewards. The
Social System 203 THE INTEGRATION OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM This brings us to the
consideration of the integrative problems of the social system. From the present point of view, the primary
integration of the social system is based on an integrated system of
generalized patterns of value-orientation.
These patterns of value-orientation are to be described in the categories
of the pattern variables. The pattern
variables and the derivative patterns of value-orientation can, however, never
by themselves adequately define the specific role-expectations which govern
behavior in particular situations.
Orientation to specific features of the situation in particular ways
must be developed in any social system.
These will be elaborations and concrete specifications of the values
derived from the pattern variables. A system or a subsystem of
concerted action which (1) is governed by a common
value-orientation and in which (2) the common values are motivationally
integrated in action is, as we have said, a collectivity. It is this
integration by common values, manifested in the action of solidary groups or
collectivities, which characterizes the partial or total integrations of social
systems. Social integration, however much
it depends on internalized norms, cannot be achieved by these alone. It
requires also some supplementary coordinahon provided by explicit prescriptive
or prohibitory role-expectations (e.g., laws)
enunciated by actors in specially differentiated roles to which is attached "responsibility"
in collective terms. Responsibility in this sense may be
subdivided into two types: first, responsibility for the allocative
functions in the social systems themselves, the definition and enforcement of
the norms governmg the allocative processes; second, responsibility for
the conduct of communal affairs, for the performance of positive functions on
behalf of the collectivity, especially vis-a-vis "foreign" social
systems or subsystems. Insofar as such
roles of responsibility are institutionally defined, they always involve a
collective orientation on the part of their incumbents as one of their
fundamental components.7 The word institutionalization
means both the internalization of common values by the members of a
collectivity, and also the enunciation of prescriptive or prohibitory role
expectations by occupants of responsible roles. The institutionalization of
value-orientation patterns thus constitutes, in the most general sense, the
mechanism of integration for social systems.
However, social integration does not require a single uniform set of
value-orientations equally and universally distributed throughout the social
system. Social integration may well
include a whole series of subsystems of common value-orientations varying
around a basic pattern.
Institutionally, this brings us before the integrative problem of
partial integrations or collectivities within the larger social system, on the
one hand, and the total collectivity as an integrated entity, on the other. 7 It should go
without saying that these considerations apply to any collectivity, no matter
how small a part of a total society it forms.
This fundamental structural homology between the total society and
sub-collectivities within it is one of the most importani aspects of the structure
of social systems. 204
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action The role-expectations in all
these situations are focused by the pattern variable of self- and
collective-orientation. Every social
system will have institutionalized definitions of the spheres within which a
collective subunit or an individual is legitimately permitted to go its own way
without specific reference to the interests of a larger collectivity, or to
specific obligations toward it. On the
other hand, there will be institutionalized spheres of direct obligation to the
larger collectivity. This usually will
be latent and will be active only
discontinuously when situations arise in which the objects are threatened or in
which conflict occurs. In the first case, negative sanctions apply only when
the limits of permission are exceeded; in the second, they apply whenever the
positive obligations fail to be fulfilled.
Social systems, of course, will vary greatly with respect to the points
at which this line is drawn. Only the solidary group in which there are
positive collective obligations would, in a specific sense, be called an
integrated social system. There is a final point to be
made in connection with social integration and nonintegration. No social system
can be completely integrated; there will, for many reasons, always be some
discrepancies between role-expectations and performances of roles. Similarly, at the other extreme, there is
never likely to be a completely disintegrated society. The mere fact that the human beings who live
in a social system are socialized to some extent gives them many need-dispositions which can be gratified only by conformity
with the expectations of others and which make them responsive to the
expectations of others. Even
societies ridden with anomie (for
example, extreme class conflict to the point of civil war) still possess within
themselves considerable zones of solidarity.
No society ever "disintegrates completely"; the "state of nature" depicted by Hobbes is never
reached by any real society. Complete
disintegration is a limiting case toward which social systems might sometimes
move, especially in certain sectors of the structure, but they never arrive
there. A particular social system
might, of course, lose its identity, or it might be transformed into one which
is drastically different and can become absorbed into another social
system. It might split into several
social systems where the main cleavages follow territorial lines. But dissolution into the "state
of nature" is impossible. CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS AND THEIR COMPONENTS: STRUCTUIRAL TYPES The foregoing analysis of the foci of organization of
social systems is a first step toward the comparative analysis of the
structural variations of social systems.
The beginning of such an analysis is classification. It is, however, only after the logically
requisite and empirically significant invariant points of reference have been defined and the range
of variability explored that the problem of classification can be seriously
approached. 205
The Social System The
construction of a classification of types of social systems is much too large a
task to attempt to carry very far within the limits of the present work. A few remarks on the nature of the problem
may, however, be made, and a few starting points indicated. The principal obstacle has been
the enormous variety of structural variables.
The possible combinations of these are so numerous that anything
approaching a determinate and manageable classification has been out of the
question. Furthermore, we have hitherto
lacked systematic theoretical criteria by which to select the most significant
of these variables. Progress therefore
depends on the selection of a limited number of criteria of strategic significance. It is the aim of the present analysis, with
its point of departure in the most elementary features of the frame of
reference of the theory of action and its purpose
to build step by step from these features to
the conception of a complex social system, to provide the required criteria. The elements of this conceptual
scheme are numerous: three modes of motivational orientation, three
of value-orientation, two object modalities, six classes of
objects, three allocative foci, five pattern variables, and so
forth. It is not, however,
necessary to treat all the conceptual elements which enter the scheme
as of equal significance, or as completely independent of each other. Selection can be made, in terms of strategic
significance, for the purpose. Our
conceptual scheme itself yields the criteria of selection which enable us
to reduce the degree of complexity. In the first place, the basic
distinctions in the structure of the object world may be eliminated as a source
of further complication. They need
appear only in the distinction between the modalities of quality and
performance, which is, of course, included in
the pattern.variable scheme.
Since the three modes of
motivational orientation and the three modes of value-orientation are already
included in the pattern variables, the construction of the basic patterns of
orientation in social relationships can proceed from
the combinations of the pattern variables. The resultant combinations may then be used
for the description of the structures through which the allocative and integrative
functions are performed. We may begin with the allocative problems. It is possible here to treat the three categories of allocation of personnel, facilities,
and rewards together.
They constitute the process of "circular
flow" which may occur within a social system that is in
equilibrium, without being accompanied by a change in the essential
structure of the system itself. They
may therefore be treated independently of the resultant substantive
distribution, at least preliminarily.
Further analyses will have to relate the properties of the allocative
process to the distributions which they bring about. 206
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action Social systems will vary, in
this range, according to whether these allocative
processes are organized and controlled in terms of ascriptive or performance
object properties. In different
social sytems, different object properties are adjudged relevant in allocative
decisions. The evaluative standards which are primarily embodied in allocative
decisions, therefore, are those of ascription and achievement. Individual actors may be granted roles, facilities,
or rewards in accordance with their possession of certain classificatory qualities, such as sex, age,
physique, personality traits (without regard for their value for the prediction
of achievement), or in accordance with their possession of certain relational
qualities such as biological (kinship or ethnic) relationships, territorial
location, memberships in associations, wealth, and status. On the other hand, they might be granted roles,
facilities, or rewards in accordance with their past or prospective
achievements, such as instances of their physical strength, performance in
examinations or past roles, their power in present roles (i.e., their capacity
to gratify or deprive) within a collectivity or among collectivities. Naturally it is not always easy to disentangle these various
properties on the basis of which allocations are made (and acknowledged), since
they often operate jointly. Indeed, a
given characteristic might have several functions simultaneously; for example, take the case of proximity to the exercise of power. Individuals whose occupational roles bring
them close to those who exercise great power might receive prestige and other
valued objects, both because of the relationship itself and because of the
potentiality which these individuals possess of influencing the direction and
content of the power and thus themselves gratifying or depriving. It
is at this point relevant to recall that a concrete allocation, once made,
cannot be expected to be settled indefinitely.
The first and basic reason is the finiteness of life and the continual
process of change of need-dispositions and situations during its passage. For a social system to function over a
period extending
beyond the life span of a generation, there must be
a continuous recruitment of new personnel into roles, and
naturally, the recruiting must be regulated by some standards of
evaluation. In addition to this fundamental
source of the need for continuous allocation, many facilities and rewards are
not indefinitely durable but are "consumed" or "wear out"
in the course of time, and tasks change, of course, with the consequent change
in roles to which there must be new allocations. Therefore,
there must also be a continuous flow of replacements in these categories.
Incumbency in some roles is much longer than in others, and some facilities and
rewards are more durable than others; these differences in "life span"
are of prime significance for many empirical problems. But here the
essential point is the relative impermanence of all three classes
of elements of the system; hence the functional necessity of a continuous flow
of replacement and of the regulation of the process. Along side of all this, and only analytically
separable from it, there are changes in the substantive
content of the expectations governing roles and the organization of the
roles about tasks. These changes of
content are empirically intimately related to the allocative flow. Indeed, strains arising from the working of
the allocative mechanisms may constitute some of the most important sources of
changes in the content of roles and the mode of their organization. The
Social System 207 As a first approximation,
we may distinguish three types of mechanism by which the allocative flow can be
regulated. The first is allocation by a
process of deliberate selective decision by an authoritative agency and according
to an established policy in which either qualities or achievements may he the
chief criteria. The second is
the institutionalization of some automatically applied rules of allocation, in
which the chief criteria of allocation are qualities, especially
memberships. The third is allocation
as a resultant of a process of
individual competitive or emulative achievement, or promise of achievement,
whereby the "winners" automatically secure the roles, facilities, and
rewards which, according to the prevailing systems of values, are the most
desirable.8 Perhaps the
emulative aspect is prominent only in some cases; the most essential criterion
in the third type is that the outcome is free from determination either by a
fixed automatic rule or by the decision of an authority. The first type, as distinguished from the second
and third, tends to be more centralized, and the actor who grants the
role, facility, or reward is less likely to make his decision on the basis of a
formalized examination established primarily as a recruitment device. Of course, different mechanisms may operate
in different parts of the social system and in some parts there may be
combinations of any two or of all three types.
But variability with respect to the incidence and distribution of these
types of mechanisms, which are distinguished
by (1) the type of criteria (concerning objects) which they employ and (2) the
extent to which organized authority makes the selective decisions, constitutes
one major range of variability of social structures. The relation to the pattern
variables, and hence to the system of value-orientations, may be treated
briefly. It is with special reference to its bearing on these mechanisms that
the ascription-achievement variable is of primary significance, especially in
the allocation of personnel. In all societies the ascriptive criteria of sex
and age at least limit the eligibilities for participation in different roles,
and hence memberships in collectivities.
Beside these, the ascrption of roles on the basis of the criteria of biological
relationship and territorial
location of residence plays some significant part in all societies, by virtue
of the fact that all have kinship systems and that kinship units are units of
residence. But, of course, the range of
allocative results determined by these ascriptive criteria varies enormously in
different societies. The maximum
application of the "hereditary principle" - in, for example an
Australian tribe or the Indian caste system - represents one extreme of
variation in this respect. Our own
society is considerably removed in the opposite direction. 8 Even in the case of
a system of allocation by individual competition, much of the allocation will
be by virtue of qualities such as membership and particularly membership in a
kinship group The winner in individual
competition usually shares the prizes with his family. 208
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action However
widely complexes of qualities may operate as determinants in a social system in
which there is a competitive allocative process, they set limits to, rather
than serve as a constitutive part of that process. Such a system therefore accords primacy to criteria of
performance and increases the range of roles which can be entered through
achievement. It is noteworthy in this
connection that ascriptive criteria may, and often do, include memberships in
collectivities - for example, by virtue of birth - but criteria of achievement
cannot do so, as far as the allocation of personnel is concerned. In this context, therefore, an orientation
toward achievement is inherently "individualistic." Of course, the same basic schema may be
applied to the relationships
of collectivities, such as those of business firms. With respect to the
ascription-achievement variable, allocation by authoritative decision is, as we
have said, neutral; it may lean either way or combine both types of
criteria. Indeed, it may facilitate the
adjustment of the two types of processes to each other. However, the more
widely ascriptive criteria are applied in
allocation, the less necessary specific authoritative decision becomes for
routine cases. There is thus a definite relationship between
such a situa-tion and traditionalism. There are, however, almost always small
openings left by ascriptively oriented allocative processes, and these tend to
be regulated by authoritative decision.
Allocation by authoritative
decision quite often serves as a mechanism for the universalistic application
of an achievement-oriented system of allocation. In the Chinese bureaucracy the allocation of personnel by
appointment, on the basis of achievement in examinations, made access to
bureaucratic roles more
dependent on achievement than it probably would have been if it had been left
to open emulative competition under the conditions then prevailing in Chinese
society. In short, the variability of
social structures with respect to the incidence of these various types of
allocative mechanisms seems capable of empirical establishment and is, as well,
of central theoretical importance. THE CONTENT OF ROLES The
allocative process does not determine the role structure of the social system
or the content of the roles. It is
necessary, therefore, to develop categories which make possible the analysis of
the variability of the social system with respect to the content and
organization of roles. We will take up
role contents first, and the structural integration of roles later. Role contents can be classified
according to three sets of invariant points of reference. That is,
there are three separate classes of problems that must be solved by all role
occupants; if we classify the solutions to these problems generally enough, we
will thereby have, in some sense, a classification of role contents. The three sets of problems (or invariant
points of reference) are (1) problems of instrumental interaction, (2) problems
of expressive interaction, and (3) integrative problems.9 The
Social System 209 Problems of instrumental interaction concern relationships with alters
which ego engages in, not primarily for their own sake, but for the sake of
goals other than the immediate and direct gratification
experienced in contact with the object.
The social elaboration of instrumentally significant activities is what,
in economic theory and its utilitarian philosophical background, has come to be called the division of labor. Problems of expressive interaction concern relationships with alters
which ego engages in primarily for the immediate direct gratification they provide. Integrative
problems are problems of a somewhat different order. They are the problems which arise when one would maintain proper
relationships between roles with an eye to the structural integration of the
social system. We will take up in the
following pages, first, problems of instrumental interaction as bases
for classification of role contents, and second, problems of expressive
interaction as bases for classification of role contents. Then we will go on to discuss problems of
structural integration. A system of instrumentally
interdependent roles has a basic structure which, throughout the variability of
the substantive goals which are being instrumentally sought, may be treated as
constant. There are a limited number of
functional problems arising in ego's instrumental relations with others, problems
which have to be solved if the system is to persist. These problems are constant in all systems of instrumental
interaction although some of them are logically appropriate to higher degrees
of differentiation of the instrumental system, and thus need not be considered
at the more elementary levels. These problems provide a set of invariant
points of reference or comparative categories for the analysis of the structure
and content of roles in systems of instrumental allocation. It is inherent in the nature of
human action that some goals should be sought instrumentally. It is
consequently inherent in the nature of social systems that their members should
perform certain mutually significant functions on the instrumental level -
functions which require disciplined activity and in which the actor's interest
in direct and immediate expression of gratification will
not have primacy. But it is
equally a precondition of the functioning of social systems that they should
provide a minimum of essential gratifications direct and indirect to their
members (i.e., to a sufficient proportion of them a sufficient proportion of
the time). These direct gratifications
of need-dispositions are so organized into a system of relationships that the structure of that system is just as vital
to the actor's interest in expressive gratification as the structure of the
instrumental system is to their instrumental interests. Moreover, the systems of gratification and instrumentality
are intertwined in the same concrete system of social roles, and many of the
factors that cause change emerge from this intertwining. 9 So far as problems
of instrumental and affective interaction are concerned, it seems fair to treat
complex societies and smaller units (e.g., the conjugal families) of which it
is composed as homologous. They will differ, of course, with respect to their
structural integration. 210
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action If we take the instrumental system
first, we find there are four fundamental problems. The first derives from the fact that, given the division
of labor,10 one or more alters must be the beneficiaries of ego's activities. In the terminology of economics, they must
be the consumers of his product. In
addition to the technical
problem, then, of how ego is to organize his own resources, including his
actions to produce the service or commodity, there is the further problem of
determining the terms on which alter is allowed to become the
beneficiary. This is a special case of
the problem of the terms of exchange; specifically it is the problem of the
terms of disposal. Thus, the problem of
disposal is the first problem of instrumental interaction. Secondly, insofar as ego specializes
in a particular type of instrumentally significant activity, he becomes
dependent on the output of one or more alters for meeting his own needs. These may or may not be the same alters
involved in the former relationship of disposal - in a complex economy they
usually are not. At any rate there is an exchange problem
here, too, growing out of the functional need, as it may be called, for ego to
receive remuneration for his
activities. Thus, the problem of
remuneration is the second problem of instrumental interaction. Problem of access to Disposal facilities (alters as problem (alters suppliers
of facilities)
consumers) Problem of collab Remuneration oration (alters as problem (alters collaborators) as sources of income) Technical
instru- mental
goal-orien- tation of
ego Third, only in a limiting
case will all the facilities that ego needs to perform his instrumentail
functions be spontaneously available to him.
It will be necessary for him to acquire or secure access to some of them
through arrangement with one or more alters, involving still a third set of
exchange relations and the associated standard incorporated into the terms of
exchange. This third instrumental problem
is that of access to facilities. Fourth,
the product may not be capable of production by ego through his own unaided efforts. In
this case he is dependent on still a fourth set of alters for collaboration in
the joint instrumental process. The
process requires organization in which ego and alters collaborate to produce a
unitary result which is the object of instrumental significance. Thus, the fourth instrumental problem is the
problem of cooperahon or collaboration.
These relations are set forth in the accompanying diagram. 10 Individual
self-sufficiency is of no interest here because it does not entail
interdependence. The
Social System 211 In each of these relationships
of ego and the alters, there is a problem of exchange, the solution of which is
the settlement of the terms on which ego enters into mutually acceptable
relations with the relevant alters. The
settlement of the terms of exchange is a basic functional problem inherent in
the allocative process of social systems.
It was not directly taken account of in our discussion of the
institutionalization of roles, but it must be treated in a more differentiated
analysis. In our analysis of institutionalization we treated the
evaluative content of the expectations of the actors toward themselves and
others as unproblematical. In actuality, however,
each expectation contains or is associated with an evaluation of the action of
the actor in its relation to the value of the complementary action of the alter.11 All human interaction contains a scale of
evaluative equivalence. In instrumental relationships this scale of evaluative
equivalence tends to be determinate, specific, and explicit. In diffuse
affective attachments the equivalences are much broader and less determinate
and much less explicit, as well. The
standards of the terms of exchange not only become imbedded in the expectations
of instrumental orientations; they also become institutionalized, as do the
processes for establishing them when they are not spontaneously and
automatically effective. The
institutionalization of the processes and standards by which the terms of
exchange come to be settled constitutes one essential component of social
structures. In addition to this, exchange implies a thing which changes hands. This
entity may be called a possession
and analysis will show that possession
is always reducible to rights. Physical objects are significant insofar as
one actor (individual or collective) has various types of control -
acknowledged as legitimate - over them while others do not. The terms on which possessions are held,
used, controlled, and disposed of is another focus of the functional problems
of allocation: property. We turn now to a somewhat
different problem, also derivative from the division of labor. A most
important range of variability occurs along the continuum of fusion and segregation
of roles in instrumental relationships.
The role allocated to ego may be confined to a technical instrumental
content, such as the arrangement of the facililties through his own resources
while assigning the "responsibility" for the execution of all four of
the essential conditions of that role to the incumbents of the other roles. Such a technical role
would be the extreme of segregation.
This is the typical case of the functionally specific (specialized)
roles within large-scale organizations in modern society. At the other extreme, is the type of role in
which the incumbent has not only the responsibility for the technical
performance but for all four associated functions - as in the case of the medieval
craftsman, or the ideal type of independent general practitioner in medicine.
This may be called the artisan 12 role. 11 The notion here is
this: when ego acts with respect to alter, his action is seen as having some
(“evaluative") value to alter.
That is, it gratifies alter, or helps alter along the road toward
gratification. When ego acts in such a fashion, alter is
expected to return the favor by acting with respect to ego with an action of
similar value. 212
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action The
larger and more differentiated an instrumental system the more essential
management or managed co6rdination becomes to keep the
organization going as a functioning concern.
With this, there emerge executive
or managerial roles. In the executive
role is centered the responsibility for the specification
of roles to be performed, the recruitment of personnel to perform the roles,
the organization and regulation of the collaborative relations among the roles,
the remuneration of the incumbents for their performances, the provision of
facilities for performance of the roles, and the disposal of the product. The
organization of an instrumental complex into a corporate body which exists in a context of other individual actors and corporate bodies
involves also the management of "foreign relations." Here
rearrangements of the internal organization and the
use of the power to gratify or deprive which the corporate body has at
its disposal are available to the manager (as well as the invocation and
interpretation of the common value-orientations which are shared with the
"foreign" body). Thus social systems may be
further characterized by the extent to which they are made up of fused or
segregated roles in an instrumental context or, more concretely, of technical,
of artisan, and of executive roles.13 Up to this point, our discussion
has entirely passed over that aspect of the system of relationships which is
oriented primarily by interests in direct and immediate gratification.14 Within such a system of relationships
oriented toward direct and immediate gratification the basic functional
categories are homologous with those of the instrumental complex. In the first
place, direct gratification in relation to a cathected social object is a
relation to that object as a "consumer" of the impulse. It is not enough to have the
need-disposition. An object must be
available which is both "appropriate" for the gratification and
"receptive." Alter must allow
himself to be an object and not resist or withdraw. 12 The independent professional role is then defined as
a special subtype in which the technical competence of the incumbent includes
the mastery of a generalized intellectual orientation. The professional role,
too, is subject to a fairly high degree of segregation of its component
elements, although some limits are imposed by the generalized intellectual
orientation. 13 The executive or
managerial function itself might be fused or segregated. The more segregated it is, however, the more
functionally necessary is some type of integrative mechanism which will perform
the function of fusion at this level. 14 Here
gratifications which do not involve social relationships with a cultural
component may be ignored. In the
context of the present discussion, we are using the terms gratification interests and expressive interests more or less
interchangeably. By expressive
orientation we mean a type of action orientation parallel to the instrumental
through its inclusion of a cultural component. It is gratification within a
pattern of appreciative standards. The
Social System 213 Second, there is also a
parallel to remuneration in the dependence of ego, not merely on the
receptiveness but on what may be called the response of alter. Alter does not merely allow ego to express
or gratify his need-disposition in the relationship; alter is also expected to
act positively in such a way that ego
will be the receptive object. These two
types of functional preconditions for the gratification of need-dispositions
are not always fulfilled by the same objects - where they are we may speak of a
symmetrical attachment. Third, gratification needs not merely an object but is
also dependent on the set of circumstances referred to in Chapter II as occasions, which appear, in certain
respects, to have functions homologous with those of facilities in the
instrumental relationship. Occasions
often center around relations to third parties, both because of the necessity
of ego's distribution of his expressive orientations among the different
objects in a system and because the prerequisite of giving gratification to and
receiving it from certain actors in a system is a certain relationship with all
other actors in the system. Availability
of appropriate
oc casions (depend Social objects ing on third as appropriate parties) and receptive IinP-\useauach Social
objects ments
(co5rdinat- as responsive mg
particular need-dispositions) I Specific gratifications of a
particular need-disposition Finally, if we take the
need-disposition for gratification and not the object relation as the unit,
there is an important functional parallel with cooperation
in the instrumental complex. Some need-dispositions, like some technical
performances, may be segregated into a separate object relation. But for reasons which have already been
discussed, there is a strong tendency for ego to become attached to particular
objects for the gratifications of a variety of
different need-dispositions. We
have called this kind of object relationship a diffuse "attachment." Such an attachment organizes need-disposition gratifications into
a "cooperative" system.
Putting these various elements together
we derive the accompanying homologous paradigm of the structure of the
system of relationships of direct and immediate gratifications or
expressions. This paradigm analyzes the
elementary structure of a social relationship system relevant to the actor's
needs for direct gratification or expression.
For n actors to participate in the same social system, the
relationships involved in this paradigm must be organized and controlled,
generally through institutionalization.
There is in each case a problem of the settlement of the terms on which
the gratifications in question can be attained, or in other terms, of the
reciprocal rights and obligations to receive and to give various types and
degrees of gratification, which is directly homologous with the problem of the
settlement of the terms of exchange. 214
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action There is, furthermore, in the
expressive system
an important homologue to possessions
in the instrumental system, since there are entities which can "change
hands." The actor can acquire them
from someone else or grant them to someone else and he can have, acquire, or
relinquish rights in them. In the
focal case where alter is the cathected object, this must mean the
establishment of rights vis-a-vis the action
of alter, that is, of a situation where ego can count
on alter's actions. This
will include expectations of alter's overt behavior, but for the reasons which
have already been discussed, the central interest will be in alter's attitudes.
Such a right to a given attitude on alter's
part may be called a relational possession. Relational
possession in this sense constitutes the core
of the reward system of a society and thus of its stratification, centering above all on the
distribution of rights to response, love, approval, and esteem. (This also
means that there will be an equivalent in the expressive system to the
"terms of exchange.") The expressive system of an actor will therefore, to a highly
important degree, have to be organized in a system of relationships with other
actors in appropriate roles. This
system will regulate choice of objects, occasions - and what is primarily at
issue in the present discussion - which objects have segmental significance, gratifying only one
need-disposition at a time, and which other objects have diffuse significance,
gratifying many need-dispositions at the same time. Here the two most obvious types of role would be on the one hand,
segregated or specific gratification roles; on the other, diffuse attachment
roles. A diffuse attachment then would
involve gratification of a plurality of need-dispositions; it would place each
object in both receptive and responsive roles and would involve the actor in a
more or less continuous complex of appropriate occasions. The
Social System 215 The instrumental complex and the
complex of direct gratifications or expressions are both aspects of the total
allocative mechanism of a concrete social system. The next step in our analysis
then, is to see how they both work in a single system. Once again the concepts of fusion and
segregation are pertinent. Instrumental and expressive functions may be
segregated from each other, each being performed by distinctly separate objects
in distinct roles, or they may be fused in the same objects and roles. Where
there is segregation of the instrumental and need-gratifying roles and
orientations toward objects, it does not necessarily mean that the
need-dispositions are always frustrated.
It means that the roles and objects which are instrumentally defined may
be either neutral or negative as far as their capacity for the gratification
of direct need-dispositions is concerned.
There certainly can be and very frequently are cases of conflict where segregation is imperfect and positive fusion is
impossible. In these cases there
must be either frustration of the immediate and direct gratification of
need-dispositions or the instrumental complex will be distorted because the
instrumentally necessary actions will not be performed in accordance with
instrumental role-expectations. In the
total economy of the personality, however, adequate motivation of instrumental activities becomes impossible if
the performance of instrument~roles imposes too heavy a sacrifice of the larger
gratification interests of the personality.
It would be possible to carry
out the classification of the possible combinations in this sphere to a high
degree of elaboration. For our present
purposes, however, it is sufficient to distinguish six major types of
combination which are particularly relevant to the broader differentiations of
role types. They are the
following: 1. The segregation of specific expressive interests from
instrumental expectations; for example, the role of a casual spectator at an
entertainment. 2. The segregation of a diffuse object attachment from instrumental
expectations; for example, the pure type of romantic love role. 3. The fusion of a specific expressive or gratificatory interest
with a specific instrumental performance; for example, the spectator at a
commercialized entertainment. 4. The fusion of a diffuse attachment with diffuse expectations of
instrumental performances; for example, kinship roles. 5. The segregation of specific instrumental performances, both from
specific expressive interests and attachments and from other components of the
instrumental complex; for example, technical roles. 6. The fusion of a plurality of instrumental
functions in a complex which is segregated from immediate expressive interests;
for example, "artisan" and "executive" roles. This classification has been
constructed by taking the cases of fusion
and segregation of the instrumental
and direct gratification complexes and, within each of the segregated role
orientations, distinguishing the segregation of role components from the fusion
of role complexes. The technical role (5) and the
executive role (6) are the two possibilities of segregation and fusion in the
instrumental complex when it is segregated from the direct gratification
complex. The role of casual spectator
(1) and the romantic love role (2) are the two possibilities of segregation and
fusion of the direct gratification complex when it has been segregated from the
instrumental complex. There is a fusion
of the two complexes in roles (3) and (4). In the role of the paying spectator
there is segregation both in the direct gratification and in the instrumental
orientation; in the role of member of a kinship group there is fusion of all
role components in each orientation. (See Fig. 13,
p.273.)
216
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action Before proceeding to examine the
dynamic implications of this scheme and its closely connected relevance to the
comparative analysis of social systems, we shall reformulate it in terms of the
pattern-variable scheme in order to show its derivation from the basic
categories of the theory of action.15 Three pattern variables
are involved: affectivity-neutrality, universalism-particularism, and
specificity-diffuseness. Primacy of
direct and immediate gratification interests implies affectivity. Neutrality
is expected in the orientation which is central in the instrumental
complex. Where instrumental
considerations have primacy, the discipline is institutionalized. Neutrality is not, however, to be found only
in institutionalized instrumental orientations. The pattern variable of specificity underlies the segregation of role
components. Specificity consists in
this sphere in the segregation of an instrumental performance or of an
expressive interest from responsibility
for its context of preconditions or repercussions so that no evaluative
adaptations in this area are required of the actor. Diffuseness unites the
particular component with the other components which make up its relational
context. From a certain point of view,
therefore, the institutionalization of diffuse
orientations into fused roles and relationships constitutes a highly
important mechanism of social control, in that it binds together empirically
the potentially independent elements of a system of relationships. When, on
the other hand, diffuseness breaks down and specificity emerges so that roles
become segregated into their components and the complexes become
segregated too, certain additional problems of control, particularly the
promulgation and the regulation of the terms of exchange and of the maintenance
of rights to possession and of motivation - emerge with it. A further subdivision is
introduced by the pattern variable particularism-universalism. Whereas affectivity-neutrality refers to an
orientation toward objects focused on the mode of their appropriateness for
gratification, particularism-universalism refers to an orientation toward
objects focused on their membership or quality in
relation to the actor as a member of a collectivity or an
ecological complex. To the extent that
the relationship (of common
membership) to the actor is disregarded we have a universalistic orientation,
the object being then judged by its properties in relation to objects other
than the actor. Thus, a segregated
specific expressive interest is compatible with a universalistic orientation so
long as a class of objects
defined by general properties is appropriate to the gratification and
appropriateness is not confined to members of a class already in a special
relation to the actor. Therefore, roles
1 and 3 may be universally institutionalized.
Particularism, on the other hand, though it may be involved in specific
gratifications, is much more fundamental to diffuse attachments. Therefore, any role in which the element of
attachment has primacy is almost necessarily particularistic.16 15 Owing to the rather difficult and technical nature
of this derivation, those satisfied of its possibility might be advised to pass
over the next four paragraphs. The
Social System 217 When the possible combinations
of these three pattern variables are considered, all of our six types
are found, in addition to one other which we did not mention; one which
combines universalism, diffuseness, and affectivity.17 Since a diffuse-affective orientation has
been specifically defined as an attachment, we must inquire into the
possibility of an attachment without
particularity of object. As an
empirical phenomenon in a social system, it is a marginal case. It corresponds to "universal love" in a religious sense,
which is certainly a value-orientation of great importance. Perhaps it might be desirable to add it as a
seventh type. In any case, the difficulties of its institutionalization
are obvious. With
respect to their composition in terms of role contents, then, social systems
should be susceptible to classification with respect to the functional
importance and frequency in different parts of the system of the above
enumerated six (or seven) types of role.
As far as major societies are concerned, by far the
most prominent are the fourth, fifth, and sixth
types. The grounds for this lead us
into some important dynamic considerations.
In social systems, because of
the dependence of ego's gratifications on the responses
- actions and attitudes - of alter,
there tends to be a primacy of functional interest
in performance of roles. The
gratifications the actors receive are, therefore, in a sense secondary and
instrumental to this interest; the
performance of a role in accordance with expectations - i.e., in conformity
with standards of obligation and efficiency - becomes established as an
intrinsic good. Moreover, in the major
role structure of the social system, a particular functional importance tends to
fall to those role patterns which perform functions
other than gratifying direct expressive interests. When conflict
arises between functional role performance in accordance with
obligations and direct gratifications, there is always a strong tendency,
although not always a successful one, for the former to be given priority. In a secondary sense, however, types one,
two, and three are both widespread and functionally very
important in most social systems in the reduction of strains created by
instrumental roles and sometimes in the disruption of institutions. But only where it is directly integrated
with instrumental expectations in the context of diffuse attachment is direct
expressive orientation prominently institutionalized in the wider social structure. 16 This connection of
particularism with diffuse attachments is explicitly limited to the present
context. When patterns of value-orientation are taken into consideration, other
bases of particularism might be found, notably, the orientation to solidarity
based on value-integration. 17 See Fig. 14 218
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action Furthermore, these
considerations point toward a very important set of dynamic relations between
the social system and the personality. All action in roles is motivated and
hence must bear some relation to the
need-disposition system of the actor.
A given need-disposition can be best gratified in certain types of
roles, and the balance of the system of need-dispositions in the personality
will have much to do with the probable "adjustment" of ego to
different types of role. Generally
speaking, the need-dispositions for specific gratifications (cell 1, Fig. 14, p.274) will
be best fitted to roles one and three. Since these roles are usually functionally peripheral to the
organization and working of the social structure, a person in whom these
need-dispositions are especially strong will probably have a difficulty in
adjustment in most societies. The need
for love, on the other hand, will fit best with roles two and four. There may, however, be a problem engendered
by the instrumental expectations and hence the elements of discipline
necessitated by adjustment
to role four. Finally, roles five
and six would seem most effectively to gratify, other things being
equal, the need-disposition for approval and esteem, when there is no necessity
for either diffuse or specific immediate gratifications or expressions. The fourth type of role
would probably be the stablest, inasmuch as it offers the possibility of
directly gratifying the need-dispositions and enhances stability through the
effect of diffuseness in both instrumental and expressive systems. The relative strength of the
different classes of need-dispositions will, of course, vary with different
personality types and hence with different types of socialization
experience. However, there is likely to
be a certain minimum strength of each of these need-dispositions although some
might undergo pronounced transformations through the mechanisms of defense and
adjustment. A society which makes the
institutionalization of roles five and six very widespread must have, if it is
to continue more or less stable, some compensatory mechanisms for the
gratification of need-dispositions for immediate gratification. The
emphasis in the American kinship system on affectivity, especially the
prominence of romantic love and the emergence of various types of relatively
undisciplined hedonism in our society such as commercialized entertainment,
drinking, and the literature and films of violence, might be among the
adjustive consequences of the institutional emphasis. These might be regarded as a balancing of the
"one-sidedness" of roles five and six
through compensating outlets allowed by roles two and three. The interrelationships are, however, neither
immediate nor direct and many other factors are involved. The
Social System 219 INTEGRATION: CONSENSUS AND POWER The foregoing discussion has
been concerned with the allocative organizatiion of social systems. Variability will also be found in structures
which are primarily of integrative significance. Of these, two classes are especially important. They are the systems of value-orientation,
which are institutionalized in the
social system and define the scope and depth of solidarities among its members,
and the adaptive structure through which the system achieves sufficient
integration to keep going as a system. We have already discussed
systems of value-orientation in general in the last chapter. Systems of value-orientation defined (in the
categories of the pattern variables) the main outlines of the expectations
governing roles. But even though there
is a relatively definite "ethos" in the value system of the culture,
the roles in a social system are not uniform.
The distribution of the different types of roles within the social
system cannot be explained merely by reference to this ethos, for reasons which
have been reviewed al- ready.
Hence there will not be one internally consistent system of values in a
society. Even in a highly integrated
society, there will be at best a heterogeneous combination of variants of the
main theme of the ethos, with numerous elements of compromise and inhibition of
the consistent application of the system of values which is generally
acknowledged as legitimate. The fifth pattern
variable, self-orientation-collective-orientation,
is especially important in the analysis of solidarity. This pattern variable defines the scope of
the obligations to the collectivity and consequently the areas of permissiveness
which are left open to private goals, whether they be sought instrumentally or as objects of immediate and
direct gratification. The private goals
may be those of individuals or of collectivities vis-a'-vis other
collectivities. Social systems vary greatly
in the ways and in the scope which they allow the sphere of
permissiveness. Although no society is
entirely without a sphere of permissiveness, just as no society is without a
high degree of regulation, yet the differences both in magnitude and qualitative
incidence may be extremely significant from both an ethical and a scientific standpoint. Thus the patterns of
value-orientation, as defined in pattern variable terms, can be seen to define the scope and depth of solidary
groupings in the social system.
The functions of all solidary groupings are largely, although by no
means entirely, allocative, as we have seen. The value patterns may, like the ascription-achievement
variable, be particularly relevant to the regulation of the allocative flow of
personnel, facilities, and rewards among roles and incumbents of roles; or,
like affectivity-neutrality, universalism-particularism, and
specificity-diffuseness, they may describe the roles and systems of roles
within which this flow takes place. Or,
finally, like self-orientation-collective-orientation,
their relevance may lie in defining the boundaries of the obligations of
solidarity and the areas of permissiveness which these leave open. In doing
this, they have a large share in the settlement of the terms of exchange. 220
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action Where the terms of exchange are not arrived at
spontaneously and simultaneously by the partners to the exchange relationship,
some type of adjudication or settlement becomes necessary. The bargaining or discussion by which they
arrive at a settlement might be simply the result of the coercive power
18 of one of the actors over the other. Usually, however, it will not be; for no social system could
persist through time and meet most of the functional problems which arise in it
if the terms of exchange
in its instrumental complex - both economic and political - were exclusively or even predominantly
settled by coercion. The threat of coercion certainly has an
important place, and actual coercion, too, plays a marginal though very
significant part. In periods of
extensive disintegration, indeed, actual coercion assumes a more prominent
position as a factor both in disintegration and in reintegration. But at almost all times the terms of
exchange - the expectations of what will be given him on the basis of which ego
acts in a given situation – have their roots in the generalized patterns of
value-orientation widely shared in the society. However, there is a gap between the generalized
patterns and the specific terms of exchange. Sometimes this gap can be closed by a
gradual give-and-take, a trial-and-error process in the course of which a
balance satisfactory to the parties immediately involved is gradually worked
out. More likely is some sort of
adjudication by discussion, in which the
generalized patterns are invoked as legitimating specific proposals
for settlement. Other forms of
settlement include threats of deprivation within
the sphere of permissiveness allowed by the generalized patterns and
settlement through declaration or legislation by an authority whose powers are
regarded as legitimate in the light of the generalized patterns of
value-orientation. Even in a society in which the consensus on the generalized patterns of value-orientation
- by their nature, patterns of value-oriientation must be generalized - is great, it will still be insufficient for the
maintenance of order. Nor can the
equally necessary specificity of role-expectation be counted upon to remedy the
deficiency. Some sort of institutionalized mechanism is indispensable, and
this is the function of authority. We have already mentioned the function of
authority in connection with the allocation of facilities and rewards. Here we shall refer briefly to the function
of authority in integration. The standard governing the terms of
exchange, or the standard by which expectations are made mutual and
articulated so that both ego and alter obtain the gratification which they seek
in the particular situation, is an evaluative
standard. It is the
functional link between allocation and integration. It is the measuring rod of apportionment, and its acceptance by
the recipients is the foundation of an integrative social system of social
order. 18 Coercive power is the capacity to inflict deprivations
despite physical resistance. Short of
this extreme, coercive power is the imposition of deprivations which cannot be
evaded because attempting to do so would result in other more serious
deprivations. The
Social System 221 THE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE We may now try to deal more
synthetically with the various components and functional processes of the
social system. The object orientations
and processes which we have treated constitute characteristic trait complexes of the social system as a
whole. They are found throughout the
system, although they are particularly prominent in some section of it; and
they may be regarded as resultants of all the factors hitherto explicitly dealt
with, including the specific situation of the social system and its
history. They may be most conveniently
classified in the Categories of Fig. 15 (p. 275). First,
all social systems will, in these terms, have certain relatively general
patterns of categorization of their units, both individual actors and
collectivities. All societies, for
example, evaluate individuals by their age and sex, although the particular evaluations will
vary from society to society. In the second place, all
social systems have characteristic patterns of role orientation to which both
individual and collective actors adhere.
The basic variations are, as we have seen, definable in terms of
combinations of the pattern variables.
But in consequence of adaptation to the exigencies of situational and motivational
conditions - societies will vary with respect to
the distribution of these patterns throughout their respective
structures. Thus a role exercising
authority may, as we saw in the last chapter, be defined in relatively sharp authoritarian terms; or a
role placing emphasis on individual responsibility may receive a strong
anti-authoritarian emphasis. The
sources of these adaptive reorganizations of the fundamental role-expectations
(conceptually derived from the pattern variables) are essentially those
analyzed in the last chapter in connection with the integration of
value-orientation patterns in the social system. With reference to the dominant ethos of the society, they give
rise to such broad traits as are usually called "indvidualism,"
"collectivism," "traditionalism." With regard to our third
category, we need do no more than refer briefly to the division of labor, since
it has already been dealt with earlier in this chapter. No attempt was made above to characterize
types of the division of labor as a whole; for example, with respect to the
degree of differentiation of functions or the points at which the fusions and
segregations occur. These tasks still
remain. In respect to our fourth category, we have dealt with
the system of social stratification, which is the reward system integrated
about the allocation of prestige. This
is a major structural aspect of all social systems, and produces extremely
far-reaching functional consequences. Finally, the fifth category comprises the specifically
integrative structures of collectivities, with the society as a whole regarded
as the most important of these collectivities. These
integrative structures include the modes of organization and regulation of the
power system and the ways in which orientation to a paramount focus of values,
as in religion, are organized.
These integrations take the form of state and church, insofar as
differentiation has made them distinctive structures. It is here that differentiated roles with integrative functions
on behalf of the social system as a whole will be found. The components which enter into them will,
however, be those already discussed. 222
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action Whatever success we have in the
development of categories which will be useful in describing the ranges of
variability of social structures will prepare us to approach those really
important problems for which classification is not the solution. One of the foremost of these is the problem
of the discovery and
explanation of certain empirical clusters among the formally possible
structural clusters. Thus in kinship, for example, although there is nothing
intrinsic to either the socialization of the child or the regulation of sex
relations which makes it necessary that these two functions should be handled
by the same institution; yet they do both tend to be accomplished by one
institution, usually the family.
Their thoroughgoing separation, where it has been attempted, has not
lasted long. Similarly, the
distributions of prestige and power do not vary independently of one another,
even though intrinsically the two are quite discrete. A wide discrepancy between the distribution of power and prestige
limits the degree of integration and creates a disequilibrium; the discrepancy
cannot last long unless special mechanisms reduce the strains and
reinforce the capacity of the system to withstand them. Otherwise the system will have to undergo
marked modifications before an equilibrium is reestablished. The existence of such empirical
clusters simplifies the ultimate problem of classification and helps us to
formulate more systematically the problems of dynamic analysis. It reduces the variety of types which must
be taken into consideration, and it more sharply defines the problem of
explanation by presenting for any variable both those categories or series with
which it is highly correlated and those with which it has a low
correlation. An adequate explanation
should account for both. Thus this
method of classification en- ables us to perceive problems in
relationships which had previously been regarded as scientifically
unproblematical, and it enables us to trace out more sharply the particulaAy
dynamic property of certain of the variables which we use. It is by no means necessary to
suspend all comparative structural analyses pending
the emergence of a comprehensive systematic classification of types of society. Work of the highest order can be done in
particular areas of social subsystems, and although it might have to be
reformulated in the light of general
theory, its intrinsic value is indisputable.
As the general theory of social systems and particularly of societies
develops, the nature of the situation in which subsystems operate can be
clarified. Gradually the analysis of
such subsystems may be expected to merge into the general theory. At the same time, the development of the
general theory of social systems needs to be carried on with special attention
to the task of elaboration toward the more specific, more concrete
subsystems. The
Social System 223 Our own analysis is thus very
far from a classification of actual structural types of social systems. But it does present, we feel, a systematic
approach to the problem, which is capable of further development into the very
heart of substantive theory. It delineates all the principal components -
the elements of orientation and the functional problems which it will be necessary
to incorporate into such a classification - and works out some of their relations
to each other. MOTIVATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL PROCESS The preceding section has led us
necessarily to the border of the dynamic problems of the stability and change
of social systems.19 It is a
measure of the validity of our conceptual scheme that it should have done so
since it may be regarded as evidence that our categories even in their most
elementary form were defined so as to include dynamic properties. A cursory retrospect of all our categories
will show that they were from the very start directed, not just toward
classificatory or taxonomic description, but toward the explanation of why various structures endure
or change. The employment of
motivational categories in our description of action meant that we had made the
first preliminary step toward the analysis of the conditions of persistence and
change. The categories of Cognitive,
cathectic, and evaluative orientation carried in them the possibilities of the
redirection of action with changes in internal or external conditions. The
introduction of the concepts of gratification-deprivation balance and of the
optimum of gratification provided a first approximation to the formulation of
hypotheses about the direction of modifications where these occur, and of the
continuation of a given pattern of action.
The categories of value standards - cognitive, appreciative, and moral - were again constructed with reference
to the persistent possibilities 19 Only in a very
specifically qualified sense is the problem here one of "psychology." It is not
sufficient to take over the theoretical generalizations held to be established
in psychology and apply them without further ado to the analysis of the
behavior of many individuals interacting as a social system. "Psychologism"
is inadequate for our task because we must study dynamic problems in the
context of a social system and the social system and the personality system are
of course not identical. The social roles in which the actor is implicated
become constituents of the structure of his personality. They become such through identifications and
the internalization of the value-orientations of alters, which are thus part of
the shared value-orientations of the members of a collectivity. Without categories which permit the analysis
of the significance of relations to social objects, and hence of sensitivity to
sanctions, "dynamic psychology" (i.e., the study of personality
within the action frame of reference) would be impossible. Likewise, without the basic
constituents of personality, without the elements of motivational orientation,
the organization of orientations to objects and so on, action in the role
structure of the social system could not be successfully analyzed. The dynamic processes involved in the
maintenance and change of institutional structures could not be treated without
a basic understanding of personalities as well as of culture. But the analysis of the dynamics of social
process is no, simply an application of the theory of personality. 224
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action of change
which are present when alternative paths of action must be discriminated and
selected in the light of standards. The
object classification had the same function of preparing our scheme for use in
dynamic analysis - it was a further step in the delineation of the fundamental
alternatives in confrontation with which either persistence or change may
result. The pattern variables carried
in themselves the same dynamic properties which were present in the more
elementary categories from which they were constructed. This could most clearly be seen in our
analysis of the personality system where a direct line runs from cathexis
through attachment and the dependence on positive attitudinal response to
identification, and it could be seen in the concept of need-dispositions as
well. When we placed the individual actor in the context of the social system,
the dynamic implications became even more apparent. The concept of functionally necessary tasks, the performance of
which in certain ways is a condition of the maintenance of social order, and the
concept of strain which is a systemic concept, referring to the problems
arising from the coexistence of different entities in the same system, brought
us into the very midst of the problems of dynamic analysis. We have argued above that there
is no point-for-point articulation between the performance of a role and the
personality of its incumbent and that the social structure could not be
described from knowledge, however detailed, concerning the personality systems
of its members. This should not,
however, be interpreted to mean that social process can be analyzed in any
other than motivational categories or that the analysis of the processes of its
maintenance or change can proceed at any stage without referring to components
and mechanisms of personalities. Thus, although a close
correspondence is impossible, it is equally impossible that personality
structure and the structure of role-expectations should vary at random with
respect to each other. In the first
place, the mere existence of an internalized common culture as a component of
personality precludes this and
so, although in different ways, does the existence of the same basic object
system, which is equally a target of evaluation for both personality and social
systems. The
core of the personality system may be treated in great measure as a product of
socialization, both through learning and by adjustments and defenses against
threats introduced in the course of the socialization process. It is also a product of the expressive and
instrumental involvement of the individual, in the course of life, in his
various statuses within the social system.
These connect the personality with the primary patterns of
value-orientation. There is no doubt of
the influence of these components in the person- ality and consequently of the great part
which the personality system plays in the maintenance of certain generalized
orientations. The
Social System 225 There has, however, been a
strong tendency in some of the recent discussions of "personality and
culture" to assume an altogether too simple relationship between
personality structure and social action.
The proponents of these views have tended to
impute too much rigidity to behavior, and they have also
overestimated the uniformity of behavior within a given society and even
within a subsystem. They have overgeneralized their often penetrating
observations of some uniformities into a nearly complete uniformity. They have
tended to regard most adult social behavior as little more than the
"acting out" of the need-dispositions of
a typical character structure, as if
the actor were incapable of reality-testing, discipline, and
evaluation when confronting particular situations with their own particular
tasks. Of course the individual's
character structure has much to do with his response to a situation. It
influences his cognition and expectations and the selections which he makes
from the various aspects of the situation.
Nonetheless, nothing approaching absolute
uniformity, even for those individuals who have been socialized in
relatively specific and uniform statuses, can be
legitimately assumed. Both the
constitutional endowment and the concrete practices of child training will vary
from individual to individual – though within limits and certainly not
randomly. The internal variations of
socialization practices within the same society contribute further to the
heterogeneity of personality types in a given society. There is also no reason to
believe that all personality structures are equally rigid. They do undergo change, again within limits
imposed by preexisting structures, but the constellation of need-dispositions,
reality-testing capacities, and disciplinary capacities can change through action in situations (even in situations
which are not specifically therapeutic).20 In the study of the bearing of personality on social processes,
however, the overwhelmingly important point is that behavior is not uniform in
different situations. If behavior were merely the acting out of
personality qualities, it would be uniform in different types of
situations. It would show no
adaptability to variations in the situation.
Once it is acknowledged that personality systems do have a
reality-testing function which explores situations and contributes to the
guidance of behavior, then it follows that the situation as a set of
opportunities for direct expressive or instrumental gratification and of
possible threats of deprivation must be regarded as a co-determinant of behavior
in the here and now. Only when the structure of opportunities can
be treated as constant can interindividual differences of concrete behavior be
attributed exclusively to the
factor of personality structure. And even then such propositions would be
methodologically and substantively defective. 20 This phenomenon
has not been sufficiently appreciated in contemporary analysis - partly because
of the difficulties of intensive and accurate biographical studies, partly
because the source of much of our insight into personality, psychoanalytic
theory, has grown up in a context in which the uniformities of the personality
system through quite long periods of life of an individual have been selected
for concentrated scrutiny. 226 These strictures on the
explanation of social behavior simply by reference to personality are directed
only against certain exaggerations.
Personality variables are
obviously in the first rank among the factors which are continuously operating
in behavior at all times. The attention
given earlier to the importance of the gratification-deprivation balance and
the optimum of gratification, the sensitivity of the actor to the approval and
disapproval of alter, the need-disposition scheme, and the concept of
attachment is an indication of the large place allowed to personality in the
working of social systems. Social
systems work through their impact on the motivational systems of individuals,
and the intra-individual complications and elaborations of motivation into
systems lead back into the social system.
The destination to which it is led back, however, is determined by the
situation. The role in which the
individual is expected by others to act, and in which he will act when there is
a correspondence between his own expectations and the ex- pectations
of the others who surround him, was not the product of his personality. In any concrete situation it is given to his
personality as a set of alternatives.
His action is limited to the alternatives, and his choice is partly a
function of his personality system, partly a function of the repercussions
which may he expected by him from each of the alternatives in the way of
gratifications and deprivations of various types. Thus for the social system to
continue to function as the same system, the reliable expectations of ego's
gratification through the alternatives which the other actors in the situation
expect him to follow will be the basis of his conformity with their
expectations (regardless of whether he is motivated by a specific substantive
need-disposition or by a generalized conformist need-disposition). To the extent that these expected
gratifications are not forthcoming at the expected times and places in the
system ego will not produce the expected actions, and the system will
accordingly undergo some change. The
kinds of expectations which ego will have, the selective focus of his cognitive
orientation, the kinds of gratifications which he will seek, will, of course,
all be integral to his personality system.
The same responses of alters will not be equally gratifying to all
individuals since all individuals will not all have the same system of
r~ed-dispositions. The social system depends, then,
on the extent to which it can keep the equilibrium of the personality systems
of its members from varying beyond certain limits. The social system's own equilibrium is itself made up of many
subequilibriums within and cutting across one another, with numerous person- ality systems
more or less in internal equilibrium, making up different equilibrated systems
such as kinship groups, social strata, churches, sects, economic enterprises,
and governmental bodies. All enter into a huge moving equilibrium in
which instabilities in one subsystem in the personality or social sphere are
communicated simultaneously to both levels, either disequilibrating the larger
system, or part of it, until either a reequilibrium takes place or the total
equilibrium changes its form. The
Social System 227 The equilibrium of social
systems is maintained by a variety of processes and mechanisms, and their
failure precipitates varying degrees of disequilibrium (or
disintegration). The two main classes
of mechanisms by which motivation is kept at the level and in the direction
necessary for the continuing operation
of the social system are the mechanisms of
socialization and the mechanisms
of social control.21
The mechanisms of socialization are those mechanisms which form the
need-dispositions making for a generalized readiness to fulfill the major
patterns of role-expectation which an individual will encounter. From the personality point of view this is
one essential part of the learning process, but only
one. The mechanisms of
socialization, in this sense, must not be conceived too narrowly. They include some which are relevant to the
production of relatively specific orientations toward certain roles (e.g., the
sex role). But they also include more general traits such as relatively
generalized "adaptiveness" to the unforeseen exigencies of different
roles. The latter may be particularly
important in a complex and changing society.
The process of socialization operates mainly through the
mechanisms of learning of which generalization, imitation, and identification
are perhaps particularly important. The
motivational processes which are involved in the learning mechanisms become
organized as part of the mechanisms of socializa- tion
through the incorporation of the child into a system of complementary
role-expectations. Two main levels may be distinguished. First, mainly in the identifications formed through the
attachments of early childhood, the primary patterns of value-orientation in
the institutionalized role-system become internalized as part of the child's
own personality. Second, at a later stage, on
the foundations thus laid, the child acquires orientations to more
specific roles and role complexes and learns the definitions of the situation
for incumbents of these roles, the goals which are appropriate to them
according to the prevailing value-orientations, the procedures which are
appropriate according to the same standards, and the symbolic structure of the
rewards associated with them. 21 This
classification of the mechanisms of the social system rests on the fact that
all motivational processes of action, hence all mechanisms, are processes in the individual personality. It is individuals who are socialized and
whose tendencies to deviant behavior are controlled. There is no motivation of a collectivity as such.
Cutting across this classification of the social mechanisms, however, is
a set of distinctions relative to the locus of functional significance for the
social system of a given motivational mechanism. This significance may center in (a) its bearing on the adequacy
of motivation of individuals to the performance of their social roles,
i.e., their gratification-deprivation balances; (b) its hearing on the allocative processes of the social
system; or (c) its bearing on the integration of the social
system. Mechanisms either of socialization or of social control may have any
one or any combination of these types of significance. 228 Values, Motives, and Systems of Action The first type of process
forms what is sometimes called the basic
character or personality structure of the individual. But the orientations on this level are too
general to constitute adequate motivation for the fulfillment of specific
role-expectations. Furthermore,
although there are undoubtedly modal types of such character orientation within
a given social system, the product cannot be uniform; there will always be
considerable variability about such modal types. For both these reasons the second level of the
socialization process, which may be called the situational
specification of role-orientations, is vital to the development of
adequate social motivation. The
mechanisms of socialization thus prepare the actor on a fairly broad level of
generalization for the various roles in which he is
likely to be placed subsequently in his career. Some of these roles may be uniform through
time, subsequent to childhood; others might vary according to the various
qualities and performance propensities which he possesses. The mechanisms of socialization will not prepare him for these roles in detail,
but they will, insofar as they function effectively, give him the general
orientations and expectations which will enable him
to add the rest by further learning and adjustment. This preparation in advance makes the
inevitable occurrence of succession less disruptive of equilibrium than it
might otherwise be. Where the
socialization mechanisms have not provided the oncoming generation or the
native-born or immigrants with the requisite generalized orientation, a
disequilibration will be very likely to occur.22 Failure of the mechanisms of
socialization to motivate conformity with
expectations creates tendencies to deviant behavior which, beyond
certain critical points, would be disruptive of the social order or
equilibrium. It is the function of the
mechanisms of social control to maintain the social system in a state of stable
or moving equilibrium; and insofar as they fail to do so, as has often happened
in history, more drastic disequilibration will take place before equilibrium is
reestablished; that is, there will be changes in the structure
of the social system. It is not possible to draw a
rigid line between socialization and social control. But the rough delimitation of the former would be given by the
conception of those mechanisms necessary to maintain a stable and
institutionally integrated social system through the formation of a given set
of appropriate personality
systems and the specification of their role-orientation with the assumption
that there would be no serious endogenous
tendencies to alienation from these institutionalized
role-expectations, no serious role-conflict, and a constant measure of
institutionalized flexibility. Such a
social system is of course the concept of a limiting case like that of a
frictionless machine and does not exist in reality. But the function of the mechanisms of social control is indicated by the extent to which actual social
systems fail to achieve the above
order of integration through socialization.
22 The proportion of
the population whose major need-dispositions are left ungratified is less
important than the cruciality of their position in the social system and the
magnitude of the discrepancy between needs and expectations on the one hand and
fulfillments on the other. The
Social System 229 In the first place, the
generalized patterns of orientation which are formed through socialization need
constantly to be reinforced through the
continuing presence of the symbolic equivalents of the expectations,
both generalized and specific, which were effective
at earlier stages in the socialization process. The orientations which have become the
shared collective and private goals must be reinforced against the perpetual
pressures toward disruption in the personality system and in the social
system. The mechanisms for the maintenance of the
consensus on value-orientations will have different functions depending on the
type of social system in which they are operating. A social system with a very high degree of consensus covering
most spheres of life and most types of activities and allowing little area to
freely selected modes of behavior will have different problems of maintaining
equilibrium than a system which allows large areas of individual freedom - and
their mechanisms of control will also be different. Even if the strains which come
from inadequate socialization and from changes in the situation of the social
system in relation to nature or to other social systems were eliminated, the
problems of control would still persist.
Tendencies toward alienation are endogenous
in any social system. The
arguments adduced in the preceding chapter concerning the impossibility of the
complete cultural value-integration of a social system bear directly on these
endogenous alienation tendencies. There
cannot be a society in which some of the members are not exposed to a conflict
of values; hence personality strains with resultant pressures against the
expectation-system of the society are inevitable. Another basic source of conflict is constitutional variability
and the consequent difficulties in the socialization of the different
constitutional types. It is impossible
for the distribution of the
various constitutional endowments to correspond exactly to the distribution of
initial or subsequent roles and statuses in the social system, and the misfits
produce strains and possibly alienation.
What is more, the allocative process always produces serious strains by denying to
some members of the society what they think they are entitled to, sometimes
exacerbating their demands so that they overreach themselves and infringe on
the rights of others. Sometimes denial deadens the motivation of actors
to role fulfillment and causes their apathetic withdrawal from the roles
which they occupy. Where the
sense of deprivation is associated with an identification with a collectivity
or a class of individuals who come to identify themselves as similarly deprived
in the allocation of roles, facilities, and rewards, the tasks of the control
mechanism, and the strains on the system, become heavy indeed. We cannot undertake here the
construction of a systematic classification
of the mechanisms of social control. All that we will offer will be illustrations
of some of them. 230
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action One of the most prominent and
functionally most significant of them is the artificial identification of
interests through the manipulation of rewards and deprivations. This is the
exercise of authority in its integrative function. When alienation exists because of
ineffective socialization, character-determined rebelliousness, conflicting
value-orientation, or apathy, the incumbent of a
role endowed with the power to manipulate the allocation of facilities,
roles, and rewards can redirect the motivational orientation of others by
offering them objects which are more readily cathected, or by threatening to
take away objects or remove opportunities.
Much of the integration in the instrumental
institutional complex is achieved through this artificial identification
of interests, which usually works in the context of a consensus
concerning general value-orientations. The weaker the consensus,
however, and the larger the social system, the greater the share borne by these
mechanisms in the maintenance of some measure of integration. Among the other mechanisms of
social control, insulation has an
important part. Certain types of
deviant behavior which do occur are sealed off, and thereby their disruptive
potentialities are restricted, since in their isolation they cannot have much
direct effect on the behavior of the other members of the society. On the individual
level, this mechanism operates with both the
criminal and the ill. On the collective level, it operates in the case of
deviant and "interstitial" "subcultures" or collectivities
which are not positively fully integrated with the main social system, and
which are more or less cut off from widespread contact with the dominant sector
of the social system - a contact which, if it did occur, would engender
conflict. Segregation
is the spatial consequence of the operation of the mechanism of
insulation. Another type of mechanism of
social control is contingent reintegration;
the care of the ill in modern medicine is a good example of this in certain
respects. The medical profession
exposes the sick person, so far as his illness constitutes "deviant
behavior," to a situation where the motivation
to his deviance is weakened and the positive motivations to conformity are
strengthened. What is, from the
viewpoint of the individual personality, conscious or unconscious psychotherapy, is from the viewpoint of the
social system a mechanism of social control.
These examples should give the
reader a general idea of what is meant by the control mechanisms of the social
system which have their efficacy through their
effect on motivation. The
Social System 231 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL CHANGE The present theory of the social
system is, like all theories involving causal or functional explanation,
concerned equally with the conditions of stability
and the conditions of change.
It is equally concerned with slow cumulative change and with sudden or
fluctuating change, and the categories and the variables which have been
presented are equally applicable to stable or rapidly or slowly changing
systems. The
state of a system at a point in time or at a series of points in time is a
fundamental referent for the analysis of social systems. It is also the fundamental referent for the
analysis of change from that state to other states of the system. The theoretical scheme here presented offers
a number of categories and hypotheses by which possibilities of change may be
described and analyzed. We have given prominence in
earlier phases of our analysis to the integration of motivational elements into
patterns of conformity with role-expectations, to the general category of
alienation and the conditions of its emergence, and to the part played by the
mechanisms of social control. The
entire discussion of motivation and its relation to the mechanisms of
socialization and control in the section immediately preceding was directly
addressed to the problems of stability and
change. If analyzed in these terms, the
maintenance of any existing status, insofar as it is maintained at all, is
clearly a relatively contingent matter.
The obverse of the analysis of the
mechanisms by which it is maintained is the analysis of the forces which
tend to alter it. It is impossible to study one without the other. A fundamental potentiality of instability,
an endemic possibility of change, is inherent in this approach to the analysis
of social systems. Empirically, of course, the degree of instability, and hence the
likelihood of actual change, will vary both with the character of the social
system and of the situation in which it is placed. But in principle, propositions about the factors making for
maintenance of the system are at the same time propositions about those making
for change. The difference is only one
of concrete descriptive emphasis. There is no difference on the analytical
level. A
basic hypothesis in this type of analysis asserts the imperfect integration of
all actual social systems. No one system
of value-orientation with perfect consistency in its patterns can be fully
institutionalized in a concrete society.
There will be uneven distributions among the different parts of the society.
There will be value conflicts and role conflicts. The consequence of such imperfect integration is in the nature of
the case a certain instability, and hence a susceptibility to change if the
balance of these forces, which is often extremely delicate, is shifted at some
strategic point. Thus, change might result
not only from open deviation from
unequivocally institutionalized patterns but also from a
shift in the balance between two or more positively institutionalized
patterns, with an invasion of part of the
sphere of one by another. The loopholes in the institutionalized
system are one of the main channels through which such shifts often take
place. Hence, in the combination of the
inherent tendencies to deviation and the imperfections of the integration of
value-orientations, there are in every social system inherent possibilities of
change. 232
Values, Motives, and Systems of Action In addition to these two major
sources, positively institutionalized sources of
change are particularly prominent in some social systems. The most prominent type of case seems to be
the institutionalized commitment to a cultural
configuration, in Kroeber's sense, so that there is an endogenous
process of development of the possibilities of that configuration. Where the cultural orientation gives a
prominent place to achievement and universalistic orientation, this endogenous
tendency toward change may be very pronounced.
The obvious example is modern science, with its technological
applications. Scientific knowledge is
by its nature open to development - otherwise the activities concerned could
not be called scientific investigation.
When made into the object of concern by scientific institutions -
universities and research organizations - there is an
institutionalized motivation to unfold this possibility. There are, furthermore, powerful tendencies,
once the ethos of science is institutionalized in a society sufficiently for an
important scientific movement to flourish, to render it impossible to isolate
scentific investigation so that it will have no technological application. Such applications in turn will have
repercussions on the whole system of social relationships. Hence a society in which science is
institutionalized and is also assigned a strategic position
cannot be a static society. What is very conspicuously true
of science is also true of the consequences of many religious
movements, once certain processes of internal development have
started. The value-orientations of
modern capitalistic enterprise are similarly endogenously productive of change.
Any society in which the value
standards, as in a legal code (even
though it is not in their formal nature to undergo development), are capable of reinterpretation will also tend toward
change. Any society in which the
allocations create or maintain dissatisfaction will be open to change;
especially when the cultural standards and the allocations combine to intensify
need-dispositions, change will be a certainty.
Changes in the external situation
of a social system, either in its environmental conditions (as in the case of
the depletion or discovery of some natural resource), changes in its technology
which are not autonomous, changes in the social situation of the system (as in
its foreign relations), may be cited as the chief
exogenous factors in change. Inspection
of the paradigm for the analysis of social systems will show that these
variables can be fully taken into account in this scheme of analysis (see Fig. 15). 233
The Social System There is no suggestion that
these sources of social change exhaust the list, but they will suffice for the
present. The possibility of doing
empirical justice to all of them is certainly present in the treatment of
social systems in terms of the theory of action. Furthermore, this type of analysis puts us in possession of important canons for the
criticism of other theories of social change.
It would seem, for instance, that there is no inherent reason why the
"motive force" of social change in
general has to be sought in any one sector of the social system
or its culture. The impetus to a given
process of change may come from an evolution of "ideas." It may come from secular changes in climate
which profoundly alter the conditions of subsistence. It may center in shifts in the distribution of power or in technological
developments which permit some needs to be satisfied in ways that change the
conditions and the level of satisfaction of the needs of other actors in the
sytsem. The theoretical generalization
of change will in all probability not take the form of a "pre- dominant
factor theory," such as an economic or an ideological interpretation, but
of an analysis of the modes of interdependence of different parts of the social
system. From such hypotheses it should
be possible to predict that a certain type of change, initiated at any given
point, will, given the main facts about the
system, have specifiable types of consequences at other points. To avoid confusion, one final
point should be mentioned. The analysis
of social change is not to be confused with the analysis of the dynamics of
action in the theory of action. There
is much dynamic process in action, including change in the structure of
personalities, within a stable social system. Indeed it is inherent in the frame of
reference that all action is a
dynamic process. The emphasis of this
work on the organization of action is not to be taken to imply that organization has
some sort of ontological priority over dynamic process. They are the two aspects of the same
phenomenon. It has been more convenient
to stress the organizational aspect since it provides certain relatively
definite and manageable reference points, which make possible a more incisive
and rigorous analysis of certain problems in the process of action.23 23 As noted in the
Introduction, a greatly expanded treatment of the subject-matter of this
chapter will be bond in Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe,
Illinois: The Free Press, 1951).
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