THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETIES:  Preface & Chapter 1

PARSONS' THEORY OF SOCIETAL EVOLUTION , 1                   

The Theory of Action ,  2

The Differentiation of Action Systems , 4

What Is a Society ?  6

The Cybernetic Hierarchy ,  8

Evolutionary Breakthroughs ,  10

The Inclusive Societal Community of Modern Societies ,  18

Conclusion,  19

Addendum to Chapter 1 , 20

References,  23

PREFACE

            This book consists of the republication in one volume of two previously published books by Talcott Parsons on the subject of societal evolution.  I hope it is also something more: a clearer guide to Parsons' thinking about societal evolution than was available in either book.  In order to achieve this goal of clarity, I have tampered with the original texts in three ways:

            1  By eliminating both of the purely theoretical chapters in the original volumes and scattering the theoretical material throughout the text, as needed, I sought to integrate more completely Parsons' theory with the detailed accounts of particular societies.  After all, Parsons was less interested in Egypt or in medieval Europe in themselves than as illustrations of societal differentiation.  But this was drastic surgery.  This editorial decision makes it difficult for the reader to examine his theory separately from the empirical materials.  There may also be places that are unclear because all of the theoretical distinctions Parsons uses did not find their way into the revised text-although a glossary of Parsonian definitions, newly prepared for this edition, ought to address this problem. I hope that, for most readers, the advantage of integrating theoretical discussions with empirical data will outweigh the disadvantages. 

            2  By combining what were two separate volumes published five years apart, I sought to emphasize Parsons' conception of the sweep of the evolutionary process from prehistory, through historic epochs, and into the contemporary world.  I also wrote a new Chapter One to serve as a guide not only to Parsons' theory of societal evolution but also to some of the broader issues of sociological theory with which Parsons has been concerned. 

            3  By careful editing of the text, sentence by sentence, I sought to clarify Parsons' meaning by simplifying his prose style.  Occasionally I deleted sentences that seemed to carry the reader toward a peripheral rather than a central point.  More usually I deleted adjectives, adverbs, or entire phrases that Parsons had intended to qualify an overgeneral statement but which might confuse the reader.  Thus, there are places where Parsons would prefer to state his argument more tentatively than he does in this edited version of his theory of societal evolution. 

            Although not an easy task, editing a masterpiece brings its own reward: the satisfaction of contributing to the accessibility of a work that will be studied by sociologists still unborn.

JACKSON TOBY

Rutgers University

1         PARSONS' THEORY OF SOCIETAL EVOLUTION, by JACKSON TOBY (return to top)

Parson’s interest in societal evolution may have surprised some sociologists because it seems on first thought unrelated to his previous intellectual preoccupations.  Actually it represents a return in a more sophisticated form to a problem that engaged him as a young man.  Recall that his earliest publications were concerned with the development of capitalism (1928; 1929; 1930).  In particular, he was impressed with Mac Weber’s interpretation of the role of religious values in the emergence of capitalism in the Christian West rather than in China or in India.  His analysis of societal evolution in this book revises and extends the Weber thesis so as to make it relevant not merely to the emergence of capitalism but to the development of modern societies from the earliest beginnings of social organization.  Parsons approaches this monumental task with a three-fold strategy: 

1         He goes much farther back in time than Weber.  Since the historical record is only about five thousand years old, he relies on archeological to place some societies in his scheme.  For very primotive societies, he shifts to contemporary anthropological evidence – on the reasonable assumption that the simple social structure of the Murgin of Australia and the Shilluk of the Sudan tell us what human societies were like at early stages of social evolution. 

2         He uses as his pivotal concept, not religious values, as Weber did, but shared symbolic systems (culture) of which religious values as only one subtype (constitutive symbols).  Cognitive symbols, moral evaluative symbols, and expressive-appreciative symbols are the other subtypes.

3    He formulates a theory of social change logically more compelling than Weber's.  It provides a cybernetic model for the cultural direction of change; the model emphasizes four processes (differentiation-adaptive up-grading, inclusion, and value generalization) that clarify the ambiguous relationship between religious ideas and modernization in Weber (1964).

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