The American University: TECHNICAL APPENDIX

423 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

TECHNICAL APPENDIX: SOME GENERAL THEORETICAL PARADIGMS

Historical Antecedents

This book has attempted not only to mobilize pertinent information about American universities in a relevant way but to pose problems in terms of a technical analytical scheme, the theory of action. In particular we have endeavored to interweave analysis at the level of the general system of action with analysis on the level of the social system, a functional subsystem of the general action system.

In our theoretical judgments, we have been guided by paradigms at both levels. Those dealing with the general action system have changed most since previous publication,¹ but we are presenting here all of our formalizations to date. After outlining them, we shall say something about the theoretical gaps still existing.

The starting point is the four-function paradigm explicated in Chapter 1. Although this was originally conceived as general to action,² the first detailed exposition of its implications occurred at the social-system level, specifically in the work done by Smelser and the senior author in Economy and Society.³ That book produced the insights

(1) that the economy could be treated, in terms of the four-function paradigm, as the adaptive subsystem of a society and

(2) that the input-output categories traditionally treated in economic theory as the factors of production and the shares of income were categories of relation between the adaptive subsystem and the other functional systems of the society.

This was how the format of the societal interchange system of Figure A.1 emerged - as did the tabular view of the structure of the social system (formulated in Figure A.2) and of its interchange processes (formulated in Figure A.5)

¹ Cf. Talcott Parsons, “Some Problems of General Theory in Sociology," in Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments ed. John C McKinney and Edward A. Tiryakian (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970).

². C£. Talcott Parsons, Robert F. Bales, and Edward A. Shils, Working Papers in the Theory of Action (New York, The Free Press, 1955).

³. Talcott Parsons and Neil J. Smelser, Economy and Society (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul; and New York, The Free Press, 1956).

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These two insights were only a beginning. Assuming the existence of an interchange paradigm, we had two further problems. The first was that of locating the sources and destinations of categories of input and output. We decided that the family household, traditionally regarded by economists as the unit of consumption and the source of the input of labor as a factor of production to the economy; should be located as a matter of primacy in the pattern-maintenance subsystem of the society. Resolving this question tentatively with the idea that a pair of inputs and outputs had a common source and destination left two further logical possibilities. Next we had to locate the source of the factor input of capital to the economy. We decided to locate it in the political subsystem. The only remaining open possibility, the interchange with the still unexplored integrative system, was assigned to the factor postclassically introduced into economic analysis by Marshall and Schumpeter; we adopted Marshall's term "organization."⁴

The second problem resulted from the circumstance that we were thinking in terms of four functional categories and indeed that, since Marshall, economists dealt with four factors of production and shares of income, but that, internal to any four-unit set, were only three interchanging pairs. Even if we properly located three of our input-output pairs from the point of view of the economy as adaptive subsystem, what about the fourth?

On both sides of the relation, clues existed to a possible solution of this problem. Economic theory traditionally regarded one of the factors of production, land, as occupying a special place. In our functional analysis of action systems and specifically at the social level, the pattern-maintenance function also occupied a special place. Perhaps the specialness of pattern-maintenance lay in the fact that this subsystem was not engaged in the same order of interchanges with the other subsystems, just as the specialness of the total quantity of land in an economy (as distinguished from the allocation of parcels) is not a function of its price.

One final assumption-decision remains to be mentioned. We tied together the input and output categories relative to a single pair of subsystems into a double-interchange bundle. In making this assumption, we were following the precedent of economic theory. The standard formula concerned the interchange between producing firms and consuming households. The source of control over consumers' goods for households lay in the productive output of firms in a sufficiently differentiated economy. The relation, however, was established through effective demand, by which economists meant the actual capacity to offer money payment for the transfer of rights of possession in consumers goods. These transfers of rights were satisfactory to firms in the sense of ultimately leading back to their profitability in particular lines of production. At the same time the consuming household was the source of the labor supply on which the processes of economic production were dependent. Through various stages of conceptual refinement, members of

⁴ Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (London, Macmfllan, 1925). Also, Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, trans. Redvers Opie (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1954).

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the household entered the labor force, became involved in employment, and were the earners of money incomes and the like. The money income from the output of labor then became the source of "effective demand" - in the sense of the household's capacity to make money offers for the purchase of goods. The justification of putting these components together in a single bundle lies in the development of the structure of societies in the course of the development of the division of labor in the sociological sense used by Durkheim.⁵ If for a "firm" in the economic sense is substituted "employing organization" as a source of money income to the household, a transition from the economic to the more general social level can be worked out.

These theoretical developments brought the focus of attention to the role of a generalized medium of exchange, in the economic case - money. The consumption-labor supply bundle could only constitute a unitary bundle if it were held together by monetary evaluations and transactions. It, therefore, became imperative to investigate the nature of money as a generalized symbolic medium of interchange - a term we have adopted to avoid the strictly economic connotations of the word "exchange." By this path we arrived at treating the relations among functional subsystems of an action system in terms of interchanges involving generalized media of interchange. The underlying conception has been that the functional paradigm not only defined tangible structural units like business firms, particular households, industries, residential aggregates of households, and the like but that it also gave the rationale for treating together a variety of the bundles of oriented and meaningful dynamic process. This could he worked out paradigmatically in terms of the relation of the economy to consuming households and the economy's relation to the sources of the other factors of production.

Such a line of theoretical development could have constituted no more than a refinement of economic sociology. However, we were theoretically more ambitious than this. Having worked out the paradigm which has been sketched in terms of its circumstantial concrete developmental situation, we wanted to generalize it to the structure and functioning of a social system at the differentiated societal level taken as a whole. The first step, documented in the paper "On the Concept of Political Power," was to use the economic model as a basis for reformulating political thinking about power; specifically, we treated power as a generalized symbolic medium in interchange not completely parallel to money, but as belonging in the same category as money.⁶ This involved reconsideration of many controversial theoretical problems involved in the political field. The process of theoretical development was then further pursued into the other two functional subsystems of a society, namely. the integrative subsystem (now called the "societal community") and the pattern-maintenance subsystem (now called the fiduciary subsystem)

⁵ Emile Durlibeim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. George Simpson (New York, The Free Press, 1969).

⁶ Talcott Parsons, "On the Concept of Political Power," in Politics and Social Structure (New York, The Free Press, 1969), chap. xiv, pp.552404 (reprinted from Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 107 [June 1965], 252-262).

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The Paradigms of the Social System

Figure A.1 presents a schematic format of the social system, locating both structural subsystems and interchange connections. The structure of the social system is presented diagramatically in Figure A.2 broken down to the sixteen-cell level. This is to say, the four larger boxes represent the primary functional subsystems of a society or another type of social system that has become sufficiently differentiated to make the distinctions meaningful. These are (in the society) the economy as the adaptive subsystem, the polity as the goal-attainment subsystem, the societal community as the integrative subsystem, and the fiduciary system as the subsystem with the pattern-maintenance responsibility. These four subsystems are then shown as linked with each other in pairs, themselves interpreted to have functional significance.

Each of the four subsystems is then broken down again by the same functional logic into four subsystems, and each of these is given a designation. Since the present book has been particularly concerned with the fiduciary system, we undertook in Chapter 1 to outline the rationale of the four-system breakdown of the fiduciary system.

Resource

>>>

Adaptive subsystem

<<<

mobilzation

Goal-attainment

(the economy)

system

>>>

subsystem

<<<

(the polity)

Labor >>>

<<< consumption

market >>>

<<< system

<< Legitimation System >>

<<<

system >>>

<<< support

Political >>>

<<< Allocative standard system >>>

Pattern-maintenance

Integrative subsystem

(locus of cultucal and

<<<

Loyalty

(law (as norms) and

motivational commitments)

solidarity

>>>

social control)

(Fiduciary subsystem)

<<<

commitment

(Societal community)

system

>>>

Figure A.1. Format of the Societal System: Structure and Interchange Sets

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The four functional subsystems constitute a cybernetic hierarchy in the order L-I-G-A. In the discussion of substantive problems throughout the hook we tried to give the reader an adequate understanding of our view that the cybernetic control which we attribute to a superordinate system in this hierarchy does not imply domination in every respect. Control is compatible with fundamental autonomy and two-way interchange. We tried to make this point clear with reference to the concept of institutionalized individualism where, although cultural and social systems are cybernetically superordinate to the personality of the individual, the autonomy of that personality is a primary feature of an individualistic action system. Cybernetic hierarchy is at the same time linked to feedback relationships, which underlines the reciprocal character of the interchanges.

The reader familiar with the history of this scheme will note several differences from the arrangement of the subsystems in Figure A.2 in previous publications, notably, the one presented in the technical note appended to the paper, "On the Concept of Political Power."⁷ First, the subsystems are arranged so that the cybernetic hierarchy runs clockwise, starting at the upper left and running around to the lower left. There is a certain arbitrariness in the diagramming of this structure in only two dimensions; a three-dimension model which treated these as steps in a spiral staircase would he more accurate. However, it is not worthwhile for present purposes to pursue technicalities this far.

Second, we have placed the pattern-maintenance subsystem of each primary unit on the outside corner. If the basic pattern of ordering is not to be altered, this has the effect of placing the four integrative subsystem units on the upper and lower edges of the diagram, but on the inner corners of each subsystem; the four adaptive subsystem units are on the outer edges, both left and right, but also on the two inside corners. This leaves the four units classified as having goal-attainment functions on the inside corners of the total paradigm.

This rearrangement was first worked out for what we will present as Figure A.6, the paradigm of the "Structure of the General Action System." There, it has been justified in terms of a theme emphasized throughout this book, namely, the importance of the internal environments of the system of action as seen from the perspective of the individual person as actor. This theme first became evident to us in social science perspective from reconsideration of Durkheim's work in the light of biological thought. If this rearrangement were appropriate at the level of the general system of action, it should also he appropriate at the social system level. For example, two important fields of application are to he found (labeled with the small letter "g") in interchanges internal to the social system between functional subsystems. One of them is between the economy and the fiduciary subsystem, in relation to which the consumer's interest in economic goods is shaped by standards of taste, that is, on the background of expressive symbolism. This connection provides an opportunity for developing the theory of consumption farther. The second context is the problem of the relation of political leadership to constituency support, a problem of the relation of the polity to the integrative system.

⁷ Ibid.

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Figure A.2. Structure of the Social System

The labelings of the six interchange pairs with the small letters "a," "g," and "i" are meant to call attention to a relationship which holds between this way of looking at the structural system paradigm and the two primary axes of the action system outlined in Chapter 1, namely, the external-internal and the instrumental-consummatory. The process which by this particular set of diagramming conventions comes to focus in the horizontal dimension has to do with adaptive function. The distinction around which the instrumental-consummatory dichotomy is built concerns what some economists used to call “time preference." This is to say, it has to do with the problem of relative immediacy of the enjoyment of benefits from resources and the delay of that enjoyment in favor of the function of increase of the resource base.

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However, we do not in the present presentation associate the external-internal distinction with the vertical dimension. Our new arrangement shifts the emphasis and holds that the pattern-maintenance function is especially concerned with the maintenance of the boundaries between a system of reference and its environment. This is justification for placing the L cells at the most isolated positions of all, namely, at the corners of the paradigm. This placement symbolizes their insulation from direct interchanges with other subsystems. Reinforcement in this set of judgments has come from the apparent parallels with biological theory both at the level of genetics and that of population and species biology.⁸ In relation to what is nonsystem, the adaptive and the pattern-maintenance functions strike us as the primary foci of definition of the status of the system.

The integrative functions, on the other hand, are concerned with the internal environment of the system. They define the ways in which the action-situations of units and subsystems come to he a function of structures that transcend the particular subsystem itself, but which at the same time are characteristic of the larger system. Durkheim was the action level theorist whose two axes of solidarity, mechanical and organic, delineated the two integrative axes of the action system and, at a lower level of generality, that of society.⁹

Finally, the g or vertical interchange pairs, though external from the point of view of the interchanging subsystems, are internal from the point of view of the larger system of which they are both parts. Relative to the adaptive function, g is concentrated on short-run interests; relative to the integrative function, it is concentrated on particularistic as distinguished from systemic interest. In terms of biological parallels, g comes closer to physiological levels as distinguished from those with more of either a developmental significance for the individual organism or an evolutionary one for the species.

Contrary to our previous views, we do not lay special stress on the subsystems of the source and destination systems of these interchanges, a question which has aroused disagreement among some of those involved in these theoretical problems.¹⁰

⁸ Cf. Daedalus material in Gerald Holton, ed., The Twentiefh Century Sciences: Studies in the Biographies of Ideas (New York, Norton, 1972); and Ernst Mayr, Populations, Species, and Evolution (Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970).

⁹ Talcott Parsons, "Durkheim on Religion Revisited: Another Look at The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life," in The Scientific Study of Religion: Beyond the Classics, ed. Charles Y. Glock and Phillip E. Hammond (New York, Harper and Row, 1975).

¹⁰ See Johannes I. Loubser, Rainer Baum, Andrew Effrat, and Victor Lidz, ads., Explorations in General Theory in Social Science (New York, The Free Press, 1975).

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[As in Figure A.6, the paradigm for the structure of the General Action System] corresponding to Figure A.2 for the social system, we have inserted suggestions in brackets at each of the four pattern-maintenance corners of the paradigm of foci of articulation of the integrative system - at the general action level - with the other action systems. The adaptive articulation (related to land in economic theory) is the only one that reaches outside the general system of action. Land mediates the relationship between the social system and the physical environment. The functional reference is primarily adaptive. Physical resources have to he made socially meaningful through the process of economic production, but so far as physical components are involved, "natural'⁷ resources have to be processed by technological procedures, the goals of which are prescribed by application of the economic value-category of utility (see Figure A.4 below)

The other three articulations are with the relevant aspects of the general system of action.

The G-subsystem of a society, the polity, articulates with the physical environment, especially through the territorial reference of its sphere of control, which includes the territorial jurisdictions of governments but also control of the physical premises in which organizational activities are carried on, for example, university buildings. The main emphasis, however, is to the action-conditions of effective goal-attainment, including the availability of the relevant human resources at the level of participating personalities and the general action grounding of the normative order of the society, coming to focus in its legitimacy - especially that of authority - in Max Weber's sense.¹¹

The T subsystem of a society articulates with those aspects of the general action system important for grounding normative order at the societal level. At one level this is grounding in the moral-evaluative commitments of the culture, the source of what Durkheim called its moral authority. Its effectiveness in controlling action, however, is also a function of the economy of affect, that is, predominantly social-affective relations at the general action level.

The L subsystem of a society relates to the aspect of the cultural system which articulates meanings that define the situation as a generalized medium of interchange. Bellah's concept of the civil religion¹² is such a focus of mediation to the social system. The cultural system in turn is the focus of the legitimation, not of authority but of the institutionalized values underlying the moral authority of the more substantive normative order of a society.

¹¹ Max Weher, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. M.Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York, The Free Press, 1969).

¹² Robert N. Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," Daedalus (Winter 1967), pp 1-21.

¹³ Parsons, "On the Concept of Political Power."

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Figure A.3 attempts to spell out the four-fold interchange paradigm between all four functional subsystems of the society. This is virtually unchanged from the version published in the technical note to the paper "On the Concept of Political Power.”¹³ Only one change of terminology is introduced, namely, putting "legitimation of claims to loyalties" in the place of "value-based claims of loyalties" in the L-J interchange. The paradigm does, however, need elucidation, couched as it is in terms of the four generalized symbolic media of interchange of the society as a system:

money anchored in the economy,

power anchored in the polity,

influence anchored in the societal community, and

value-commitments anchored in the fiduciary system.

We have generalized the classical paradigm of economic theory to the social system as a whole by treating each of the six as consisting of a double interchange; but we have self-consciously moved to a higher level of abstraction from that employed by economists. For example, in the prototypical A-L relation, the economist's formula consisted of exchange of money for goods and services on the one side, labor on the other. Subject to the imperatives of theoretical generalization, however, the latter categories are dealt with at the level not of concrete control of particulars but of value-commitments on the part of the putative providers of such control. The problem of the relation of these two levels has come up several times in the course of the book where we have tried to relate the generalized medium to the particularized valuables for which they may be exchanged. The students of this appendix should be aware that Figure A.3 is couched at the level of generalized media throughout and that for certain applications a shift of level is required. The details for that shift probably can be worked out ultimately in formal paradigms. Many of the terms employed to designate the twenty-four different categories are terms which to some degree compromise between these two levels. The use of the term "goods" and "labor" are examples, but there are others. Care is necessary in use of the paradigm.

At several points in the hook we have brought up another consideration about generalized media, namely, that externally to the primary anchorage of a medium (such as the anchorage for money in the economy) the medium functions to acquire control of resources through interchange. Thus the firm which sells consumer goods acquires the money income which can he used to acquire control of factors of production. Internally, however, the same medium functions as an agency of cost control. This is the basis of the relation between the two left-hand vertical columns in Figure A.4. The coordination standard - an example of "norms" as distinguished from "values" - is the standard specifically revelant (sic) to the cost-control function. In the economy the coordination standard is that of solvency. We have introduced one terminological change here by using the term "compliance" in the G box of the coordination standard column in place of "success," a term which never seemed appropriate.

The A and G columns of Figure A.4 designate contexts of operation of each of the four media as sanctions, arranged not by interchange system as in Figure A.3 but by control of factor inputs and product outputs respectively. Thus money, though not itself a factor of production, controls (buys) labor and capital as the primary factors, in the A-L and the A-G interchange systems respectively, whereas for consuming systems money buys outputs of the economy, namely goods (in A-L) and services (in A-G)

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Figure A.3. The Categories of Societal Interchange

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The involvement of power is parallel. On the one hand, it commands the two primary mobile factors of effectiveness, namely control of productivity (in G-A) and interest-demands (in G-I) (as justified in terms of appeal to norms). On the other hand, the consumers or beneficiaries of the outputs from the process can use power to command these outputs in the form of fluid resources (for example, through budget allocation in G-A) and of leadership responsibility for valued goals (in G-I).

In Figure A.4, negative and positive sanction types alternate in the hierarchy of control. Power, as the medium depending on negative-situational sanctions, is sandwiched between money (below it) with its positive-situational sanctions and influence (above it) with its positive intentional sanctions.

Returning to Figure A.3, power is also involved in the legitimation system (L-G) , but this time as code, as an aspect of authority. This may be conceived as a mechanism for linking the principles and standards in the L and G rows. What is called the assumption of operative responsibility (P3a) , which is treated as a factor of integrity, is responsibility for success - as internally indexed by compliance in the implementation of the value-principles, not only of collective effectiveness but of integrity of the paramount societal value-commitments. The legitimation of authorIty (C3a) imposes the responsibility to attempt such success. Legality of the powers of office on the other hand (P3c) , as a category of output to the polity, is an application of the standard of pattern consistency. At the various relevant levels action may and should he taken consistent with the value-commitments. In exchange for legal authorization to take such action, the responsible officeholder must accept moral responsibility for his use of power and his decisions of interpretation (C3b).

In a sense not clear when Figure A.4 was first formulated, the L and T vertical columns, that is, the farthest left and the one next to it, correspond to the analytical distinction between values and norms. To he sure, this is explicit in the designation value-principle for the left-hand column but not in the designation coordination standard for the column next to it. An example of the latter is solvency as a standard for the business firm. This means that the primary norms governing decision making for the firm as a unit in the economy should concern the balance of monetary receipts and monetary costs. This (rather than any psychological generalization) is the core of the “profit motive." The profit motive is not so much a specific norm as a standard which ties together a ramified set of more particular norms to which business decision-makers may reasonably he held to he bound. Stress on the word primary is necessary. No concrete collectivity can be exclusively ordered by the norms governed by one particular standard. Business firms are bound by norms expressing the other three standards as well as solvency, but this fact does not eliminate the primacy of the standard of solvency.

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Figure A.4. The Social-System Media as Sanctions

The two coordination standards of greatest significance for the subject matter in this book are consensus and pattern consistency. By consensus, in the context of this hook we mean essentially the voluntary status of ordered participation in the collective life of academic communities. In this context the affective balances of academic communities are of great significance. Because of their academic functions, it is imperative that these should he integrated with the relevant parts of the cognitive complex, but serious deficits in the affective sphere have the same order of negative significance that financial deficits would have for firms. Pattern-consistency is relevant with reference to the values of cognitive rationality. The essential point is the maintenance of the primacy of the standard defined in terms of those values at the core of the academic system, even though this standard has to be combined with others in a number of interpenetrating boundary relationships.

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Paradigm of the General Action System

Figure A.5 sets forth the main components of the general action paradigm, components extensively treated in this book. In the order of cybernetic hierarchy L-J-G-A, the functional subsystems are the cultural system, the social system, the psychological (or personality) system, and the behavioral organism. Each of these is the focus of a generalized symbolic medium of interchange, namely, definition of the situation, affect, performance capacity, and intelligence in the same L-I-G-A order. As with the social system in Figure A.1, all of the six internal double-interchange systems in which the media are involved are given designations.

Figure A.6 spells out this paradigm on the structural side. It is constructed on the same basis as Figure A.2 was for the social system, but with differing content references because of the different system reference levels. The articulation between the two is made explicit in that the I subsystem of Figure A.6 is subdivided into the same four general subsystems of the social system which appeared as the main boxes in Figure A.2.

Figure A.5. Format of the General Action System

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The ideas for the rearrangement of the ordering of the subsystems compared to earlier forms of presentation of a structural paradigm for an action system originated at the general action level and were then applied to that of the social system. One advantage of this reorganization is diagrammed in terms of the references placed in brackets in relation to each of the four pattern-maintenance corners. Thus, we can speak of the behavioral organism and its genetic component as the main locus of integration of action in the biosphere and, through that, in the physical environment. The corresponding category for the personality system is the meaning of problems for the individual life, that is, what biologically is the phenotype and its passage through the life course from birth to death. In connection with the social system, the meanings in the course of human history grow out of collective life that transcends the time span of the individual and are not reducible to meanings at the organic level of analysis of biological systems.

Figure A.6. Structure of the General Action System

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Finally, the cultural system is the point of articulation of human action systems with the foci of what Tillich called "ultimate concern"¹⁴ or Weber the "problems of meaning" in the primarily religions sense.¹⁵ This is a way of lending significance to the corners of the structural paradigm, that is, to the pattern-maintenance subsystems of each of the four functional subsystems. It helps to highlight the significance of the general rearrangements commented on for the social-system case in the section above, The Paradigms of the Social System. It highlights the significance of the conception of the internal environment of the action system which defines the relations between individuals as the operating units of action formulated structurally in the combined behavioral organism and the personality and, on the other hand, the milieu social formulated in terms of the combination of social and cultural systems, namely, the J and L subsystems.

This conception of the relation of individual actors to an internal environment has been used discursively throughout the analysis; it has provided a key to our conception of the cognitive complex. It is our view that the cognitive complex has to be spelled out at all four levels in the structure of the general system of action:

the cultural level in the category of knowledge as a type of cultural object;

the personality level in the category of competence;

the societal level in the category of rationality; and

the level of the behavioral organism through the overall operation of intelligence as a generalized symbolic medium.

Parallel considerations with reference to the expressive complex led us, in the introductory portion of Chapter 6, to a revision of our previous account of the relations between personality, the expressive aspects of culture, and the phenomena of symbolization at ideological levels.

In the personality subsystems we have adopted essentially a Freudian categorization of structure, although in that of the behavioral organism we do not stand far from the main traditions of behavioral psychology.

The present mode of structural diagramming highlights the significance of the two axes of the general functional paradigm discussed in Chapter 1. Our treatment of articulation of the pattern-maintenance subsystems highlights the conception of the definition of a system of action as distinguished from its environment. In particular the concepts of ultimate concern and of history define boundaries of meaning at the macro level of the action system, whereas those of the biosphere and the individual life course define them for the individual organism-personality. In addition to the conception of the internal environment, we point to a processual threshold of action which is related to the conception variously formulated as "delayed gratification," "time preference," and in other ways. The essence is the alternative of selection; in Kluckhohn's analysis of values, it is the distinction between relatively immediate interests and longer-run interests.¹⁶ The alternative of selection is related to that between unit interests and collective interests.

¹⁴ Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, t952).

¹⁵ Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization.

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Figure A.7 parallels Figure A.3; it is an attempt to categorize the six double-interchange subsystems at the level of the general system of action. Although the general format remains unchanged, the categorization has been substantially revised since the last published version.¹⁷ The revisions were largely a consequence of struggling with the analytical problems of defining the cognitive complex and the various input-output relations in which it was involved among the different subsystems at the general action level. The orienting change was to introduce the two categories of knowledge and competence in the A-L and A-G interchanges as product outputs of the behavioral organism - or "intelligence-cognitive" system - conceived as a subsystem with cognitive primacy. Much has been made of the parallel

between knowledge and competence at the general action level and goods and services as corresponding outputs of the process of economic production.

Once this identification of output categories had been worked out, three of the six interchanges fell into a pattern of order, namely, the three involving the A subsystem: A-L, A-G, and A-I. The other reordering developed from consideration of the L-I interchange. This involved the considerations that Durkheim raised about the internal environment of action and about the relation between the sense in which the acting participant in society was faced with that environment as a set of social facts¹⁸ and as a normative structure which imposed its imperative by moral authority. Our view increasingly became that the L-I interchange was the focus of this syndrome; an implication of this then was that the moral problem involved the social level and therefore that our previous views about moral involvement in the L-G interchange had to be revised. This revision was formulated in the introductory section of Chapter 6. The G-I interchange system, which has remained stable through these processes of revision, formulates the context which Freud called the "object relations" of the individual personality.¹⁹

¹⁶ Clyde Kluckhohn, "Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action: An Explanation in Definition and Classification," in Toward a General Theory of Action, ed. Talcott Parsons and Edward A. Sbus (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1951).

¹⁷ John C. McKinney and Edward A. Tiryakian, ed., Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970).

¹⁸ Durkheim, The Division of Labor.

¹⁹ Talcott Parsons, "Freud's Theory of Object Relations," in Social Structure and Personality (New York, The Free Press, 1964), chap. iv.

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Figure A.7. General Action-Level Interchanges

A few words should be said about the problem of affect, a difficult theoretical problem which has aroused controversy among members of the inner circle of action-theory people. Despite these controversies the authors of this book conclude that the conceptualization of affect as the medium anchored in the social system is correct. The reconsideration of the interchange system at the general action level has confirmed our original allocation and has clarified the grounds of its theoretical legitimacy. If the G-J interchange were considered by itself, it might he thought a toss-up in which direction the affect-performance-capacity exchanges went. The theoretical question involves the involvement of affect in the two other interchange systems: the L-T and A-I interchanges. In L-I, affect involves the institutionalization of solidarity in relation to the moral standards of a cultural order and regulates the acceptance of involvement in solidarity reinforced by sentiments of justice. The A-I interchange system underlies our analysis of the relations between the cognitive complex and affective engagement in cognitive pursuits in the setting of social community. Integration of affective concerns with the cognitive bases of the allocation of affect and loyalties is the key area in this respect.²⁰

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The media at the general action level are not entirely homologous with media at the social-system level. As J. G. Loubser has suggested, since the social system is treated as a subsystem of the general action system, certain constraints which operate at the social-system level should not be operative at the level of general action. This has proved to be a most fruitful suggestion.²¹ We first worked with it in the attempt to take advantage of the parallels between money and intelligence as well as to take cognizance of the differences between them. Money as a medium of economic exchange is in the first instance used to acquire or transfer to others property rights in commodities. In a sense these are rights of exclusive possession at various levels. Knowledge, however, as an object of interchange in the cognitive system, is not in the same sense bought and sold though it is produced and transmitted through the teaching-learning relationship. The acquisition of knowledge from others does not require the abandonment of possession by the original possessor. A teacher can transmit knowledge to his students, but he does not thereby cease to know what he was talking about. We were careful to distinguish this higher degree of freedom at the general action

level from any lifting of the constraint of scarcity with respect to intelligence as a medium. Scarcity in the intelligence case concerns the fact that problem-solving is an action process and, as such, takes time and consumes other resources. Instant problem-solving is not possible; wishing to know everything desirable to know without effort and without expenditure of resources does not produce results.

This principle of relation between the social-system level and that of general action has proved generalizable. Late in Chapter 2 we applied it to the relation between solidarity and influence on the one hand and identification and affect on the other. Solidarity is the constraint of integration at the societal level which does not operate at the level of general action. One can become identified with other persons at the general action level without undertaking the mutuality of obligation which solidarity entails. However, without that mutuality of obligation, one cannot speak of institutionalization, and such relations would, therefore, be inherently unstable.

When and if media for the other three subsystems of the general action system have been defined and analyzed, their operation will probably turn out to involve constraints of the same order relative to the general action media which have been found at the social-system level.

²⁰ The theoretical problem is not yet resolved, but it may be possible to help by shifting the definition of affect more in the normative direction and that of performance-capacity in a direction emphasizing "motivation."

²¹ It has already been made use of in Chapters 2 and 6 of this book.

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Intrasystem Exchanges and Temporal Changes of the Inflationary and Inflationary Trends,

Post-World War II, 1964 and 1968~1970 (as analyzed in Chapter 7)

The following diagrams can only be appreciated in concert with other media exchanges illustrated in the technical appendix. We focus in this section on the exchanges of intelligence as anchored in the behavioral organism. Such a focus means that the adaptive subsystem at the general action level (the behavior organism) constitutes the point of reference of the analysis; in anthropological kinship terms the point of reference is "ego."

If the ego is anchored in the organism and its medium of interchange is intelligence, ego spends intelligence not only for cultural products and factors but also for personality and social-system products and factors. The organism exchanges intelligence with these other subsectors for performance-capacities and affect, the media anchored in these other subsystems, and for the particulars they control.

In an ideally balanced era (noninflated), the organism²² expends intelligence proportionally for factors and outputs from all three subsystems: cultural, social, and personality. A cognitively inflated condition produces disproportionate expenditures. The organism exchanges intelligence in larger proportion for knowledge and for cognitive standards of validity and significance to the cultural system than for affective meaning of cognitively defined alternatives from the social system, for instance.

This picture of exchange internal to the general action level between the organism and the other three subsystems, complex as it is, does not exhaust inflationary distortions in the cognitive cultural direction. Simultaneously the cultural system invests intelligence inputs into cognitve symbolization, such as long-range knowledge production, rather than in expressive, moral, or constitutive symbolization. Since no one set of illustrations can portray the simultaneity of the qualitative exchanges and the relative quantitative changes at different times, we must simplify a complex story.

The Western tradition has experienced a mild but increasing inflationary cognitive trend: a creeping intelligence inflation for almost three hundred years. The rapid growth of higher education, the large number of participants, and the demands for knowledge production on the cultural system since World War II intensified this cognitive inflationary trend. The demands for intelligence inputs between World War II and 1964 increased the scarcity and thus raised prices for intelligence inputs into the personality and social systems. The growing need of the cultural system for intelligence was the straw that broke the camel's back. However, the events over the last decade or so began to redress the inflationary process both among systems at the general action level and internal to the cultural system by a deflationary countermovement, as we have stated in Chapters 7 and 8.

²² The relation between the "behavioral organism" as formally presented in Figure A.6 above and the functional category "cognitive" is not yet fully worked out. The concept "intellect" seems to be important, perhaps as a zone of interpenetration between organism and personality.

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Following World War II the exchange between the cultural system and the organism was only mildly inflationary. The lines between the systems indicate a normal balance of exchange between the culture and the organism.

Coincidentally, the interchanges of intelligence for affect between the organism and the social system were also relatively normal as were those between the organism and the personality. That is, the balance of exchange was at about the same intensity (see this appendix, Figure A.7, the A-I and A-G interchanges at the general action level)

By 1964, and despite the countermovement, inflation of cognitive culture had proceeded quite far, as is illustrated by the double black lines in Figure A.9 between the cultural system and the organism, suggesting the inflated character of the exchange.

Of major importance here are the exchanges between the social system and organism and between the personality and organism. In the latter exchange, for example, for large segments of the personality population, the personality was investing in a narrow range of goals ("intelligent allocation of competence among goals," in Figure A.7, G-A interchange) over a long period of time, thus delaying gratification in order to maximize particular types of competences (especially cognitive competences) . This is illustrated below. (For the total interchange, see Figure A.7, G-A interchanges at the general action level.)

Between the social system and the organism, "rational ranking of claims to identification" and "rational grounds for allocation of affect" expenditures of intelligence were being sacrificed as were affective returns from the social system. (For diagramatic portrayal of the A-I interchange, see Figure A.7.)

By 1968-1970 the deflationary trend had become evident. The culture-organism interchange had either returned to the post-World War II level or had been even more deflated. (The post-World War II level of intelligence expenditure is being used as the standard by which to gauge monetary inflation.) The deflated situation is represented by the broken lines.

Figure A.8. Post-World War II

Figure A.9. 1964

Note: The four double black lines are meant to indicate a feature of an inflationary state of the system where orderly directionality of the movement of interchange components has broken down.

The demand for intelligence expenditure was shifted to those of community (I) and personality (G) as sources. Simultaneously, many of those attacking the culture were suggesting that intelligence inputs be shifted to noncognitive symbolizations.

Figure A.12, the equivalent at the general action level of A.4 at the social-system level, has had to be revised in two respects from the version presented in the McKinney and Tiryakian article.²⁸ In the first place, the two right-hand columns have been revised in the light of the revisions in Figure A.7; they do not require further comment because the principles on which the categories have been placed in the various boxes are exactly the same as were used in Figure A.4, and all of them will be found in the appropriate places in Figure A.7.

In the two left-hand columns, which deal with the code level, a further revision has taken place. As has been noted earlier, the term "code" is not meant in the technical sense in which that term is used in the expression "the genetic code." It follows the usage of Roman Jacobson and Morris Halle and other linguistic scientists in using "code" as distinguished from "message."²⁴ Code is a categorical framework at levels of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax which provides the frame of reference for the formulation of particular messages. As such, a code communicates nothing.

²³ McKinney and Tiryakian, Theoretical Sociology.

²⁴ Roman Jacobson and Morris Halle, Fundamentals of Language (The Hague, Mouton, 1956).

²⁵ McKinney and Tiryakian, Theoretical Sociology.

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Figure A.10. The 1968-69 Turning Point

The problem which has to be faced was where to place subcategories of rationality, including cognitive rationality. In the earlier McKinney-Tiryakian version, subcategories of rationality had been placed in the L column.²⁵ This seems to have been erroneous. They should, we now think, be regarded as value standards, and value standards at the general action level should be regarded as equivalent to coordinative standards at the level of the social system. Therefore, they should be placed in the integrative column. On this basis, it seems plausible to introduce Weber's two categories of Zweckrationalitit and Wertrationalitat.²⁶ The term rationality could also have been used in the integrative cell, but something like harmonization seemed mor (sic) appropriate. However, harmonization comes close to a synonym of integration. Its focus lies in the social system as part of general action; it has integrative functions for the general action system and not only internally to itself. This column, in the A cell, was the appropriate place to put the category, cognitive rationality.

The pattern-maintenance column, then, essentially takes up the category of meaning and attempts to subdivide it according to the four functional references of the action system. Appropriately, the category of cognitive validity and significance, so important to us throughout the book, falls neatly into the classification of meaning types in the A cell. A category of meaning is not only one of mode of orientation but it has normative significance. We would like to relate this placing to the problem of objectivity and the relation of cognitive objectivity to values in the last section of Chapter 2.

Unresolved Problem Areas

The formalized materials reviewed in this appendix and diagrammatically presented in Figures A.1 through A.8 are incomplete compared with what a complete paradigmatic formalization of the action system would require. Several gaps need to be filled in order to approach a higher level of completeness. One gap is that the level of formalization presented here is worked out only for two out of the five action systems which figure prominently in our analysis, namely, the general system of action and the social system. For the other three, the cultural system, the personality system, and the behavioral organism, the structural paradigm has not been carried beyond the first level of breakdown, that is, into four subsystems. This should be attempted at the next level down, that is, into a sixteen-cell structural table. The difficulties which have been encountered, however, in carrying the structural analysis as far as we have, even for two systems of action, warn us that this task should not be undertaken lightly, but will require much hard analytical work.

²⁶ Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, chap. i, sec. 2, pp. 115-118.

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Figure A.11. 1968-1970

This is still more the case for the dynamic aspect of the paradigm. Ideally, there should be complete identification of symbolic media and characterization of interchange sets for each of these other three subsystems of the general action system. The amount of work that went into the revision of the version of the interchange paradigm for the general action system between the form presented in the McKinney-Tiryakian volume²⁷ and that presented in the present version is another index of the magnitude of the task. This revision would have to be worked out for three analytically distinct systems in such a way as to link adequately with the state of knowledge in three not closely integrated fields, namely, a boundary zone of anthropology and of culturally oriented disciplines, of the psychology of personality, and, finally, of certain aspects of psychology and human biology. The three resulting paradigms must then be related with each other and with the two already worked out, especially that of general action. This is a formidable task; a level of formalization comparable to the one presented here for two subsystems could not be accomplished without a great deal of work.

A second problem area still imperfectly worked out concerns the setting of action in its environment. The relation to the physical environment, for example, in ecological fields, involves the relations of action to the biosphere. We have stressed the continuity of the characteristics of living systems throughout organic and sociocultural evolution. An assertion of such continuity is somewhat less programmatic today than it used to be because some important connections can now be established. Nevertheless, this is still an incomplete field. The progress of the theory of action depends on the adequacy with which these articulations can be worked out with aspects of the organization of subsymbolic behavior and on the relation of the behavioral reference to both genetic and physiological references in organic biology. The present book has not been concerned with these problems except peripherally, but the theoretical framework with which it operates articulates with these problem areas. The articulation which we anticipate should be achieved in a nonreductionist way. The key to an understanding of the future of the university cannot be located in the neurophysiology of the human central nervous system without reference to psychological, sociological, and cultural considerations.

²⁷ McKinney and Tiryakian, Theoretical Sociology.

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Figure A.12. General Action Media as Sanctions

At the other end of the scale of evolutionary emergence lies the problem of adequate theoretical analysis of the boundary problems of action in the direction of what in Figure A .6 is called the area of "ultimate concern." Such scholars as Robert Bellah, with conceptions like symbolic realism,²⁸ are performing work that promises clarification in these areas relative to the older philosophical traditions of Western society. However, this clarification will also prove to be a complicated task; codifiable results will probably not be forthcoming for a considerable period.

²⁸ Robert N. Bellah, "Religion and Social Science," in The Culture of Unbelief, ed. R. Caporale and A. Grumelli (Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 1971), chap. xiv.

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A similar set of problems arises from the attempt to diagram the relationships we are dealing with on two dimensions only. These problems involve the fact that cybernetic hierarchy is not a simple system of absolute domination of the higher-order elements over the lower but of certain kinds of control intricately interwoven with bases of autonomy of the cybernetically lower-order components and subsystems. We illustrated this with institutionalized individualism, a concept prominent in this book. The cybernetic control-condition distinction relates to the information-energy distinction; its further refinement and clarification will be necessary. The cybernetic-control distinction relates also to the system of cultural meanings and the code framework within which meanings are organized and to the genetic component in the determination of the characteristics of species and individual organisms at the organic level. Genetic patterning is fundamentally related to cultural patterning, which in turn is fundamentally related to the cybernetic idea. Still, much remains to be done in this area.

Finally, this problem area is related to our concern with the process of institutionalization, that is, to the way in which the cultural components of the cognitive complex are organized as integral parts of going social systems and become relatively stabilized. Further clarification in this area will help in resolving problems of the modes of integration of action systems and, relative to general action, of social systems. One consideration is the sense in which a society like that of the contemporary United States can or cannot be characterized as having a common value-system. In the sense that we discussed it in Chapter 2, it can. However, such a society is not characterized by fiat uniformity of shared values; variability is of substantial significance. This significance is connected with our views about the pluralistic structure of the society. Pluralism in turn relates to the problems of cybernetic control and of the ranges of autonomy relative to it as well as to the forces making for structural change at several different levels ²⁵

The above is not an exhaustive catalogue of areas in which the paradigm of the theory of action is incomplete. We are aware of this incompleteness and indeed of other inadequacies, as, for example, possible bias. However, improvement of the state of knowledge in this, as in other areas, depends on adequate communication among the groups with the interest and competence to deal seriously with such problems. Therefore, incomplete as our theory is, we are laying our conceptual cards on the table in order to promote further thought and work.

²⁹ See Robin Williams, "Change and Stability in Values and Value Systems," in Stability and Social Change, ed. Bernard Barber and Alex Jakeles (Boston, Mass., Little, Brown and Co., 1971), pp. 123-159. Also, Edward A. Shils, "Centre and Periphery," in The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi (London,

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), pp.117-131.

last edited 11/2/01