Parsons Four Systems Summary

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2. Parsons’s was concerned with four systems: Social system, cultural system, personality system, and behavioral organism. What is the function of each system?
The first of Parsons’s systems is the social system; this system looks at different groups; however, the most important of these is society. According to Parsons, there are four structures in a society, and each one has a different function in which they perform. The first of these structures is the economy, its function in society is to adapt to the environment by means of labor, production, and allocation. Therefore, these actions of work allow for the economy to adapt to the environment in regards to a society’s needs, and in turn it also helps the society to adapt to external
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This system is controlled by both the cultural and social system because it is result of socialization, and it more dependent on cultural and social aspects of a society. According to Parsons, “the personality is defined as the organized system of orientation and motivation of action of the individual actor” (Ritzer & Siepnisky, 2011, p. 249). The basic portion of the personality system is “need dispositions,” or “significant units of motivation of actions that are drives that are shaped by social setting” (Ritzer & Siepnisky, 2011, p. 249). Therefore, need dispositions allow for an individual to accept, reject, or seek our new objects in an environment if these dispositions are not met. According to Parsons there are three types of need dispositions: those that have individuals seek emotions from social relationships, internalize values and observe cultural standards and role expectations. However, the idea of need dispositions leaves out a lot of important parts of personality because he mainly linked the personality with the social system through how they fit in a society and their role expectations. In doing so he limited his perception with the personality …show more content…
“Merton defines culture as “that organized set of normative values governing behavior which is common to members of a designed society or group” and social structure as “that organized set of social relationships in which members of the society or group are variously implicated” (Ritzer & Siepnisky, 2011, p. 258). Anomie happens in a society when there is a disconnection with cultural norms and goals and the actions of members in that society. This means that some people in a society are not able to comply with normal social values depending on their position in that society. These reasonings can be linked to several factors including: successfulness, socioeconomical classes, education, material success, etc. Each of these factors gives a reasoning as to why anomie exists and why people lend toward deviant behavior that is either an unusual, unacceptable, or even illegal activity that is used to achieve some sort of economic success. An example the textbook illustrates is with drug dealing since it is used to achieve economic success but “creates disjunction between cultural values and social-structural means of attaining those values” (Ritzer & Siepnisky, 2011, p. 258). Merton ties anomie to deviant behavior, which suggests his argument that “disjunctions between culture and structure have the dysfunctional consequence of leading to

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