Parsons, Talcott (1902–1979)

Talcott Parsons was the preeminent sociological theorist of his generation. He developed a “general theory of action” that still serves as a comprehensive framework for understanding human social relationships and behavior. First adumbrated in articles published in the late 1920s, the theory was elaborated to a high level of analytic complexity in books and essays published over the next 50 years. Several works, including The Structure of Social Action (1937), The Social System (1951), Economy and Society (by Neil J. Smelser, 1956), and essays collected in Politics and Social Structure (1969) remain landmarks in the history of sociology. Parsons was interested in the relations between sociology and other social sciences, including economics, political science, psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology, and he contributed basic ideas to each of these disciplines. At Harvard University, where he served on the faculty from 1927, he became in 1947 the founding chair of the Department of Social Relations, an international center of interdisciplinary teaching and research in sociology, clinical and social psychology, and social anthropology until it split up in 1968.