@Parsons1970

(1970) - Talcott Parsons

Journal: Sociological Inquiry
Link:: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-682X.1970.tb01002.x
DOI:: 10.1111/j.1475-682X.1970.tb01002.x
Links::
Tags:: #paper #SocialHistory #SocialClass #Stratification
Cite Key:: [@Parsons1970]

Abstract

This paper attempts both to “bring up to date” the author’s conception of social stratification as set forth in two previous general papers written in 1940 and 19S3, and to broaden the field of consideration by giving special attention to the forces pressing toward equality in various respects, as well as the bases of inequality. The position taken is that the erosion of the legitimacy of the traditional bases of inequality has brought to a new level of prominence vulue-commitment to an essential equality of status of all members of modern societal communities. Inequalities. among units of societal structure which are essential in such fields as economic productivity, authority and power, and culturally bused competence, must be justified in terms of their contribution to societal functioning. The balancing of the respects in which all members of the societal community and many of its collective subunits must be held to be equal with the imperatives of inequality constitutes one of the primary foci of the problem of integration in modern society. A few suggestions about the mechanisms by which this integrative process can operate are presented.

Notes

Extracted Annotations (14/03/2022, 02:54:40)

"The position taken is that the erosion of the legitimacy of the traditional bases of inequality has brought to a new level of prominence vulue-commitment to an essential equality of status of all members of modern societal communities." (Parsons 1970:13)

"If my interpretation is correct, the concept of "elitism" in the modern, especially American, setting, refers primarily to what has been called the "achievement" complex-which as a focus of inequality has tended to replace aristocracy and other ascriptive bases during the last few generations." (Parsons 1970:14)

"Daniel Bell's statement that only in the last generation or so has the United States become a "national" society (cf. Bell, 1968: 19). One of the striking phenomena has been the immense increase in geographical mobility, not only for more or less permanent residence, but also, facilitated by ease, speed and relative cheapness of travel, for more temporary purposes, both recreational and occupational as well as others." (Parsons 1970:15)

"Added to this is the new technology of communication, both person-to-person varieties, and the mass media, which are directed to nonspecific "audiences."" (Parsons 1970:15)

"I As have argued elsewhere, the two most critical "factors of solidarity," corresponding to labor and capital as factors of production, are firm policy decisions of organized collectivities, private as well as governmental, and the commitments of units of the society to "valued association," which means to the socially organized collective frameworks within which the implementation of more general value-commitments can be carried out" (Parsons 1970:15)

"This complicated matter of territorial concentration of functions is of course dynamically related to that which has ordinarily been called the context of "class."" (Parsons 1970:17)

"class in this sense represents a transitional phase in the development of the stratification systems which have become prominent in modern societies since the industrial revolution. The historically important pattern immediately preceding was that which divided a territorial population into two basic groups, the aristocracy and the "common people."" (Parsons 1970:17)

"The essential break in this arrangement had its roots in the fact that, since the Middle Ages, the urban sector of European society was characterized by a third group later called "bourgeois."" (Parsons 1970:17)

"On the one hand, the newly dominant class had a position grounded in ownership of the newly important means of production; and, on the other, while it could be argued that the landed base of aristocratic predominance was rooted in the political power of government, of which aristocracies were an adjunct, government now came to be conceived to be dependent on the organization of the economy: became it the "executive committee of the bourgeoisie." Despite these shifts, however, two factors carried over. The first was the conception that "in the last analysis" the stratification system must be conceived as a two-level affair, and the second that "membership" in each of the two classes was basically determined by status of birth, as in the case of aristocracy." (Parsons 1970:17)

"The "ascription" of superior status to ownership of property has largely broken down in favor of a highly diversified occupational structure which no longer displays a clear division between the "controllers" and the subordinate class. This occupational structure is characterized by a fine gradation of prestige statuses with respect to which authority-power relations have come to be differentiated as one among several rationales of status-differentiation." (Parsons 1970:18)

"especially perhaps through education, a far looser connection between adult position in the occupational world and status by birth than was assumed by the Marxian analysis" (Parsons 1970:18)

"The inequalities constituting a stratification system have previously tended to occupy the center of attention, with institutionalization of equalities regarded as manifestations of a need to curb excesses of inequality." (Parsons 1970:19)

"tendency is to emphasize the respects in which societal units, but especially persons, are and should be treated as equals, and to place the burden of proof not only on the explanation, but above all the justification of components of inequality." (Parsons 1970:19)

"Claims to equality of status, that is, must also be legitimized, and sometimes the problem of grounding such claims becomes complicated and subtle." (Parsons 1970:19)

"The status of a child is less problematical in that neither his role nor his personality can, in the early years, have differentiated sufficiently to enable him to occupy other than primarily an ascribed status or to stand in functionally diffuse relations, by any standard, to his parents and siblings." (Parsons 1970:20)

Actually quite important theoretical argument for using parental social class and prestige etc (note on p.20)

"At the same time, for the partners, it is diffuse in the sense that, whatever other involvements the partners may have, e.g., in occupation, community affairs, etc., they are thrown back on each other in contexts both of daily living and of more ultimate personal security" (Parsons 1970:20)

"Indeed the "better" the school or college, the more it may contribute to the Matthew effect, in that it may not only confer immediate "prestige" but also help train capacities and open opportunities which, if competently used, will improve the chances for achieving higher status than would otherwise be possible" (Parsons 1970:22)

"In recent, non-Marxian discussions of class, the specific reference to the ownership of the means of production has virtually disappeared; concern with the distribution of wealth and of power, as well as with kinship, however, has remained" (Parsons 1970:22)

"On the "property" side, we can clearly no longer speak of a "capitalistic" propertied class which has replaced the earlier "feudal" landed class. The changes are principally of two types. One concerns the immense extent to which household income has come from occupational rather than property sources, extending upward in status terms from the proletarian wage worker to the very top of the occupational scale." (Parsons 1970:23)

"The second type of change is the relative dissociation of rights to property income from effective control of the means of production. Thus most of the recipients of corporate dividends have no more control of the enterprises in which they invest than do customers over those from which they buy." (Parsons 1970:23)

"The Marxian synthesis essentially asserted the of class codetermination status by economic political factors-ownership of economic facilities and giving control, in a political sense, of the firm as an organization. This in turn was conceived to be synthesized with the kinship system in its lineage aspect. The process of differentiation in modern society has, however, broken down this double synthesis, insofar as it existed at all, in classical nineteenth-century "capitalism." In consequence, not only has the mobility of economic and political resources been greatly enhanced, but the door has been opened to the involvement of factors other than the classical three of kinship solidarity, proprietorship, and political power in private organizations." (Parsons 1970:23)

"Occupation rather than property having become the primary focus of household status, both through the prestige value of occupational positions and functions themselves and through the income and style of life they ground, there is neither a simple dichotomy nor a single neat hierarchical continuum in the status system-and least of all is there such a continuum hinging on ownership as distinguished from employed status" (Parsons 1970:24)

"Diffuse solidarities, in this sense, constitute the structure of modern "communities." It is important to our general argument to be clear that there is no one community in a sociologically relevant sense but that a modern society is a very complex composite of differentiated and articulatingsometimes conflicting-units of c ommunity" (Parsons 1970:25)

"Rokkan (1960) in particular has shown how fundamental and universal, within at least the "liberal" world, has been the institutionalization of equalities in this aspect of government." (Parsons 1970:27)

"It has, however, also given rise to a new basis of the legitimation of inequality, namely in the authority and power of incumbents of elective office relative to that of the larger numbers on whose electoral decisions this grant of power rests. As noted, this new legitimation of inequality of power extends to the sphere of private associations. At the same time, it is not unrelated to the legitimation of authority in the more bureaucratic aspects of modern formal organization. The most obvious case is that of governmental executive organization where the authority of elective office legitimizes appointive powers. In modern governments this, of course, becomes a very extensive phenomenon indeed" (Parsons 1970:27)