SOCY 226 - PARSONS

AGIL Framework

Society meets four functional needs of adaptation, goal attainment, integration, latency

Adaptation (Distribution)

Securing and organizing resources

Goal Attainment (Ends)

Defining and pursuing collective goals

Integration (Cohesion)

Coordinating roles and managing conflicts

Latency/Pattern Maintenance (Norms)

Maintaining norms, values, and cultural patterns

Social Roles

Structure expectations and guide behaviour, show how institutions integrate individual experiences into broader social order

Sick Role

Patients are exempt from duties but must seek help from a practitioner

Practitioner Role

Authorized expert responsible for diagnosis and care

Instrumental Reason

Way of thinking that treats everything, including human beings, as a means to an end

Calculate, manipulate things for some kind of external goal

Rationality turned into a tool for domination and efficiency

Commodification

When we buy and sell objects, start to treat the objects as though they create meaning on their own, social relations appear as relations between things

Distorting of social reality, make power appear natural, hide labour behind value

Reification

Lukács, everything takes on the qualities of a commodity

Commodity becomes the “universal category” of social life

Experience ourselves as measurable and comparable

Standardization

Cultural products follow fixed formulas; same plots, rhythms, emotions

Freedom to choose what is always the same

Loss of Aura

Art loses authenticity, ritual, and singularity, originality and sacred presence fades

True Needs

Creativity, love, imagination, autonomy

Lead to liberation, arise from human potential

False Needs (Marcuse)

The need to upgrade, to stay “productive”, to buy the newest version of the same thing

Implanted by the system

Dunn on Consumption and Selfhood

Consumption becomes a language of identity, individuals express and negotiate meaning with capitalism

Culture Industry

Adorno and Horkheimer

Culture becomes industrialized, pleasure and entertainment reproduce conformity

Commodity Fetishism

Process where commodities are given importance, obscuring relations behind them

Distorts reality, shapes hierarchies and identities

Norms

Shared expectations guiding behaviour within social group, essential to social roles, guide behaviour to sustain order

Socialization

Process whereby individuals learn and internalize norms and roles of society

Emphasizes institutional role in preparing people for society through socialization

Functions of Deviance

Reaffirms norms; reminds us what’s acceptable

Defines boundaries; clarifies who belongs + under what conditions

Activates repair; mobilizes institutions to restore stability

Reintegrates actors; brings individuals back into normal functioning