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Social Theory, Social Research, and a Theory of Action
Abstract
After an extraordinarily promising beginning in 1937 with The Structure of Social Action, Talcott Parsons abandoned his attempt to ground social theory in a theory of purposive action. The functionalism that resulted moved in one direction, while social research has progressively moved in an individual-behavioristic direction, resulting in an ever-widening divergence between research and theory. This paper describes paths in research and in theory development, that will reconstitute relevance of each for the other. The essential elements are two. The first is use of a theory of purposive action as a foundation for social theory; this entails acceptance of a form of methodological individualism and rejection of holism. The second is a focus in social research and theory on the movement from the level of individual actions to macrosocial functioning, that is, the level of system behavior.
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Citations
Cites
Becker, G. S. (1991) · doi:10.4159/9780674020665 · Cited by 10,565
Cited by
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/231294 · Cited by 6,165
Information Technology and Organizational Change: Causal Structure in Theory and Research
Markus, M. L., & Robey, D. (1988) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.34.5.583 · Cited by 2,108
Using Paradox to Build Management and Organization Theories
Poole, M. S., & van de Ven, A. H. (1989) · The Academy of Management Review · doi:10.5465/amr.1989.4308389 · Cited by 1,905
Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking
Lyng, S. (1990) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/229379 · Cited by 1,238
Beyond rational choice: The social dynamics of how people seek help
Pescosolido, B. A. (1992) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/229863 · Cited by 1,017
Metadata
- Authors
- Coleman, J. S.
- Venue
- American Journal of Sociology
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1986-05
- Volume
- 91
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1309-1335
- ISSN
- 0002-9602 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5390
- OpenAlex
- W2136843866
- Cited by
- 1,573
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 111.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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