“Give conceptual meaning of social system. What is cognitive consonance between ‘pattern variables’ and ‘paradigm’?” (2011)
Talcott Parsons built two conceptual tools in close succession: the pattern variables (1951), which classify the choices actors make, and the four-function (AGIL) paradigm (1953), which classifies the problems every system must solve. The question asks how he made the two fit together logically.
Conceptual meaning of social system
In The Social System (1951), Parsons defined it as a plurality of individual actors interacting in a situation with a physical or environmental aspect. These actors are motivated towards the “optimisation of gratification”, and their relations are mediated by a system of culturally structured and shared symbols. Its key features are:
- Unit: the status-role, not the concrete person. One individual takes part in many systems through different roles.
- Interpenetration: culture enters the system through institutionalisation, and personality is linked to it through internalisation.
- Boundary and equilibrium: the system stays distinct from its environment and tends to restore complementary role expectations when they are disturbed.
- Analytical, not concrete: a family, a firm or a nation can each be treated as a social system.
Pattern variables meet the paradigm
In Working Papers in the Theory of Action (1953), written with Robert F. Bales and Edward Shils, Parsons turned the four phases Bales had found in small groups into a paradigm of four functional problems. These are defined by two axes: external/internal and instrumental/consummatory. He then reorganised the pattern variables to match those axes:
- two attitudinal variables (affectivity/neutrality, specificity/diffuseness) describe how the actor orients to objects;
- two object-categorisation variables (universalism/particularism, performance/quality) describe how objects are classified;
- self/collectivity was set apart, treated as bearing on the system’s relation to its members rather than as one of the matrix variables.
The “consonance” is that each function corresponds to one distinctive combination of the remaining four variables:
| Function | Axes | Pattern-variable combination | Typical role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adaptation | External, instrumental | Universalism, performance, specificity, neutrality | Engineer, market trader |
| Goal attainment | External, consummatory | Particularism, performance, specificity, affectivity | Leader mobilising for a collective goal |
| Integration | Internal, consummatory | Particularism, quality, diffuseness, affectivity | Community or kin member |
| Latency | Internal, instrumental | Universalism, quality, diffuseness, neutrality | Teacher, priest |
The fit is systematic. Specificity and performance mark the external functions, while diffuseness and quality mark the internal ones. Neutrality and universalism go with instrumental activity, and affectivity and particularism with consummatory activity. Parsons defended this alignment in “Pattern Variables Revisited” (1960), a reply to Robert Dubin.
Why it matters
- It links action and system. The value choices of actors (structure) now line up with the needs of the system (function), so a sub-system can be identified by the orientations it institutionalises.
- It allows comparison. An Indian district administration dealing with disaster relief needs adaptive and goal-attaining orientations, while a panchayat mediating a land feud relies on integrative ones.
Limits
Critics saw the match as achieved by definition rather than discovered through research. The neat symmetry reflects C. Wright Mills’ charge of “grand theory”, and real roles mix all combinations.
Conclusion
A social system is a network of institutionalised roles. The consonance between pattern variables and the AGIL paradigm is Parsons’ late attempt to show that the choices built into those roles are precisely the ones each functional problem requires. It is elegant as theory, though empirically thin.