Sie sind auf Seite 1von 21

Journal ofhttp://jcs.sagepub.

com/
Classical Sociology

'A single societal community with full citizenship for all': Talcott Parsons,
citizenship and modern society
Giuseppe Sciortino
Journal of Classical Sociology 2010 10: 239
DOI: 10.1177/1468795X10371715
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://jcs.sagepub.com/content/10/3/239

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Journal of Classical Sociology can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://jcs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://jcs.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://jcs.sagepub.com/content/10/3/239.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Aug 9, 2010


What is This?

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

Article

A single societal community


with full citizenship for all:
Talcott Parsons, citizenship
and modern society

Journal of Classical Sociology


10(3) 239258
The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1468795X10371715
http://jcs.sagepub.com

Giuseppe Sciortino
Universit di Trento, Italy

Abstract
The main claim of this paper is to show that any canon of citizenship studies should include Talcott
Parsons. Contrary to the received views,Talcott Parsons provides an innovative view of citizenship
as a key sociological structure, rooted in his theory of modern society. In doing so, he anticipates
contemporary debates on the topic by highlighting the relationship between citizenship and
cultural pluralism in modern Western societies.The paper provides both an interpretative account
of Parsons analysis of citizenship and an assessment of its contemporary relevance.

Keywords
citizenship, differentiation, ethnicity, inclusion, Parsons, pluralism, race

As with any new and rapidly expanding academic field, citizenship studies has an uneasy
relationship with its potential founding classics. From one side, there is some pressure to
define the field as being concerned with a set of recent events requiring answers that go
beyond existing frameworks and intellectual traditions (Ong, 2006). This is not surprising, since the field is vibrant and new, and both publishers and students want to hear that
contemporary social life requires an entirely new understanding of citizenship, inclusion
and recognition. They wish to claim that previously established conceptual frameworks
have melted into thin air.
From the other side, there is the need for a canon, as fluid and contested as it may be. A
set of common references is helpful in multiple dimensions of scholarship in regulating
debates, condensing communication, providing resources for teaching and thinking,
increasing reciprocal understanding and clarifying conceptual cleavages. In disciplines that
are fragmented, some argue, a set of classics is the functional equivalent to a hegemonic
Corresponding author:
Giuseppe Sciortino, Dipartimento di Sociologia e ricerca sociale, Universit di Trento,Via Verdi 26, 38122
Trento, Italy
Email: giuseppe.sciortino@unitn.it

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

240

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

single conceptual paradigm (Alexander, 1987; Poggi, 1996). As citizenship studies is a


recent, multidisciplinary and multi-paradigmatic field (Isin and Turner, 2002), it will likely
develop along this classical track.
The main claim of this paper is to show that any canon of citizenship studies should
include Talcott Parsons. The notion of citizenship plays a crucial role in Parsons analysis
of contemporary Western society. In broad terms, Parsons account of modernity is systematically rooted in evolving structures of solidarity and thus it continually touches
upon issues of membership and inclusion. Building and expanding on T.H. Marshalls
(1950) work, Parsons presents citizenship as a key sociological structure. He sees citizenship as linked to a primary feature of social integration the self-reinforcing relationship between generalized membership and social pluralism. In doing so, he anticipates
contemporary debates on the topic by highlighting the relationship between citizenship
and cultural pluralism in modern Western societies. He also provides an analysis of citizenship as an evolutionary achievement, claiming that the structural differentiation of
modern societies produces a set of tensions that may be managed successfully only
through the development of a generalized inclusion in a common polity. Finally, this
grounded liberalism defines the existence of any ascriptive, second-class status within
the citizenship complex as a significant obstacle and an effective threat to the integration
of Western societies. Indeed, in many ways that resonate with the contemporary context,
Parsons delves into the complexities of citizenship from within and the issue of secondclass citizenship.
Taken together, these claims provide the basic outline of Parsons analysis of citizenship. They also demonstrate the enduring significance of his work, in both empirical and
theoretical terms, for contemporary citizenship studies. The main strength of Parsons
corpus is its capacity to differentiate his interpretation of citizenship both from the
empirical implausibility of much normative theorizing in political philosophy and
from the nostalgic temptations of critical theory. To argue for the enduring centrality of
Parsons analysis implies neither a claim nor a desire for empirical correctness or theoretical superiority. The point is not that Parsons was always adequate in his analyses or
that his approach is the right one. Some of the progressive premises he took for granted
in the climate of the 1960s and 1970s have turned out to be spurious or short-lived. His
analysis underplays key factors in the historical expansion of social citizenship, such as
the exigencies of warfare. And his strong evolutionary approach often blinded him, along
with most liberal intellectuals of the period, to the possibility that rights not only expand
but also contract, that inclusive and exclusive tendencies may alternate or even coexist,
and that processes of socio-economic change may operate both ways. To claim an enduring significance for Parsons work does not signify hero worship or an attempt to show
that in the last instance he was right. What makes Parsons a classic for citizenship
studies is simply that both his achievements and his shortcomings are highly instructive
and fertile for contemporary research.

Social Membership as a Key Structure of Sociological Interest


Albeit a self-proclaimed incurable theorist, Talcott Parsons has contributed to virtually
every field of empirical inquiry. A cursory glance at his bibliography reveals essays and

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

241

Sciortino

empirical research on a large variety of sociological topics ranging from family life to
health, political phenomena to religion and ethnicity to sexuality. Although some of these
are regarded as among his best contributions to sociological knowledge (Levine, 1989),
the systematic nature of his empirical interests and their embedding in his theoretical
project remain largely unappreciated (Lidz, 1986).
Issues of membership and inclusion are a common thread throughout Parsons analyses of Western society from his early concerns with anti-Semitism and free-floating
aggression (Parsons, 1942a, 1942b, 1945, 1946, 1955) to his evolutionary work in the
1960s (Parsons, 1964b, 1966a, 1971c) up to his final attempt to provide an adequate
description of the integrative structures of American society (Parsons, 2007). What connects Parsons empirical and theoretical work is a sustained attempt to go beyond politicaleconomy approaches that are centred (and caged) in the duality of state and market in
order to provide an account of social life that not only avoids treating cultural identities
and social solidarities as residual categories but also integrates them systematically
within a sociological framework. No doubt most of his theses may be contested and
heavily criticized (Alexander, 2005). But the ways in which Parsons posed the problems
related to societal membership and the conceptual frameworks he provided for thinking
about them are nevertheless an unsurpassed sociological resource (Sciortino, 2005).
How does Parsons broader theoretical framework connect to his specific analyses of
citizenship and inclusion? There is no room here to provide even a cursory introduction
to action theory, one of the most complex, and sometimes esoteric, monuments of modern
social science.1 For an analysis of Parsons works on citizenship, however, a good starting point is the fact that for most of his career he was preoccupied with two major questions. Analytically, he sought to construct the possibility of a voluntaristic social order,
accounting for the social coordination of actors in terms different from the assumptions
of a zero-sum game. Empirically, he worked toward the development of an account of
social change and modernity that was able to explain the highly unlikely social processes
that have brought about the breakdown of ascription as the main component in regulating
social interaction. Parsons saw modern society mostly in terms of the differentiation,
albeit uneven and incomplete, of a sphere of pluralistic social relationships, held together
not only by domination and exchange, but also by cross-cutting ties of sociability, identification, solidarity and persuasion. It is not surprising that a lifelong exploration of
these problems made him deeply sensitive to issues of citizenship, as a political institution and as one component of the system of individual memberships. Citizenship is
indeed a key concept in most of his writings on Western society, particularly those concerning the United States (Lechner, 1998; Lidz, 2009; Turner, 1993).
Parsons understanding of social membership is strictly linked with a key, although
often underestimated, feature of action theory its break with classical social theory
about the forms of sociological theory. His work represents a conscious effort to move
sociological analysis beyond the search for social wholes, the construction of epochal
dichotomies and the attempt to identify first movers for all societal processes. His action
theory substitutes last-instance explanations rooted in the structure/superstructure
assumption with the analysis of interdependencies among analytically irreducible elements. It substitutes total or ideal types with a nested level of analysis; it substitutes
reductionism with multidimensional analysis. From the double contingency of interaction

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

242

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

to the pattern variables, from the AGIL scheme to the generalized media of interchange,
Parsons efforts do not reduce a plurality of epiphenomena to a single criterion of order
but rather develop an inquiry into the modalities of coordination among differences
(Bourricaud, 1977).
This feature of action theory is particularly evident in Parsons analysis of social
integration. He defines social integration in a way quite distinct both from the political
tradition centred on consensus and from the evolutionist thrust of the Durkheimian
distinction between mechanical solidarity based on uniformity and group identification
and organic solidarity based on functional interdependence and individual diversity.
Contrary to Durkheim, and implicitly to a variety of classical theorists from Spencer to
Tnnies, Parsons analysis takes for granted that both mechanical and organic dimensions exist in any social system, regardless of its level of complexity (Parsons, 1960). He
sees mechanical and organic solidarity not as two societal forms of integration, but
rather as two dimensions analytically differentiable that define two axes of integration within any social system. Mechanical solidarity defines the coordination among the
units of the system as equally included, while organic solidarity defines the coordination
among the units in reference to their differentiation. Both axes are constitutive of the
integration of any social systems. Thus, in a very important sense, simple societies are
as complex as modern ones.
According to Parsons, social evolution should be interpreted in terms of structural
differentiation between these forms of solidarity, not as an account of the substitution of
one for the other (Parsons, 1971c). From the beginning, Parsons stressed that in Western
society, mechanical solidarity is rooted in the institutions of citizenship, which applies
equally to all individuals, while organic solidarity is typified most clearly in the institution of the social contract, which formalizes cooperation and exchange among differentiated interests and roles. Mechanical solidarity refers to diffuse networks of solidarity and
categories of belonging, where membership is contingent upon what the actor is assumed
to be. By contrast, organic solidarity refers to specific or performance-related networks,
with membership contingent upon the sharing of specific interests, values, competencies
and tastes. The coexistence of pressures to homogeneous membership and to differentiated forms of participation and allocation creates an intrinsic dynamism and the potential
for a large and inevitable variety of conflicts and adaptations (Baum, 1975). In Parsons
view, an adequate theory of social integration should focus on how different forms of
social solidarity may be regulated and made compatible. The regulation of such coordination patterns, however, is complex, defined by tensions over both the allocation of
resources and rewards as well as the recognition of prestige and influence in the community (Chazel, 1974).
Parsons held that such a theory could not rely on a single factor, because the integrative outcomes of markets, hierarchies, networks and communities require an explanation
of how they are combined and regulated. Citizenship is a key form of social membership, but it is not the only one. Contrary to the assumptions of most political theory, it
is not always the most empirically important or the most normatively precious. It is
rather a main element within a system of social memberships, often competing and
sometimes conflicting with other elements. A second consequence is the acknowledgement that both mechanical and organic solidarities are comprised of a plurality of complex,

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

243

Sciortino

collective identities, with differences in the assumptions that descend from membership
in such categories and in the management of expectations attached to such memberships. In the realm of mechanical solidarity, there are strains related to the existence of
a plurality of collective identities, the differences assumed to attach to membership in
the various groups, and the complex expectations associated with each membership.
Organic solidarity must deal with the allocation of resources among competing ends, as
well as with the structural externalities produced by the different clusters of differentiated
interactions. Societal integration is consequently a second-order problem, focused on
the reciprocal interactions of such integrative mechanisms, along with their overall
impact upon the social environment.
In Parsons framework, the above dynamic applies to any social system, large or
small, lasting a few moments or enduring over centuries. During the 1960s, in his attempt
to apply his scheme to the analysis of whole societies, Parsons chose to name their integrative subsystem with a term that expresses clearly the ambition to overcome the distinction between community and society: he called it the societal community. According
to this perspective, the societal community is a collectivity displaying a patterned conception of membership which distinguishes between those individuals who do and do not
belong. Immediately after this definition, however, Parsons stressed that although the
societal community must maintain the integrity of a common cultural orientation,
broadly (though not necessarily uniformly or unanimously), shared by its membership,
as the basis of its societal identity, such a collectivity is inevitably plural and differentiated (Parsons, 1966a: 10). Some years later, his definition of the problem centred even
more explicitly on the issue of societal membership:
A societal community is a complex of collective loyalty networks and interpenetrating
collectivities, a system where units are characterized both by functional differentiation and
segmentation. The normative system that regulates such loyalties must integrate the
rights and obligations of the various collectivities as well as the legitimation basis of the
overall order.
(Parsons, 1971c: 27, italics added)

Moreover, the integration of contemporary societies is entrusted to a system of solidarities, defined explicitly as a network of crisscrossing inclusions which also has a hierarchical aspect based on the functional nature of the solidary groupings, on its inclusiveness
and on the prestige ranking, by relevant criteria, of the units and classes of them which
are involved (Parsons, 2007: 273273274). As I will discuss later, the availability of an
abstract legal order and an effective, generalized criterion for membership (what Parsons
calls citizenship) represents the basic precondition for the ability of such a complex and
stratified system of solidarity to provide integration.

Citizenship and Pluralism in Contemporary Western Societies


The implications of such a conceptual framework for Parsons view of citizenship are
far-reaching. The use of this broad theoretical lens generates a view of citizenship with
innovative connotations. A good way to highlight its novel aspects is to compare Parsons

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

244

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

theory with the classical account of citizenship previously provided by T.H. Marshall
(1950). In his writings, Parsons has nearly always, quite modestly, presented his analyses
of citizenship as merely an application of Marshalls ideas. And there is little doubt that
he regarded Marshalls work as both theoretically crucial and empirically sound.2 Parsons
subscribed to the distinction of civil, political and social components within the citizenship complex and he was deeply sympathetic to Marshalls historical reconstruction of
its evolution. In Parsons account, citizenship has evolved in a complex and conflicted
way, over the course of the process of structural differentiation between the societal
community and the government. States, in exchange for their ever-increasing, politically
uniform powers, have had to define a set of rights for citizens, the protection of which
has been increasingly acknowledged as an obligation. A second phase, building on the
social processes triggered by the first, concerns the participation in public affairs and in
particular the right of citizens to select governmental leadership. This development was
difficult and hard-won, with the combination of mass suffrage, equal value of the votes
and secrecy of the ballot becoming the crowning achievement of Western democratic
societies (Parsons, 1971b). A third and highly contested development has been the institutionalization of a public responsibility for the welfare of citizens seen not as a matter
of public charity but as the provision of realistic opportunities to participate in societal
institutions and in the societal community itself (Parsons, 1969). In developing this evolutionary sequence, Parsons follows Marshall quite closely and with all the strengths and
weaknesses of the original scheme (Birnbaum, 1997; Mann, 1987).
However, it would be a mistake to assume that those who have read Marshall may
dispense with reading Parsons. Parsons theory has significantly revised and expanded
Marshalls analysis, making it more sophisticated and taking it in new directions, which
are definitely closer to contemporary understanding of citizenship issues. In his original
canonical treatment, Marshall (1950) sees citizenship nearly exclusively in reference to
social class it is an egalitarian status that stands in tension with the structural inequalities of the social positions endlessly produced by the dynamics of capitalism. The tension
is so strong that Marshall writes of it in terms of an unending war that, thanks to
the enlargement of rights, knows only temporary truces between the combatants.
Unsurprisingly, his focus was on the traditional social-democratic vision of the welfare
state. In the same vein, the main weakness Marshall identifies in the development of
contemporary citizenship is the fact that even entitlements gained through citizenshipregulated processes may increase equality of opportunity only at the price of some
decrease in the equality of outcomes. Ethnic, religious and cultural differences are almost
completely absent in Marshalls original analysis, and only marginally acknowledged in
his later work (Marshall, 1969). Moreover, he is concerned almost exclusively with citizenship from within, as amelioration or removal of second-class statuses, and does not
pay any particular attention to the ways in which individuals may (or may not) acquire
such membership. Immigration is conspicuously absent from his framework. Of the
three markers of contemporary citizenship income taxes, pensions and passports
Marshall dealt exclusively with the first two (Turner, 2009).
Parsons does not ignore redistributive issues. He is strictly persuaded that social rights
are a primary condition for any inclusion process and, as a strong supporter of US
President Lyndon B. Johnsons war on poverty, he constantly stressed how the lack of

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

245

Sciortino

access to economic resources was an obstacle on the road to full participation in the
larger community for disadvantaged populations (Parsons, 1971c). Moreover, like Marshall,
Parsons tends to see social rights as part and parcel of the evolution of modern citizenship, largely underestimating the possibility of serious contractions in the entitlements
and provisions attached to it.3
The major difference between the accounts of citizenship provided by Marshall and
Parsons lies rather in the fact that Parsons is much more aware of the need to complement
the issue of class inequality with considerable and constitutive attention to religious,
racial and ethnic diversity. Reflecting a rich North American tradition of social inquiry
into ethnic hierarchies, Parsons acknowledges both the significance of citizenship as a
bounded criterion of membership and the empirical existence of a variety of second-class
statuses predicated upon the assumption that specific religious, ethnic or racial markers
render an individual unable to fulfil the duties and obligations of full citizenship. In fact,
Parsons very definition of society is among the first in the classical literature to deal
explicitly with issues of resident foreigners and transnational allegiances. Moreover, he
defines both the non-coincidence of territorial membership and citizenship and the existence of a variety of cross-border loyalties as normal and to be expected features of
advanced societal life (Parsons, 1971c, 2007). Not surprisingly, large waves of immigration, together with the process of industrialization and the educational revolution, are
among the major social factors he uses to account for the specific features of American
social life (Parsons, 2007: 90140).
A major consequence of Parsons broader framework lies in the way in which he analyses the existence and significance of ethnic identities and loyalties in contemporary
societies (Kivisto, 2004). In his view, modernization does not destroy ethnic and religious
diversity nor does it necessarily reduce their social significance. Rather, it implies a
change in their structural roles. When matched by a universalistic legal order and a generalized definition of citizenship, societal heterogeneity is not a danger to citizenship, but,
on the contrary, it is a factor that strengthens it. This may come as a surprise, as Parsons
is often depicted as describing social evolution primarily in terms of a rupture in the
ascriptive organization of the world (see Parsons, 1964b), which systematically stresses
the connections between structural change and the dissolution of the matrix of ascriptionbased expectations (Parsons, 1966a). To identify modernity with the breaking of ascription as a master frame for the allocation of resources and recognition does not imply sic
et simpliciter the disappearance of meaningful ascriptive categories or the absence of dedifferentiation processes (Parsons, 1975). For Parsons, ethnicity is not an archaic phenomenon nor is there any contradiction between diffuse solidarities and modern society
(Sciortino, 2005). In highly differentiated societies, modernization does not herald the
end of ascriptive categories they may still function as a widespread base for identity
construction. On the contrary, difference-based networks or associations are just one
primary example of a large genus of types of social collective organization, along with
kinship networks, religious associations, educational establishment (and the societal
community itself), which are strengthened, not weakened, by social evolution (Parsons,
1975: 387388). The process of structural differentiation is not the destroyer of the
natural ways of life, as is so often pronounced by advocates of pseudo-Gemeinshaft
(Holton and Turner, 1986). In fact, it is a process that may, when matched by the development

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

246

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

of democratic citizenship, have emancipatory consequences for both mechanical and


organic forms of solidarity.4
Parsons sees the development of modern citizenship as having an effect not only upon
the external relationships among the societal community, the market economy and the
polity, but also within the societal community itself. The introduction of (relatively) generalized criteria for membership and the notion of citizenship as shared and equal
participation in the civil sphere modifies the existing structure of the system of social
solidarities. Democratic citizenship does not destroy prior forms of collective identification, such as religion, ethnicity, region or subculture; it simply changes their structural
meaning. With the enactment of a general status of citizenship, the range of differencebased affiliations and attributions compatible with a common membership increases
enormously and, Parsons argues, contributes to stabilize the very existence of a common
public space and to increase the variety of channels for social participation. Eventually,
the effects of differentiation on previous solidarities and identities are such that a structural pressure originates for an increasing generalization of the cultural definition of
societal membership. A main trend of contemporary society, according to Parsons (2007),
is precisely the de-coupling of societal membership from neatly defined expectations of
cultural uniformity.5 Contrary to most scholarly perspectives and much textbook lore, in
his analysis of contemporary citizenship Parsons is first and above all a Meistersinger of
contemporary social pluralism, offering an account of this feature of contemporary society that contrasts sharply with both the nostalgic vision of conservative thought and the
jeremiads of critical theory. Where others see the breakdown of a common culture into
fragments of highly specialized, narrowly developed tastes, Parsons stresses the development of a sophisticated normative order, in which the requirements of common membership are distinguished from the pressures to conformity exercised by particularistic
traditions. Where others identify in the existence of segmental loyalties a danger to the
unity of the national societal community, Parsons stresses how such networks once
embedded in universalistic individual rights represent a source of strength and flexibility in a democratic society. Where others lament the end of the common good, Parsons
identifies the highly institutionalized premises of the freedom from ascription and from
compulsory allegiance. Where others see the eventual corruption of the moral order,
Parsons sees the emergence of a pluralist societal community existing in relation with,
but analytically independent from, economic control, political power and cultural imposition (Mayhew 1997; Parsons, 1971b, 1974, 1975 ).
Why does Parsons see ethnic and subcultural pluralism only if taking place in the
context of a common citizenship and of an independent legal order as a stabilizing force?
A primary reason is that in his theory the main integrative problem for a complex social
system is not social conflict, but rather social polarization (Parsons, 1942b, 1964a, 1968).
Any social system has to avoid breakdowns in structural interdependencies as well as in
the motivations of members (Parsons, 1971c). But each social subsystem has built-in
polarizing tendencies that are intrinsic to its own development. The reason Parsons is so
interested in social pluralism is precisely the fact that it operates as a strong countervailing
force to these polarizing tendencies. In the presence of a common generalized membership, Parsons argues that social pluralism implies the existence of multiple individual
memberships spanning across any single cleavage. Processes of inclusion randomize the

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

247

Sciortino

distribution of ascriptive and achieved statuses, making it difficult to polarize society


along any single dimension. This is precisely why he defines the integrative subsystem as
a network of crisscrossing solidarities (Parsons, 2007). And this is not an innovation of the
late Parsons. For example, he argued early on that it was exactly this form of pluralism that
kept political polarization under control in the American polity:
The very looseness of the relation between structural solidarities other than the political party
and the party structure itself can be said to constitute an important protection against the
divisive potentialities of cleavage. The essential fact here is that the most important groupings
in the society will contain considerable proportions of adherents of both parties. The
pressure of political cleavage by activating ties of solidarity at the more differentiated
structural levels that cut across the line of cleavage tends automatically to bring countervailing
forces into play.
(Parsons, 1969: 223224)

This important function of social pluralism is not, however, intrinsic to social pluralism
itself. The ideal type of the plural society, characterized by the spatial coexistence of
bounded groups that exchange only through group-defined channels, is not inherently
peaceful or progressive (Furnivall, 1939; Rex, 1959). Most empires have been equally
characterized by a broad and deep social pluralism, managed through a constantly challenged and continuously policed, ascriptive hierarchy of social ranks. And economic and
political cleavages may often align with religious and ethnic cleavages, thus strengthening rather than reducing their divisive role. Taken alone, social pluralism can well be a
factor of structural instability, particularly in the context of modernizing change or geopolitical pressures. Not to mention that it is often a fertile ground for oppression. In
Parsons analysis, social pluralism becomes a stabilizing force only when matched by the
existence of common rules implemented in (relatively) universalistic ways. The contemporary societal community is social pluralism plus citizenship. In other words, it requires
the detachment of the public sphere both from ascription-based allocation processes and
from particularistic cultural traditions. The definition of membership in a modern pluralist society, according to Parsons, has stabilizing effects only when it is characterized by
the fact that the duties of the public sphere are not identified with the protection of
particular cultural traditions or with the rights of any collectivity over its members.6 The
relationship between social pluralism and citizenship is bi-directional. Citizenship as a
generalized membership protects the pluralism of social collectivities (functioning as a
kind of societal anti-trust legislation, so to speak) as well as the right of the individual
to choose his or her solidary networks (Parsons, 2007). And pluralism stabilizes the normative order, as the very same variety of overlapping networks rooted in differences
among categories and groups impedes the success of fundamentalist pressures attempting to re-couple membership in the societal community to a particular group identity.

Citizenship as an Evolutionary Achievement


Like T.H. Marshall, Parsons interprets citizenship in broadly evolutionary terms, as a
(largely) irreversible process characterized by increasing inclusion. In both cases, but

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

248

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

particularly in the case of Parsons, their attempts to develop an evolutionary framework


for the analysis of modern society have encountered sustained criticism, mainly based on
gross misunderstanding, but some definitely well taken.7 However, Parsons theory of
social change also has a strong Weberian inspiration. His evolutionary work may be
read also in non-evolutionary terms, as an historical inquiry into the highly unlikely
structural preconditions for the institutionalization of a single societal community with
full citizenship for all, able to sustain and nurture a fully pluralistic large-scale system
of social solidarities (Parsons, 1965: 1040). This follows along the lines of Webers
attempt to understand the preconditions for the rise of capitalism in Western Europe,
rather than as an aspiration to replicate Herbert Spencers ambitions to identify a blanket
recipe for modernization.
The fact is that, according to Parsons, social inclusion is not a natural trend of history. It is triggered, not caused, by structural differentiation. During any differentiation
process, societies face a number of contrasted alternatives. A hierarchical order or a
political difference among groups may be re-established. Fundamentalist reactions may
repress the exact same structural basis of such challenges. Even if differentiation alters
the structure of ascriptive loyalties, the outcome may still vary from subordinate incorporation to structural polarization (Parsons, 1968, 1971a). As Parsons himself acknowledges, the specific solution of a single societal community with equal citizenship for all
has become conceivable and feasible only in very special cases, and only after a long
series of conflicts (Parsons, 1965: 1040). To explain how such a goal becomes an inherent part of the normative project of modern societies is the major aim of most of Parsons
evolutionary analysis.
In the same vein, the fact that Parsons openly celebrates citizenship as a major
achievement of Western, and specifically US, society does not necessarily imply that he
was complacent over or oblivious to the many sources of structural tension existing in
such an arrangement. There is little doubt that Parsons deeply identified with the normative account of American society (Alexander, 1983; Lechner, 1991). And contrary to
most radical theorists of the 1960s, hailing from both the left and the right, he was deeply
convinced of the practical superiority of the American model of liberal democracy at the
international level. He consistently denied that Western societies were structurally unstable or socially doomed.8 He was deeply convinced that in Western society, ascriptive
inequalities were living on borrowed time (although he knew it was definitely a longterm lease). But he did not deny that the normative promises of the civil sphere in modern
society were still largely unfulfilled, and he acknowledged the existence of several builtin sources of serious social strain. His criticism of leftist intellectuals was rooted not in a
conservative attitude but rather in his deep conviction that their accounts of modern society were theoretically inadequate and politically counterproductive. While in the 1960s
and 1970s, most radical intellectuals were willing to focus nearly exclusively on class
inequality, Parsons was willing to claim that, for the social integration of advanced
industrial societies, issues of social diversity and social recognition were no less important than the regulation of organically integrated units centred on economic and political
interests. In the mid-1960s, he even claimed that the civil rights movement, if able to
assume a more general definition of the structurally disadvantaged, had the potential to
become the American equivalent of a socialist movement (Parsons, 1965).

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

249

Sciortino

All these elements are clearly spelled out in the closing pages of Parsons work on
social evolution (1971c), and they are worth quoting at length. Here, Parsons recognizes
both the comparative structural advantages and the strong potential for conflict and strain
embedded in modern societies. And he places the societal community and the normative
promises of citizenship squarely at the center of an oncoming storm:
The salient foci of tension and conflict, and thus of creative innovation, in the current situation
does not seem to be mainly economic in the sense of the nineteenth-century controversy over
capitalism and socialism, nor do they seem political in the sense of the justice of the
distribution of power, though both these conflicts are present. A cultural focus, especially in
the wake of the educational revolution, is nearer the mark. The strong indications are, however,
that the storm center is the societal community . The most acute problems will presumably
be in two areas. First is the development of the cultural system as such in relation to society.
We may picture it as focused on certain problems of rationality, or what Weber called the
process of rationalization. Second is the problem of the motivational bases of social solidarity
within a large-scale and extensive society that has grown to be highly pluralistic in structure.
Neither set of problems will be solved without a great deal of conflict. We should expect that
anything like a culminating phase of modern development is a good way off very likely a
century or more. Talk of a postmodern society is thus decidedly premature.
(Parsons, 1971c: 121, 143)

Regardless of ones judgment on the overall framework of societal evolution, it is possible to argue that Parsons reconstruction of the long-term development of modern citizenship does not take citizenship for granted. On the contrary, he acknowledges openly
the crucial, normative and empirical role played by generalized membership in contemporary Western society as well as the existence of a growing number of tensions related
to the citizenship complex. Regardless of how one reconstructs his basic arguments,
many of them have contemporary relevance for citizenship studies. This will be even
clearer once I review critically Parsons analyses of the processes of inclusion.

Citizenship From Within: T


he Problem of Second-Class Citizens
One of the main implications of a generalized citizenship complex is the assumption
that citizens are from the point of view of the duties and rights of their membership
putatively equal. Ostensibly, they deserve equal respect and recognition and are fully
qualified to contribute to the commonwealth. In the language of generalized citizenship,
the breaking away of the ascriptive matrix implies above all the end of status consistency
between ascriptive and achieved roles. The consistency between certain ascriptive features of the individual and his or her full membership status moves from moral requirement to moral anomaly. As Parsons states, the best indicator of inclusion is when it is no
longer safe to infer that a person has a working-class background from knowing that he
is a Catholic of Irish descent (Parsons, 1966b: xxi).
Such an abstract notion of membership, however, is never abstract enough. Real
Western societies have developed their notions of nationhood and citizenship in specific
historical periods, and they have codified their membership according to the particular

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

250

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

cultural visions of their mainstream, core groups (Alexander, 1990, 2006).9 Those who
are unable or perceived as unable to comply with such bounded requisites for full
memberships are usually relegated to the peripheries of membership. Legal citizenship
may in fact coexist with severe discrimination regarding access to economic opportunities, political voice, sociability patterns and cultural recognition.
The difference between citizenship and full citizenship and the processes through
which second-class status diminishes or disappears are at the core of Parsons writings in
the mid-1960s. Here, Parsons was writing under the influence of the US civil rights
movement in the context of the important effort by the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences to contribute to a better understanding of the issues involved (Lidz, 2009). In a
short period, Parsons produced several papers detailing a new vision of the process of
inclusion and of the role played by social movements (Parsons, 1965, 1966b, 1967, 1968,
1970). The focus of these papers is the possibility and the process through which democratic societies may actually carry out the normative goal of eliminating within a societal
community any category defined as inferior in itself (Parsons, 1965: 1039). Parsons
defines inclusion as the process through which formerly marginalized members of a
societal community become participants with full standing. He is very careful in distinguishing inclusion from assimilation: the former implies a process of symbolic generalization of the criteria for membership that allows for both the new members and their
activities and values to synchronize with the common value system. To be included, the
normative system must undergo a process deep enough to define the social markers of
the included group as positive for, or at least indifferent to, the common good. Parsons
also stresses that inclusion is not an automatic consequence of citizenship. A generalized
definition of membership may actually coexist for quite a long time with material and
symbolic exclusion or subordination. Citizenship as a legal status is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for full inclusion (Parsons, 1966b). In his analysis, Parsons thus
introduces a more specific and interactive model of active citizenship, fairly innovative
even for contemporary visions of political belonging.
The starting point of Parsons analysis is the development of a process of structural
differentiation, which creates integrative strains in the established hierarchies of memberships. In reference to ascriptive stratification, social differentiation involves a change
in the allocation of resources: some clusters of membership units attain a level of generalized resources that, in kind or degree, are different from what the established ascriptive
hierarchy expects or mandates. Differentiation involves the development of new activities or the transformation in meaning for traditional ones; it often involves a process of
empowerment and a breach in traditional expectations. The excluded or some of them
at least appear as prospective full-fledged members based on their contribution to the
commonwealth or their prospective capabilities to offer such contribution. The consequences of this process, however, do not necessarily redefine the criteria for membership
to include the previously marginalized group into full membership. Selective incorporation, through assimilation and social mobility, of a minority of members of the excluded
group may coexist with the reproduction of the collective boundary against the others. A
hierarchical caste-like difference may be re-established, and fundamentalist reactions
may repress the very same structural basis of such a challenge. Even if differentiation
triggers an inclusive process, the outcome may vary from subordinate incorporation to
structural polarization (Parsons, 1968, 1971c).

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

251

Sciortino

To understand such outcomes, however, structural analysis alone is not enough. For
this, Parsons needs a group-specific, interactional scheme able to account for the internal
structure of inclusion processes. And precisely such a scheme the demand for and
supply of inclusion is at the core of his essays on the civil rights movement in the
United States (Parsons, 1965, 1966b).
Parsons argues that any inclusion process requires the existence of a demand for and
supply of inclusion able to cut across the cleavage between outsiders and insiders
namely the qualifications for membership of the excluded group and the structural
conditions that make their participation viable. In other words, the supply side is multidimensional. It includes the factors that make the organic solidarity between the
included and the excluded a social fact and contains all the social and cultural elements
that make solidarity normatively desirable.10 As Parsons stressed, however, social life is
not a morality play (Parsons, 1978: 262). Inclusion does not come about without a conscious, and often conflict-ridden, effort on the part of a variety of actors. The demand
for inclusion defined as the collective action targeted to exploit the opportunities for
inclusion as well as to manage their consequences thus plays a crucial role. For an
inclusion process to take place, sectors within both the excluded and the included categories must believe that inclusion is a valued goal, and furthermore they must be willing to
mobilize toward its achievement. In some cases, such mobilization may happen in a diffuse, nearly invisible way. But where the distance between the normative definition and
the reality is highly entrenched, the inclusion process requires the development of a
social movement able to challenge the established system of social identity and to convert the gap into the basis for action.
In his analysis of the US civil rights movement, Parsons does in fact sketch the foundations of a voluntaristic theory of social movements. He claims that the critical variables
for the success of such movements are relational. On the supply side, he stresses how
economic resources, political power, normative protection or value commitment are not
able to operate in isolation. What matters is the historically specific relational composition of these resources (Parsons, 1966b). The activation of a value commitment without
structural opportunities brings backlashes and the deflation of this resource (Parsons,
1975). While political power is necessary at several key points, inclusion does not manifest itself through exclusively political means.11 If it is true that a market economy contributes to the dissolution of ascriptive stratification, this happens only once some key
non-contractual guarantees of the membership are established and enforced. In other
words, while the structural conditions do define the window of opportunity for inclusion,
the strategies pursued by social movements are not without consequences for the social
reception of their claims to inclusion. On the demand side, Parsons stresses that, since
inclusion crosscuts ethnic stratification, it has supporters and enemies at both poles.
Parsons seems to identify two basic recipes for a successful inclusion movement. First,
it should try to reproduce the basic character of the inclusion process: the integration of
differentiated units across established boundaries. A successful movement toward inclusion must mobilize a pluralistic social grouping a coalition able to trigger a cumulative
learning process. Second, the challenge to ascribed status based on universalistic values
should be able to respond to the anxieties connected to the possible debasement of the
value of membership. According to Parsons, this calls into question the role of social
rights as achieved only through a generalizing tendency and establishes a connection

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

252

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

between the minority claim and the upgrading of all those sectors of the society that fall
below membership standards. He asserts: The most important single condition of avoiding the inflationary debasement is the general upgrading not only of the Negro, but of
all elements of the population falling below the minimum acceptable standards of full
citizenship (Parsons, 1965: 1044). With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to appreciate how developments in this direction would soon encounter significant difficulties.
But this neither invalidates the argument that long-term inclusion of African Americans
requires a significant reform in the social rights component of the civil rights movement,
nor negates the claim that the removal of legal barriers and exposure of the strength of
economic barriers makes it necessary to address more general redistributive issues
(Gould, 1997, 1999; Parsons, 1965).

Conclusions:The Fragility of Citizenship


Reading Talcott Parsons on citizenship today, it is difficult not to remain impressed by
what appears to be an overly optimistic tone. He regarded inclusion as a process that
while surely difficult and wrought with tensions and strains is largely irreversible.
Moreover, he considered the de-ethnicization of US citizenship as more or less accomplished. He was largely correct in stressing how the conflation of ascriptive membership
and economic inequality is the main stumbling block toward achieving full inclusion in
contemporary Western societies and in insisting that such conflation cannot be redressed
without the development of social rights. But, exactly like T.H. Marshall, he never doubted
that the social component of citizenship was well entrenched and bound to further
expand. In the late 1970s, he noted the existence of backlashes against the welfare state,
but he seemed to consider them a transitory phenomenon that could never devolve into a
long-term reality (Parsons, 2007). The reasons for such optimism are both historical
and theoretical.
The historical period in which Parsons lived throughout most of his career was bound
by an expansion of Keynesian economics that seemed irresistible even to its former
adversaries. The rate of economic growth was remarkable, and the opposition to high
taxation was far from becoming a main cleavage across all social strata. The expansion
of social programmes and the strengthening of welfare states seemed to be irreversible
trends to many observers, both on the left and on the right. The 1960s registered a wide
and far-reaching activism on ethnic issues, with the passage of civil rights legislation and
the removal of racial criteria from immigration legislation. A significant number of the
trends Parsons identified were not delusional. As with the demise of the Soviet Union,
Parsons optimism has been closer to the mark than most of the predictions of his more
radical critics. The impact of the trends he identified in the 1960s has been broadly inclusive, with a large change in the rules of sociability, recruitment practices and social and
political participation in the direction of a single societal community with full membership for all. To be sure, the societal community in the United States remains heavily
fragmented along religious, ethnic and racial lines, but it is more broadly inclusive and
de-ethnicized than most observers would have been ready even to conceive four decades
ago.12 And most other Western democratic states, no matter how unsatisfactory their
policies may be judged to be, use remarkably less ethnicized notions of membership and
belonging than was the case at the time of Parsons writings (Joppke, 2003, 2005, 2008).

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

253

Sciortino

To keep fighting over who was right does not make for good theoretical progress. For
the purposes of this article, it seems more important to stress the existence of some social
problems that Parsons, given the depth of his theoretical framework, could have anticipated
as possibilities. Surely, we have learned in recent decades that we must consider an understanding of citizenship that is able to take into account adequately not only the strength of
its role but also its fragile nature. Citizenship is something that may be gained, but it can
also be lost. While second-class membership may decline, it just as well may be reproduced
or even created anew. These perspectives may have seemed far-fetched in the climate of the
sixties, but they are of fundamental importance for contemporary citizenship studies.
The first sociological problem to account for is the possibility that increasing social
heterogeneity and high rates of immigration, particularly when they take place within the
framework of embedded liberalism, may actually reduce social support for welfare state
measures. According to a strand of contemporary research, societies with high degrees of
social heterogeneity are increasingly facing the scarcity of trust and reciprocal support
necessary for many voters to perceive redistributive measures as an investment and not as
a burden or a waste (Alesina and Glaeser, 2004; Eger, 2009; Putnam, 2007). If Parsons is
correct in assuming that social rights are necessary to promote the development of full
inclusion in sociability networks and crisscrossing solidarities, a satisfactory theory of
citizenship should also take into account the possibility that the enforcement of these
rights may be more controversial and less legitimate precisely during the phase in which
they will be most needed.
The second problem concerns the relationship between increasing socioeconomic differentiation and the processes of social and cultural inclusion. In Parsons scheme, the
main effect of economic development is the breaking down of ascriptive categories and
the empowering of at least certain strata within excluded groups to a position where their
claim to full membership can be both made and heard. While this is largely correct, recent
decades have also shown that economic, technological and economic developments may
have the opposite effect, weakening the base for such claims and triggering processes of
exclusion. A severe decline in manufacturing has produced exclusionary effects for many
segments of the population especially in the inner cities of the United States. The shift
to professional armies has sharply reduced the relationship between welfare and warfare
that has been a historically important driving force for social policies. Various mechanisms operating in market economies may have adverse effects on some ascriptive categories, even if they are not designed to produce such effects (Sunstein, 1991). In many
cases, these processes of socioeconomic exclusion particularly when matched by strong
concerns regarding the cost of welfare provision have been rationalized through the
resumption or the coinage of new ascriptive categorizations in particular, racial ones. In
most of Parsons analyses, as well as in those of nearly all of his contemporaries, ascription is something existing before differentiation occurs. The possibility that it is also
something that derives from it should not, however, be neglected.
Notes
1. There are several good introductions to Parsons work (see, for example Bourricaud, 1977;
Lidz, 2000; Mayhew, 1982), and an innovative selection of his writings is available from
Turner (1999). For assessments of Parsons relevance for contemporary social theory, see
Alexander (1987) as well as Joas and Knobl (2009).

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

254

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

2. It is interesting to note that the esteem was reciprocal. As Marshall (1973a) writes in his
autobiography, he considered Parsons work as the only outstanding, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, example of contemporary attempts to build a general theory of society. The paragraph
is missing, however, from the shortened version of the paper, published the same year by the
British Journal of Sociology (Marshall, 1973b).
3. Moreover, Parsons follows Marshall in defining social rights in terms of a mix of defensive
entitlements designed to protect citizens from adverse life-chances and pro-active entitlements, designed to enable them to pursue an active and civilized life. The only difference in
the texts of the two authors is that Marshall stresses the protective aspects, while Parsons is
more concerned with the second, particularly regarding access to education (Parsons and Platt,
1973). The difference, however, is more in emphasis than in content, and it concerns different
visions of social reform embedded respectively in British labour traditions and US liberalism.
4. It is consequently quite surprising that one of the few detailed critical reviews of Parsons view
of citizenship, written by Pierre Birnbaum, defines Parsons as a theorist scared by the unexpected revival of diversity-based claims and as considering them as a threat for the integration
of American society (Birnbaum, 1997).
5. In his work, Parsons deals repeatedly with the well-known pluralism born out of the differentiation of economic and political interests and subcultures. But he pays equal attention
to religious and ethnic diversity as well as intellectual and professional specialization. At a
certain point, Parsons even stresses that contemporary society may also be characterized by a
noticeable degree of ethical pluralism (Parsons, 1968).
6. There is a strong similarity between Parsons framework and the analyses of the de-ethnicization trends in citizenship acquisitions developed more recently by Christian Joppke (2003).
7. Critics of Parsons evolutionary theory have attacked his work on several grounds. Granovetter
(1979) has focused on the role attributed to the master trend of increase in adaptive capacity.
Bortolini (1999) has criticized the principle of the special significance of the most highly
developed case, and Tilly (1984) has questioned its usefulness for the study of social change.
Luhmann (1984) has even denied that Parsons scheme qualifies as a genuine evolutionary
theory.
8. On the contrary, he was among the first sociologists to stress that totalitarian forms of government, such as the Soviet Union, would in the end prove politically unstable and economically
regressive (Parsons, 1961a, 1964b). On Parsons analysis of the communist countries, see
Mouzelis (1993).
9. This is not necessarily a consequence only of the fact that even liberal societies have a preliberal history. The process may occur in already liberal societies, as is the current case with
certain European countries in their approaches to Islamic residents. Here, even procedural
liberalism may be transmuted into a form of substantive identity that ascribes to the Islamic
minorities a cultural difference that excludes and disqualifies them from full participation
(Joppke, 2008).
10. Parsons does not provide a systematic list of these factors. In his analyses, however, he often
refers to the degree of value generalization, the opportunities for political mobilization, the
structure of the normative system and the configuration of the arena of influence makers.
11. According to this point of view, much of what some consider Parsons conservatism may be
more appropriately defined as the acknowledgement of the limits of political will in a highly
differentiated society.

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

255

Sciortino

12. Even if Parsons was overly optimistic, his adversaries have denied the full significance of
his analysis only to pay a high price in empirical plausibility (Birnbaum, 1997; Harris, 1979;
Lyman, 1972). For a detailed assessment of how Parsons analyses have withstood the test of
time, see Lidz (2009).

References
Alesina A, Glaeser EL (2004). Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Alexander JC (1983). The Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought: Talcott Parsons. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Alexander JC (1987). Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory since World War II. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Alexander JC (1990) Core solidarity, ethnic outgroups and structural differentiation: Toward a
multidimensional model of inclusion in modern societies. In: Alexander JC, Colomy P (eds)
Differentiation Theory and Social Change. New York: Columbia University Press, 267293.
Alexander JC (2005). Contradictions in the societal community: The promise and disappointment
of Parsons concept. In: Fox RC, Lidz VM, and Bershady HJ (eds) After Parsons. New York:
Russell Sage, 93110.
Alexander JC (2006). The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baum RC (1975) The system of solidarities. Indian Journal of Social Research 16(12): 306353.
Birnbaum P (1997) Citoyennet et identit: De T.H. Marshall Talcott Parsons. Citizenship Studies
1(1): 133151.
Bortolini M (1999) Inclusione politica, inclusione sociale: La democrazia come differenziazione
in Talcott Parsons. Sociologia e politiche sociali 2(3): 93116.
Bourricaud F (1977). Lindividualisme institutionnel: Essai sur la sociologie de Talcott Parsons.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Chazel F (1974) La thorie analytique de la socit dans loeuvre de Talcott Parsons. Paris: Mouton.
Eger AM (2009) Even in Sweden: The effect of immigration on support for welfare state spending.
European Sociological Review 26(2): 203217.
Furnivall JS (1939). Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gould M (1997) Race and politics: Normative orders and the explanation of political differences:
The Simpson Verdict, the Million Man March and Colin Powell. Social Identities 3(1): 3346.
Gould M (1999) Race and theory: Culture, poverty, and adaptation to discrimination in Wilson and
Ogbu. Sociological Theory 17(2): 171200.
Granovetter M (1979) The idea of advancement in theories of social evolution and development.
American Journal of Sociology 85(3): 489515.
Harris RA Jr (1979) The applicability of Parsons theory of the social system to blacks in urban
places. The Journal of Negro Education 48(2): 139148.
Holton RJ, Turner BS (1986). Talcott Parsons on Economy and Society. London: Routledge.
Isin EF, Turner BS (eds) (2002) Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage.
Joas H, Knobl W (2009) Social Theory: Twenty Introductory Lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Joppke C (2003) Citizenship between de- and re-ethnicization. Archives Europnnes de Sociologie
44(3): 429458.

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

256

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

Joppke C (2005) Selecting by Origin: Ethnic Migration in the Liberal State. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Joppke C (2008) Immigration and the identity of citizenship: The paradox of universalism.
Citizenship Studies 12(6): 533546.
Kivisto P (2004) Inclusion: Parsons and beyond. Acta Sociologica 47(3): 291297.
Lechner F (1991) Parsons and modernity: An interpretation. In: Robertson R, Turner BS (eds)
Talcott Parsons: Theorist of Modernity. Los Angeles: Sage, 166186.
Lechner F (1998) Parsons on citizenship. Citizenship Studies 2(2): 179196.
Levine DN (1989) Parsons structure (and Simmel) revisited. Sociological Theory 7: 110118.
Lidz V (1986) Parsons and empirical sociology. In: Klausner SN, Lidz V (eds) The Nationalization
of the Social Sciences. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2739.
Lidz V (2000). Talcott Parsons. In: Ritzer G (ed.)Companion to Major Social Theorists. Oxford,
Blackwell, 388l432.
Lidz V (2009) Talcott Parsons on full citizenship for African-Americans: Retrospective interpretation and evaluation. Citizenship Studies 13(1): 7583.
Luhmann N (1984) Soziale Systeme. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Lyman SM (1972) The Black American in Sociological Thought. New York: Capricorn.
Mann M (1987) Ruling class strategies and citizenship. Sociology 21(3): 339354.
Marshall TH (1950) Class, Citizenship, and Social Development. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Marshall TH (1969) Reflections on power. Sociology 3(2): 141155.
Marshall TH (1973a) A British sociological career. International Social Science Journal XXV(1/2):
88100.
Marshall TH (1973b) A British sociological career. British Journal of Sociology 24(4): 399408.
Mayhew L (ed.) (1982) Talcott Parsons on Institutions and Social Evolution. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Mayhew L (1997) The New Public: Professional Communication and the Means of Social
Influence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mouzelis N (1993) Evolution and democracy: Talcott Parsons and the collapse of Eastern European
regimes. Theory Culture Society 10(1): 145151.
Ong A (2006) Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Parsons T (1942a) The sociology of modern antisemitism. In: Graeber I, Henderson Britt S (eds)
Jews in a Gentile World. New York: Macmillan, 101122.
Parsons T (1942b) Some sociological aspects of the fascist movements. Social Forces 21: 138147.
Parsons T (1945) Racial and religious differences as factors in group tensions. In: Approaches
to National Unity. New York, Conference on Science, Technology and Religion in their
Contribution to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., 182199.
Parsons T (1946) Certain primary sources and pattern of aggression in the social structure of the
Western world. Psychiatry 10: 167181.
Parsons T (1955) McCarthyism and American social tension: A sociologists view. Yale Review
(4): 226245.
Parsons T (1960) Durkheims contribution to the theory of integration of social systems. In: Wolff KH
(ed.) mile Durkheim, 18581917. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 118153.

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

257

Sciortino

Parsons T (1964a) Communism and the West: The sociology of the conflict. In: Etzioni A,
Etzioni E (eds) Social Change: Sources, Patterns, and Consequences. New York: Basic
Books, 390399.
Parsons T (1964b) Evolutionary universals in society. American Sociological Review 29(3):
339357.
Parsons T (1965) Full citizenship for the negro American? A sociological problem. Daedalus
94(4): 10091054.
Parsons T (1966a) Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Parsons T (1966b) Why freedom now, not yesterday? In: Parsons T, Clark KB (eds)The Negro
American. Boston: Beacon Press, xixxxviii.
Parsons T (1967) The American societal community: General outline. Parsons Papers. Harvard
Archives.
Parsons T (1968) The problem of polarization on the axis of color. In: Franklin JH (ed.) Color and
Race. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 349372.
Parsons T (1969) Politics and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.
Parsons T (1970) Equality and inequality in modern society, or social stratification revisited.
Sociological Inquiry 40: 1372.
Parsons T (1971a) Belief, unbelief and disbelief. In: Caporale R, Grumelli A (eds) The Culture of
Unbelief. Berkeley: University of California Press, 207245.
Parsons T (1971b) Comparative studies and evolutionary change. In: Vallier I (ed.) Comparative
Methods in Sociology: Essays on Trends and Applications. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 97140.
Parsons T (1971c) The System of Modern Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Parsons T (1974) Religion in postindustrial America: The problem of secularization. Social
Research 41: 193225.
Parsons T (1975) Some theoretical considerations on the nature and trends of change of ethnicity.
In: Glazer N, Moynihan DP (eds) Ethnicity: Theory and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 5383.
Parsons T (1978) Action Theory and the Human Condition. New York: Free Press.
Parsons T (2007) American Society: A Theory of the Societal Community. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.
Parsons T, Platt GM (1973) The American University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Poggi G (1996) Lego quia inutile: An alternative justification for the classics. In: Turner SP (ed.)
Social Theory and Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell, 3948.
Putnam R (2007) E pluribus unum: Diversity and community in the twenty-first century.
Scandinavian Political Studies 30(2): 137174.
Rex J (1959) The plural society in sociological theory. The British Journal of Sociology 10(2):
114124.
Sciortino G (2005) How different can we be? Parsons societal community, pluralism and the
multicultural debate. In: Fox RC, Lidz V, and HJ (eds) Bershady After Parsons.. New York:
Russell Sage, 111136.
Sunstein CR (1991) Why markets do not stop discrimination. Social Philosophy and Policy
8(2): 2237.

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

258

Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3)

Tilly C (1984) Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparison. New York: Russell Sage.
Turner BS (1993) Talcott Parsons, universalism and the educational revolution: Democracy versus
professionalism. The British Journal of Sociology 44(1): 124.
Turner BS (ed.) (1999). The Talcott Parsons Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Turner BS (2009) T.H. Marshall, social rights and English national identity. Citizenship Studies
13(1): 6573.

Author biography
Giuseppe Sciortino teaches sociology at the Universit di Trento. His research interests
are social theory, migration study and cultural sociology.

Downloaded from jcs.sagepub.com at Biblioteca di Ateneo - Trento on August 6, 2013

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen