bout inevitably by an increase in a society’s size, is thought of today as an importantaspect of a social system’s interrelatedness and integration. By integration we mean theincorporation of individuals into the social order, which is essential to the maintenance of socialequilibrium. It was Durkheim, the most important forerunner of modern functionalism, whochampioned integration and conceptionalized the function of the division of labor(Wallace andWolf 1999). Parsons was greatly influenced by these two concepts. Durkheim viewed social evolution as a movement from the mechanical solidarity of tribalsocieties to the organic solidarity characteristic of industrial societies. At the heart of bothsocieties is the collective conscience, which he defined as “the totality of beliefs and sentimentscommon to average citizens of the same society.” Primitive societies with mechanical solidarityhad a strong collective conscience but little individualism. As the division of labor increased, sodid individualism. This, in turn, led to a corresponding decrease in the collective conscience and ashift to organic solidarity. With this foundation of great ideas, and his own experience in thebiological studies, Parsons was ready to form his own functionalism perspective. Hiscontributions include: his system of action, his action schema, the pattern variables, and thesystem problems.For Parsons, the system was the center of his thinking from a very early age(Wallace andRuth 1999). His general theory of action includes four systems: the cultural system, the socialsystem, the personality system, and the behavioral organism system. Each system in turn has abasic unit of analysis, or variable by which it is measured. For the cultural system it is “meaning”or “symbolic systems” like national values, religious beliefs, or languages. In Parsons view,cultural traditions are made up of shared symbol...
