littleabout the different contingencies and expectations actors are likely to face in the situation. In anattempt to show the actor’s situation in not entirely unstructured and uncertain he formulated thepattern variables. This segment of Parsons’s work is based on Ferdinand Toennie’sgemeinschaft-gesellschaft typology. Toennies focuses on contrasting primitive communities,characterized by close personal bonds or kinship relations, with modern industrial societies, whichare characterized by more impersonal or business-type relationships. As mentioned earlier,Durkheim analyzed the types of solidarity in primitive and modern societies. Like both beforehim, Parsons considers the difference between primitive and modern societies to be fundamental. He labels relationships in traditional societies expressive, and relationships in modern societyinstrumental. Each pattern variable, to Parsons, represents a problem or delimma that must besolved by the actor before the action can take place(Wallace and Wolf 1999). The first choice an actor must make is between ascription(expressive) andachievement(instrumental). The problem is whether the actor chooses to orient themselvestoward others on the basis of ascribed qualities, like sex, age, race, or ethnicity, or on the basis ofwhat they can do or have done, as in performance. To Parsons, the choice is not an arbitrary onebecause at the core of this decision are normative expectations.The second pattern variable is diffuseness(expressive) or specificity(instrumental). Theissue at hand here is the range of demands in the relationship. If the number and types of demandsor responsibilities are wide-ranging then it is a diffuse relationship, much like a close friendship. Ifthe scope of the relationship is narrow or very limited then it is specific, much like the relationshipbetween a patient and a doctor. Parson argues that in modern societies with a high division oflabor, t...
