8.

SocialSystems

"SYSTEM" is the concept that refers both to a complex of interdependencies

between parts. components, and processes that involve discernible regu-
larities of relationship, and to a similar type of interdependency between
such a complex and its surrounding environment. System, in this sense,
is therefore the concept around which all sophisticated theory in the con-
ceptually generalizing disciplines is and must be organized. This is because
any regularity of relationship can be more adequately understood if the
whole complex of multiple interdependencies of which it forms part is
taken into account.

Social Systems and the Action System

Methodologically, one must. distinguish a theoretical system, which is

a complex of assumptions, concepts, and propositions having both logical
inteation and empirical reference, from an empirical system, which is
a set of phenomena in the observable world that can be described and
analyzed by means of a theoretical system. An empirical system Ce.g., the
solar system as relevant to analytical mechanics) is never a totally con-
crete entity but, rather, a selective organization of those properties of the
concrete entity denned as relevant to the theoretical system in question.
Thus, for Newtonian solar system mechanics, the earth is "only" a particle
with a given mass, location in space, velocity, and direction of n'otiorl;
the Newtonian scheme is not concerned with the earth's geological or
human social and cultural characteristics. In this sense, any theoretical
system is abstract.
As a theoretical system, the social system is specifically adapted to

From the /nternational EncycloPedia of the Social Sciences, David L. Sills,

editor, Volume IS, pp. 458-473. Reprin[tetd by permission of the Publisher.
Copyright @ 1968 by Crowell Collier and Macmillan, Inc.
177

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 cIcscribing and analyzing social interaction considered as a class of empir-
ical systems. These systems are concerned with the behavior, as distin-
guished from the metabolic physiology, of living organisms. Among the
categories of organisms, our interest la this article centers on human social
mteraction, which is organized on the symbolic levels we call "culturaf."
However, one should remember that such interaction is a late evolution-
ary product and is continuous with a very broad range of interaction
phenomena among other organisms. All bisexual reproduction, for exam-
ple, requires highly structured interactive relations between the organisms
of the two sexes. Various kinds of interspecies ecological relations consti-
tute another example, one to which human relations wth domesticated
animals are relevant.
The aspects of behavior which directly concern "cultural-level" sys-
tems I calf action. Action in this technical sense includes four generic
types of subsystems, the dilferentiation among which has gained fairly
clear dehnition during modern intellectual history.
The first is simply the organism, which though quite properly treated
as a concrete entity in one set of terms, becomes, on a more geaeralized
level, a set of abstract components (i.c., a subsystem) in the culturally
organized system of action.f. J ' ~':'",,"`\" ' ,,,,,,, ,
A second subsystem is the so.cial. system, which is generated by the
process of interaction among individual units. Its distinctive properties are
consequences and conditions of the specific modes of interrelationship
obtaining among the living organ.isms which constitute its units.
Third is the cultural system, which is the aspect of action organized
about the specific characteristics of symbols and the exigencies of forming
stable systems of them. It is structured in terms of patternings of meaning
which, when stable, imply in turn generalized complexes of constitutive
symbolisms that give the action system its primary "sense of direction,"
and which must be treatcd as independent of any particular system of
social interaction. Thus, although there are many ramifications into such
areas as language and communication, the prototypical cultural systems
are those of beliefs and icfeas. The possibilities of their preservation over
time, and of their ditfusioa from one personality and/or social system
into another, are perhaps the most important hallmarks of the indepen-
dent structure of cultural systems.
Fourth, the analytical distinction between social and cultural systems
has a correlative relation to the distinction between the Organism and those
other aspects of the individual actor which we generally call the person-
ality. With the achievement of cultural levels of the control of behavior,
the primary subsystems of action can no longer be organized--or structured
primarily-about the organic base, which, in the first instance, is anatom-
ical or "physical." Personality, then, is the aspect of the living individual,
as "actor," which must be understood in terms of the cultural and social

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 Social Systems 179

cOtlfcnt of the learned pattcrnings that make up his behavioral system.

Here. "learned" refers not only to the .problem of the origin of the pat-
tcrns in the hered"ity-cnvironment sense, but also to the problem of the
kind and level of their content. The comlcction between these two prob-
lems partly reflects the fact that we have no evidence that cultural content
is, at what we call here the level of pattern, determined through the genes.
Thus, there is no evidence of a hereditary "propensity" Co speak one
language rather than another, although the genetically determined capaci-
ties to learn and use language are generally fundamental.
Thus, we treat the social system, when evolved to the action level, as
one of four primary subsystems of action, all of which articulate with the
organic bases of life and with organic adaptation to the environment in
the broadest biological sense.
There is a sense in which the social system is the core of human action
systems, being the primary link between the culture and the individual
both as personality and as organism-a fact for which "culture and per-
sonality" theorists have often not adequately accounted. As (he principal
source of the independence of cultural systems from restrictive organic
and environmental conditions, it has been the primary locus of the "oper-
ation bootstrap" of human evolution. The secret of this evolutionary cap
acity evidently lies in the possibilities for "reverberation" among the inter-
communicating members of a social system, each of whom is both an actor
orienting himself to his situation in terms of complex, cultural-level,
intended meanings and an object of orientation meaningful to orienting
actors. Furthermore, each person is both actor and object to himself as
well as to others. Interaction at the symbolic level thus becomes a system
anafyticafly and, very appreciably, empirically independent of its pre-
symbolic bases (though still grounded in them), and is capable of devel-
opment on its own,
Insigt into this basic complex of facts constitutes a principal founda-
tion of modern social science theory, It has been attained by convergence
from at least four sources: Freud's psychology, starting from a medical'-
biological base; Weber's sociology, which worked to transcend the prob-
lems of the German. intellectual tra)lition concerning idealism-'lnaterialism;
Durkheim's analysis of the individdal actor's relations to the "social facts"
of his situation; and the social psychology of the American "symbolic
interactionists" Cooley and Mead, who built upon the philosophy of prag-
matism. (See Chapter 7. )
In dealing with social systems, one must distinguish terminologically
between an actor as a unit in a social syste,..,d ysterfr as such, The
actor `may be """eith6f`ah"f'ri"di`idrlalor 6In kind f collective unit. la both
cases, the actor within a $\Stern of reference will be spoken of as acting
in a situation consisting of other actor-units within the same system of
reference who are considered as objects. The system as a whole, however,

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functions (but does not "act" in a technical sense) in relation to its envir-
onment. Of course, the system references are inherently relative to parti-
cular scientific problems. When a collective (i.e., social) system is said to
act, as in the case of a government conducting foreign relations, this will
mean thnt it and the objects of its action onstitute the social system of
reference and that these objects are situa|tlons, not et,viromnenf, 1.0 the
acting collectivity.

The Social System and Ifs Environments

A social system, like all living systems, is inherently an oPen sys-

tem engaged in processes of interchange (or "input-output relati.ons )
with its environment, as . well as consisting of interchanges among Its In-
ternal units. Regarding it as an open system is, from some viewPoints,
regarding it as a part of-i.e., a subsystem of,one or more superordinate
systems. In this sense, it is interdependent with the other parts of the more
comprehensive system or systems and, hence, partly dependent on them
for essential inputs. Here the dependence of the organism on its Physical
environment for nutrition and respiration is prototypical. This is the essen-
tiaf basis of the famous concept of itmction as it applies to social systems,
as to all other living systems.
For any system of reference, functional problems are those concerning
the conditions of the maintenance and/or development of the interchanges
with environing systems, both inputs from them and outputs to them,
Functional significance may be determined , by the simple criterion of the
dysfunctional consequences of failure, deficit, or excess of nu input to n
receiving system, as asphyxiation is the consequence of failure in oxygen
input, and so oxygen input is judged to be functionally significant for the
organism. Function is the only basis on which a theoretically systematic
ordering of the structure of living systems is possible. In this context func-
tional xeferences certainly need beg no question about how structural
~gemants have come bout, sine the ological conts of vari:'ti<m,
selection, and adaptation have long since provided a framework for analyz-
ing the widest variety of change processes.
Goal-attaining processes explicitly intended lo fulfill functional require-
ments constitute a limiting, but very important, case. Outputs in this sense
have primary functional significance only for the system which receives
them and which is situational or environmental to the system of reference,
although they have secondary functional significance to the latter. For
example, although economic output ("produced" goods \ goes to "con-
sumers," the maintenance of certain levels of salable outpute clearly bas
great significance to producing organi7.ations. It is its inputs that have

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 Social Systcms 181

primary functional significance for any given system of reference. The

"factors of production" of economic theory are classic examples, being
the critical inputs of the economy.
In a cf1lciaZ sense, the relation between any nction system-incJuding
the social-and any of its environments is dual. On the one hand, the
particular environment constitutes a set of objects which are "exterior" to
the system in the Cartesian-Durkheimian sense. On the other hand,
through infcrpcncfration, the environmental system is partially and selec-
tively included in the action system of reference. Internalization of cultural
and social objects in the personality of the individual is certainly the proto-
typical case of inferpcnctration, but the principle it involves should be gen-
eralized to all the relations between action systems and their environments.
Thus, neither the individual personality nor the social system has any
direct relation to the physical environment; their relations with the latter
are mediated entirely through the organism, which is action's prim nry 'link
with the physical world . This, after all, is now a commonplace of modern
perceptual and epistemological theory ( Ayer 1956, pp. 130'-13 3 ) . In es-
sentially the same sense, neither personalities nor social systems have direct
contact with the ultimate objects of reference, with the "t,Ttiffxate reality"
which poses "problems of meaning" in the sense sociologists associate
above all with the work of Max Weber. The objects that personalities -alxd
social systems know . and otherwise directly experience are in our termi-
nology cultural Obiecfs, which are human artifacts in much the same sense
as are the objects of empirical cognition. Hence, the relations of personali-
ties and social systems with ultimate "noxYempirical reality" are in a basic
sense mediated t!froUgh the cultural system,
Emphasis on their lack of direct contact with what is "out there" con-
cerns in both cases certain qualities of the environing systems as objects.
There is, however, important contact with the physical and superflatural
environments through the interpenetratioll of the latter into action systems.
Hence, such Concepts as knowledge are not naive illusions but modes of
the organization of the relations between the various action systems and
their environmenfs (Whitehead [1929} and Mead [1938] based their
analysis of action on philosophical positions similar to that assumed here \ .
We must regard the relations between the subsystems of action, and be-
tween the action system and the systems of nonacfion, as Pluralistic. That
is, there will be no one-to-one correspondence between any, two inter-
dependent and interpenetrating systems, but there will be a complex rela-
tion which can perhaps be understood by theoretical analysis. This is true
of "heredity and environment," "culture and personality," and (he "}clear`
and "real" factors in social systems.
It Is necessary to consider the various ellvironfffents of a lining system,
because each such environment is engaged in one of the interchange rela-
tions with the system, and the specialized natures of these relations serve

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182 ]FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF SOClETIES

as the primary bases of the internal differentiation of the system, For in-
stance, the nutrition and elimination systems, the respiratory system, and
the locomotor system of an organiSm are differentiated from each other
on this basis. This, as noted, is the essential meaning of the controversial
( in social, not biological, science ) concept of function. The basis of dif-
ferentiation is functional, since it consists in the differing input-output
relations of the system with its various environments and,,following from
that, the internal relations between the differing parts of the system itself.

SQCj8fy and Societal Com munity

On file understanding that all social systems are systems of interaction,

the best refexeuce point among their many types, for general theoretical
purposes, is the society. The definition of this concept presents consider-
able difficulties, the history of which cannot occupy us here. For present
purposes, I shall dc6ne a ciety as the category of social system embody-
ing, at the requisite levels of evolutionary development and of control over
the conditions of environmental relations, the greatest self-sufficiency of
any type of social system.
By self-sufficiency (a criterion which has figured prominently in
Western thought on the subject since Aristotle at least ) , I mean the caPac-
ity of the system, gained through both its internal organization and re-
sources and its access to inputs from its environments, to function auton-
omously in implementing its normative culture, particularly its values but
also its norms and collective goals. Self-sufficiency is clearly a degree of
generalized adaptive capacity in the sense of biological theory.
The term "environment" is pluralized here to emphasize the fact that
the relevant environment is not just physical, as in most formulations of
general biological theory, but also includes the three basic subsystems of
action other than the social, which have `been outlined above.
The core structure of a society I will calf the societal community. More
specifically, at different levels of evolution, if is cal\ed tribe, or "the
people," or, for classical Greece, polis, or, for the modem world, nation'
it i the collective structure in which members are united or, in some
sense, associated Its most important Property is the kind and level of
solidrity___in Durkheim's sense-which characterizes the relations be-

twee~s~sf a community is essentially the degree to which (and

the ways in which) its collective interest can be expected to Prevalf. over
the uni interests of its membcrs wherever the two conflict. It may mvolve
mutual respect among the units for the rights of membershifr slatus,. con-
formity wih the value and norms institutionalized in the colfectivlty, or

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 Soc.ml Systems 183

positive contribution lo the attainment of collective goals. The character

of solidarity varies with the level of differentiation in the society, differen-
tiation which is evident in the structures of the roles in which a given
individual is involved, of the system's subcollectivitics, and of its norms and
spccifled value orientations, Tile best-known basis for classifying the types
of solidarity is Durkheim's two categories, mechanical and organic (sec
Parsons 1960a).
Both types of solidarity are characterized by common values and insCi-
tutionalized norms, In the case of mechanical solidarity, however, the pat-
terns of action expected from units 'are also uniform for ail units in the
system: relative to one another, the units arc segments, since they are not
functionally differentiated. Durkheim analyzed crime as the prototype
violation of the obligations of mechanical solidarity. For full members of
the community, no matter how highly differentiated the society, the treat-
ment 'of the criminal should ideally be always the same, regardless of who
commits the crime, even though this ideal is frequently and seriouSly devi-
ated from. At the societal community level in differentiated societies, the
core of the system of mechanical solidarity lies in the patterns of citizen-
ship, in T. H. Marshall"s sense (1949). These patterns can be conveniently
subdivided into the components of civil-legal citizenship, political citizen-
ship, and social citizenship. In modern American society, the bill of rights
and associated constitutional structures, such as the fourteenth amendment,
comprise the most directly relevant institutions in this field.
Qrganic solidarity concerns those aspects of the societal system in
which roles, subcollectivities, and norms are differentiated on a functional
basis. Here, though common value patterns remain of the first importance
to the various subsystems at the relevant levels of specification, expecta-
tions of behavior differ according to role and subcollccfivity. Solidarity,
then, involves the integration of these differing expectations with respect
to the various bases of compatible funcfiOnilYg,from mutual noninterfer-
ence to positive mutual reinforcement.
Organic solidarity seems to be particularly important in three Primary
struccucal contexts. Most familiar is the one Durkheim himself Particular.fy
stressed, the economic division of labor, where the most imPortanf mstltu-
tional patterns are contract and property. Second is what we ordinarily
call th area of political differentiation, that of both the organizaion of
authority and leadership and the various modes of ParticiPation In col-
ective ecision making, which involve the interplay of information and
~Huence bearing on collective action" The third is the area of the society's
t;laions with ifso cultural involvements. This Particularly concerns the

etyr"n
thSOCfl,. s.a~~
r' thhethemlic becuutl~roe
)(hd e

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184 FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIETIES

Organic Solidarity and Pluralism

In all three contexts, organic solidarity is associated with the pheno-

menon generally called pluralism. In none of these cases is the structure
of a subsystem articulating with the social community ascribed to the
structure of the latter. On the contrary, as a function of the level of dif-
ferentiation among the articulating subsystems, there is an increasing flex-
ibility that facilitates the concrete relations coming to be established by
relatively specific processes. Thus, there is, flrst, a pl\smlism of economic
interests which, if uncontrolled, would tend to destroy the solidarity of
the societal community-indeed, it may be suggested that an exaggerated
anxiety about this underlies much of the modern socialist dogma that only
the central societal collectivity, the state, can be trusted with any interest
which seems important to the public welfare. However, there is a second
pluralism of "interest groups" in the political context which, though of
course linked with the economic pluralism, is by no means the same. The
political process, as that lending to collective decision making, is in part
a "political strugg!e" among such interest groups. Thus, it has great poten-
tial for disrupting societal solidarity. However, the latter can also not
merely contain the struggle but, even more positively, f urther integrate
the disparate groups by virtue of various mechanisms of integrative con-
trol. Finally, the more differentiated societal community tends also to be
culturally pluralistic, This is particularly conspicuous in the few Western
societies which have attained a certain level of religious pluralism. Thus,
at the very least, contemporary American society is a multidenoxuinational,
Judaeo-Christian society which also includes secular humanists who prefer
not to affiliate with any explicitly religious association. In one sense, it has
"transcended" the historic bases of religious conflict which prevailed in
the Western world for centuries. The basis of this is genuine denomina-
tional pluralism, not only before the law but `also in terms of acceptance
la the community.
Very closely associated with this is the pluralism among the intellectual
disciplines which has gained institutionalization in modern society, espe-
cially in the ulxiversity system ( Parsons 1965 ) . The rise of the sciex3ees
was, in the first instance, a profound symbol of this pluralization. But it
has now become a major factor in the future development of modern
society in a variety of ways. The problem of "ethical" pluralism is analyt-
ically more difficult and complex. The trend seems to be away from the
special kind of moral uniformity which characterizes societies in which
mechanical solidarity prcdominatcs. The essential point concerns the level
of generality at which common moral standards are defined: if a pluralistic
society is to integrate its many various kinds of units into a solidary so-
cietal community, what counts as moral obligalion camlot be defined in

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 Social Systems 18S

terms specific to each kind of unit but must be sufficiently general to apply
to the considerable range of diffcrcntittted classes of mils. Moralism ties
morality to the specifics of a subgroup or a particular stage of social devel-
opneut and must be distinguished from concern with maintaining control
of action in accord with more generalized moral standards.

CulturalSystemand PoliticalSystem

The societal community in the present sense is artiaxlated most directly

with the c.ultural and political subsystems of the society. Furthermore, it
is in these two relationships that the main connections between organic
and mechanical solidarity are lodged.
The cultural (or pattern-maintenance ) system centers on the institu-
tionalizati`on of cultural value patterns, which at the general cultural level,
may be regarded as moral. Institutionalized societal values, and their
specifications to societal subsystems, comprise only part of the relevance
of moral values to action; moral values are also involved. through inter-
alizatiOn, in structures of the personality and behavioral organism; and,
more generally, they articulate with religion, science, and the arts within
the cultural system.
Community in the present sense is never a simple matter of the "acting
out" of value commitments. It also involves differentiated acceptance, in
valuational terms, of the conditions necessary for the functioning of soci-
eties and their subsystems. Essentially this latter clement draws the line
between utopianism-making an imperative of "pure" value actualiza-
tion-and realistic social idealism. Avoiding the uptopian dilemma involves
organizing the value system so as to include the positive valuation of social
relationships for their own sake, not only as being rigidly instrumental to
specific value patterns.
But this is not the whole story. In addition to a general "set" establish-
ing a presumption of legitimacy for the social system as such, there must
also be a mote flexible set of mechnnisms providing for adaptation be-
tween the cultural subsystem of the society and the societal community
itself. These mechanisms concern the capacity for handling the changing
needs and exigencies of nations associational relationships in the tight of
both their developing interrelations and their relations with the value sys-
tem; the more particularized commitments must be a function of changing
conceptions of the imperatives of relationship, as defining the nature of
"valued association." The commitment to the societal community is, so far
as this interchange develops flexibility, no longer ascriptive but dependent
on the need for such commitment and on an evaluation of its compatibility
with deeper moral commitments at the cultural level. One aspect of this
flexibility is the individual's enhanced moral independence from impera-

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186 FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIETIES

Lives of unquestioning obligations to conformity. But the obverse aspxt

is the "right" of the community to expect appropriate flexibility in the
adaptation of moral demands to exigencies of realistic implementation
The minimum imperatives of specified common value commitment
define one pole of the structures of the societal systems organized with
mechanical solidarity. There is a place for organic solidarity in this context
so far as such commitments are so firm as not to be "negotiable" and so
general as to permit the kind of flexibility in adaptfllg to particular "exi-
gencies" which has just been discussed. What I above called moralism is
the limiting case where lack of generality (and perhaps firmness of com-
mitment ) forecloSes such flexibility. The basic rights of members in the
societal community constitute, in negative definition, the hmits of applica-
tion of these value commitments, Members' complementary obligations
to the societal community constitute the obverse expectations of contribu-
tion to the functioning of a social system to which they are committed.
In a sense, the "payoff" on such obligations comes in the relation be-
tween the societal community and the political subsystem, since the latter
is concerned with collective goal attainment as a function of the total
society and, pvt passu, of each subsystem grounded in communal soli-
darity. This relation between the societal community and the political sub
system concerns a further step toward mastering exigencies in the interest
of the implementation of values. It is a matter not just of establishing
particular relationships of solidarity as the "selling" for value implementa-
tion but, further, of committing the interests of that community to Patti-
cufar collective goals-which involves dealing with the exigencies of Parti-
cular environmental conditions. For the individual, then, this concerns
not merely his personal commitment to the goal but his obligations as a
member of the community. Committing the community implies a solution
to the problem of integrating the community with reference to the "Policy"
in question, whether this involves developing a broad consensus or mth-
lessly suppressing minority, or even majority, views. As a somewhat ex-
treme' case, entering a war commit the national community, whatever
various membership elements think about it, short of their mustermff a
resistance which would favor the enemy cause.
Here, as in the .relation of the national community to the "cultural"

articular situations. One extreme in this context would be an absolutist or

espotic "governmeat" hi p ued a I ess~
a nm h a In meolUn ac upen-

dentB iwmoe
to eved
uls,otdmiO mental systems aid
bairncaugbt in the above dilemma. They set up Procedural rules deffmnff

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