8: Evolution, Modernity, and American Society

Parsons described himself as an ‘incurable theorist’ but saw theory as a means to better understand the world. He produced empirical studies in parallel with his theoretical work, the two informing each other, and he taught courses on both comparative sociology and American society. During the 1950s, he launched a research project on American society, working with Robert Bellah and others, to produce a book. The demands of his theoretical work slowed down progress on this project, but in 1959, he eventually drafted an introduction called ‘A Tentative Outline of American Values’ and followed this with several papers on economic and political subsystems. He continued with the task and produced further papers in cooperation with Mark Gould, Victor Lidz, Leon Mayhew, and Winston White, and by the middle of the 1960s, he felt that separate volumes on the various subsystems might be more manageable. With White, he eventually produced a draft manuscript on Values in American Society, circulated to students and colleagues for comment but not published until many years after his death.