9: Action, Society, and the Human Condition

Writing in 1937, Parsons had set out a view of the action frame of reference. This formed the basis of everything he wrote over the following 40 years. For much of that time, however, he concentrated on a detailed exploration of the social system. Wider issues in the analysis of action were left to one side. In the last decade of his life, he felt able to return to these wider issues, using his four-function scheme to explore the action system as a whole. At the same time, he also broadened his concerns to explore the place of action in what he called ‘the human condition’, the universe in which all humans must live.