Modern sociology is characterized by the coexistence of various concepts of social knowledge. The continuity of sociological ideas at the moment is the basis of the very development of the teachings on society. A significant contribution to this progress was made by the concept - the structural and functional analysis of Parsons, which the outstanding American scientist formulated in the middle of the last century. Today, Talcott Parsons is recognized in the scientific world as one of the classics of sociological science. He created a detailed concept - functional analysis, which is a necessary methodological tool for sociological knowledge of the modern world in all its diversity.
The concept of systemicity is at the center of this concept; it is with it that the whole complex of ideas and problems associated with the subject area of research on issues of social equilibrium, conflict, consensus and the evolution of society as a system is associated.
For the first time, Parsons touches on functional analysis as a methodological resource, exploring the Henderson-Pareto theory, where the main place was given to economic issues and its role in the evolution of society. Then this topic was continued by Schumpeter, who came to the analysis of the economy precisely from the point of view of its systemic nature.
Summarizing the conclusions of scientists, Parsons comes to the conclusion that systemicity alone cannot objectively explain social trends, therefore it is necessary to include components of the study of social functions in a systematic analysis. And this complex theoretical education was born - “structural-functional analysis”. Its essence lies in the universalism of approaches to the study of patterns and trends observed in modern social life.
A completely new in this theory was the study of the cybernetic aspects of society as a "system of cultural symbolic meanings." The cybernetic method made it possible to more substantively deal with hitherto practically unexplored problems of stability and entropy of society.
Functional analysis justified by Parsons made it possible to take a fresh look at the then-popular problem of social conflict. The fact is that the spread of positivism and its methods created one-sidedness and contradiction in the interpretations of the categories of stability and conflict. Therefore, the question was raised of the coexistence in society of chaos and order as the dialectical aspects of social life. Developing the theory of conflict at that time, Lewis Coser, an American economist and sociologist, in fact, supplemented the idea of Parsons, arguing that society does not exhaust all its possible states with stability alone. This conclusion became especially significant in substantiating the development trends of an economy that was undergoing processes of cyclical changes in its states — periods of crises were replaced by periods of relative economic stability. Therefore, a functional analysis in the economy today acts as a necessary methodological method for studying economic processes, especially in the field of assessing the probability of risks, macroeconomic forecasting and others.
In Parsons theory, the unit of analysis is the concrete action of the individual, and not the abstract society as a whole. Such a fundamentally new approach made it possible to analyze society not from the point of view of individual traits of a person, which was accepted in psychology, but from the point of view of considering the behavior of an individual in a specific situation. According to Parsons, a social action is a behavior localized in time and space, which is caused by a person performing certain functions in the surrounding society. In the context of these functions, the intersection of a variety of structures, social mechanisms, value and cultural systems can occur, and all of them will affect the behavior of a person and the performance of social functions.
This completely original approach, which included functional analysis, and its new methodological paradigm laid the foundations for future European sociology. Famous followers of Parsons' ideas here were Max Weber, Wilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels.
In general, although Parsons' theory contains some abstractions and elements of formalism, it continues to be very popular and practically in demand in the analytical study of modern society.
