Book Reviews : Sociological Analysis and Politics: The Theories of Talcott Parsons. By WILLIAM C. MITCHELL. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. Pp. xvi, 222.)

• Date: 01 September 1968
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296802100325
• Published date: 01 September 1968
• Author: Francis D. Wormuth
• Subject Matter: Articles

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The work cites such well known sources as Clark’s Dark Ghetto in underlining
the stark nature of the current problem. It tends to buttress the findings of the
Kerner Commission report.
The main shortcoming of this excellent study lies in its limitation as to time
and the fact that it could survey only a small segment of the problem. The author
has done an impressive job of verifying empirically some of our recent unhappy
discoveries about the direction of Negro-white relations in the United States.
WILLIAM C. SPRAGENS
Wisconsin State University, Oshkosh
Sociological Analysis and Politics: The Theories of Talcott Parsons. By WILLIAM
C. MITCHELL. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. Pp. xvi, 222.)
This is the third item in a series edited for Prentice-Hall by David Easton. It
is curious that Easton should introduce the book as one &dquo;devoted to empirically
oriented theory,&dquo; for admirers and critics alike would agree that there is nothing
empirical about the work of Parsons. Nor, indeed, is it theoretical: Parsons him-
self has said that he has only reached the stage of classificatory concepts and not
that of theory.
Parsons’ ambition is to characterize the necessary structure and functioning
of any social system -
not any empirical social system, but the ideal type of all the
ideal types of empirical social systems. The concepts he has developed for this
purpose are the concept of system; the four functional prerequisites of any social
system; the &dquo;pattern variables&dquo;;...