Parsons

Question 1

achievement versus ascription

Answer 1

one of Parsons’s five pat- terned value-orientations whereby, for example, modern society emphasizes achievement rather than ascriptive (e.g., inherited status) criteria.

Question 2

adaptation

Answer 2

economic function (or institutional subsystem) necessary in all societies and societal sub-units.

Question 3

Christianizing of secular society

Answer 3

the thesis that christian- derived values (e.g., Protestant individualism, the Golden Rule) penetrate the everyday culture and non-religious institutional spheres of modern secular society.

Question 4

cultural lag

Answer 4

when societies that experience economic and social modernization experience a delay in adjusting their (traditional) values to accommodate change.

Question 5

cultural system

Answer 5

institutionalized norms, values, motivations, symbols, and beliefs (cultural resources).

Question 6

functions

Answer 6

necessary tasks accomplished by specific social institutions (e.g., family, economy, law, occupational structure) ensuring the smooth functioning of society.

Question 7

goal attainment

Answer 7

political function (or institutional sub- system) necessary in all societies and societal sub-units.

Question 8

integration

Answer 8

regulatory(e.g.,legal) function (or institutional subsystem) necessary in all societies (and societal sub-units).

Question 9

latency (or pattern maintenance)

Answer 9

cultural socialization function (or institutional subsystem) necessary in all societies and societal sub-units.

Question 10

modernization theory

Answer 10

the thesis that all societies will inevitably and invariably follow the same linear path of economic (e.g., industrialization), social (e.g., urbanization, education), and cultural (e.g., democracy; self-orientation) progress achieved by American society.

Question 11

neutrality versus affectivity

Answer 11

one of Parsons’s five pat- terned value-orientations whereby, for example, modern societies differentiate between institutional spheres and relationships based on impersonality (e.g., work) rather than emotion (e.g., family).

Question 12

pattern maintenance

Answer 12

(latency); socialization function (or institutional subsystem) necessary in all societies and soci- etal sub-units.

Question 13

pattern variables

Answer 13

Parsons’s schema of five separate, dichotomously opposed value-orientations determining social action.

Question 14

self versus collectivity orientation

Answer 14

one of Parsons’s five patterned value-orientations whereby, for example, modern society emphasizes individual over communal interests.

Question 15

socialsystem(s)

Answer 15

interconnected institutional subsystems and relationships that comprise society and all of its sub-units.

Question 16

specificity versus diffuseness

Answer 16

one of Parsons’s five pat- terned value-orientations whereby, for example, modern society emphasizes role specialization rather than general competence.

Question 17

structural-functionalism

Answer 17

term used to refer to the theorizing of durkheim and Parsons because of their focus on how social structures determine, and are effective in (or functional to) maintaining, the social order, society (social equilibrium).

Question 18

subsystems

Answer 18

spheres of social (or institutional) action required for the functioning and maintenance of the social system (society) and its sub-units (institutions, small groups, etc.).

Question 19

uneven modernization

Answer 19

when societies experience modernization more quickly in one sphere of society (e.g., the economy) than in another (e.g., in education, the failure to develop the educated workforce necessary to the changed economy).

Question 20

universalistic versus particularistic

Answer 20

one of Parsons’s five patterned value-orientations whereby, for example, modern society emphasizes impersonal rules and general principles rather than personal relationships.

Question 21

value system

Answer 21

shared value-orientation (culture) that functions to maintain societal cohesion/integration.