Гирц о Парсонсе, Парсонс о культуре

[borislvin]

Until Talcott Parsons, carrying forward Weber's double rejection (and double acceptance) of German idealism and Marxist materialism, provided a viable alternative, the dominant concept of culture in American social science identified culture with learned behavior. This concept can hardly be called "wrong" - isolated concepts are neither "wrong" nor "right" - and for many, rather routine purposes it was, and remains, serviceable. But it is now clear to virtually everyone whose interests extend any distance beyond the descriptive that it is very difficult to generate analyses of much theoretical power from such a diffuse, empiricist notion. The day when social phenomena were explained by redescribing them as culture patterns and noting that such patterns are handed down from generation to generation is very nearly past. And Parsons, insisting in his grave and toneless voice that to interpret the way a group of human beings behave as an expression of their culture while defining their culture as the sum of the ways in which they have learned to behave is not terribly informative, is as responsible for its passing as any single figure in contemporary social science.

http://www.iwp.uni-linz.ac.at/lxe/sektktf/gg/GeertzTexts/After_Revolution.htm

Comments

[gr-s.livejournal.com]

:)! О, вывели на чистую воду! (в очередной раз, я бы сказал).

[shogokat.livejournal.com]

так это проблема, не снятая со времен Дюркгейма.
Объяснять социальные факты социальными фактами - замкнутый круг, где отсуствует выход, как объяснить исходный социальный факт