Introduction: Text and Context

Why would anybody want to make another study of Talcott Parsons? This study is about identifying the fact and fiction of Talcott Parsons and draws upon his body of published writing to outline his view of the world in order to re-evaluate or reconsider Parsons’ social theory for an audience who have had their conception of his work shaped by decades of often uninformed or biased secondary sources that often presented a caricatured conception of Parsons’ ideas and arguments, often to support what was presented as a new, more fashionable, more politically radical or more inclusive contribution to our understanding of social life.