Politics and the Academic Social Scientist; The Record of Talcott Parsons
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9601460 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Victor Lidz (Drexel University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 63-87 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Sociologist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1232 • E-ISSN: 1936-4784 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s12108-021-09477-1 |
| OpenAlex | W3136497011 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 27 |
The decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons’ major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the Joseph McCarthy movement in American politics. In the 1960s, he contributed supportive essays to the Civil Rights movement. Later in the decade and in the 1970s, he contributed to the protection of academic freedoms while also proposing accommodations to the demands of the student movement for more “relevant” teaching and greater participation in university governance. Throughout his career, he taught and worked closely with students of various political views and sought to protect their rights of freedom of political expression
Academic freedom · Higher education · Liberalism · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Social order · Social science · Sociology · Academic Freedom and Politics · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Law
Communism, conformity, and civil liberties
The Nationalization of the Social Sciences
The broken covenant
Science as a Vocation
The system of modern societies.
Structure of Social Action
Structure and Process in Modern Societies
Citizenship and Social Class
Social Science
Talcott Parsons
The American University
Ideology and Utopia
Some Sociological Aspects of the Fascist Movements
Kapitalismus bei Max Weber - zur Rekonstruktion eines fast vergessenen Themas
Talcott Parsons and National Socialism
"Capitalism" In Recent German Literature
No Ivory Tower
Some remarks on Talcott Parsons’s family
Politics as Vocation
Max Weber and the Contemporary Political Crisis
On the Concept of Influence
From Max Weber
On the Concept of Value-Commitments
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |