Front cover image for Talcott Parsons : an intellectual biography

Talcott Parsons : an intellectual biography

"The American sociologist Talcott Parsons was often accused of being an overly abstract, even apolitical thinker, remote in Harvard's ivory tower. Uta Gerhardt dispels this image in her fascinating account of the political nature of Parsons's life and scholarship. Gerhardt depicts Parsons as a champion of American society and democracy. In this respect he followed the lead of his venerable mentor, Max Weber. Parsons's work, Gerhardt argues, was driven by an overriding agenda to develop a sociological understanding and defense of the development of modern democracy."--Publisher's description
Print Book, English, 2002
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002
History
xiv, 311 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780521810227, 9780521174589, 0521810221, 0521174589
48265613
1. Understanding The Structure of Social Action; 2. Parson's sociology of national socialism, 1938–45; 3. The Harvard social science war effort and The Social System; 4. A new agenda for citizenship: Parsons's theory and American society in the 1960s; Epilogue: a life of scholarship for democracy.