Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- I What is theory?
- II The classical attempt at synthesis: Talcott Parsons
- III Parsons on the road to normativist functionalism
- IV Parsons and the elaboration of normativist functionalism
- V Neo-utilitarianism
- VI Interpretive approaches (1): symbolic interactionism
- VII Interpretive approaches (2): ethnomethodology
- VIII Conflict sociology and conflict theory
- IX Habermas and critical theory
- X Habermas' ‘theory of communicative action’
- XI Niklas Luhmann's radicalization of functionalism
- XII Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and the new British sociology of power
- XIII The renewal of Parsonianism and modernization theory
- XIV Structuralism and poststructuralism
- XV Between structuralism and theory of practice: The cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
- XVI French anti-structuralists (Cornelius Castoriadis, Alain Touraine and Paul Ricoeur)
- XVII Feminist social theories
- XVIII A crisis of modernity? New diagnoses (Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Bellah, and the debate between liberals and communitarians)
- XIX Neo-pragmatism
- XX How things stand
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
V - Neo-utilitarianism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- I What is theory?
- II The classical attempt at synthesis: Talcott Parsons
- III Parsons on the road to normativist functionalism
- IV Parsons and the elaboration of normativist functionalism
- V Neo-utilitarianism
- VI Interpretive approaches (1): symbolic interactionism
- VII Interpretive approaches (2): ethnomethodology
- VIII Conflict sociology and conflict theory
- IX Habermas and critical theory
- X Habermas' ‘theory of communicative action’
- XI Niklas Luhmann's radicalization of functionalism
- XII Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and the new British sociology of power
- XIII The renewal of Parsonianism and modernization theory
- XIV Structuralism and poststructuralism
- XV Between structuralism and theory of practice: The cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
- XVI French anti-structuralists (Cornelius Castoriadis, Alain Touraine and Paul Ricoeur)
- XVII Feminist social theories
- XVIII A crisis of modernity? New diagnoses (Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Bellah, and the debate between liberals and communitarians)
- XIX Neo-pragmatism
- XX How things stand
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
In light of the increasing dominance of the Parsonian school in the 1940s and 1950s, first in the United States and then internationally, one might have presumed that the age of utilitarian intellectual movements was finally past. Parsons' incisive arguments had demonstrated the inadequacy of utility-oriented models of action; in his first major work, The Structure of Social Action, he had already shown how the edifice of utilitarian ideas had disintegrated from within and how leading theoreticians from various disciplines had turned away from this theoretical model as a result. According to Parsons, this was because utilitarianism had never managed to conceptualize the existence of a stable social order in consistent and non-contradictory fashion. After this great feat of criticizing utilitarianism comprehensively yet precisely, there was some justification for Parsons' view that it was no longer possible to take models of utility-oriented action seriously as theoretical approaches within sociology. He did not dispute the applicability of these models to the discipline of economics. But he considered them unacceptable as an integrative theory of the social sciences.
Despite all that, utilitarianism underwent something of a renaissance in the late 1950s; its supporters even launched massive counter-attacks on the edifice of Parsonian thought. One of the reasons for the revival of an intellectual movement that had been presumed dead was that the concept of ‘utility’, which was constitutive of utilitarianism and gave it its name, was multifaceted and thus open to interpretation. Some believed that Parsons' objections could be got round if one understood ‘utility’ somewhat differently.
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- Social TheoryTwenty Introductory Lectures, pp. 94 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009