ABSTRACT
The impact of ‘the classics’ on Anglo-American sociology was, in the first instance, very much the achievement of Talcott Parsons (1902-79), whose graduate studies in the UK and Europe in the 1920s had familiarised him with the work of, among others, the trio of Marx, Weber and Durkheim (see Chapters 2-4). In the 1930s Parsons set out to construct a major work of theoretical synthesis, drawing especially upon the work of Weber and Durkheim. The result of his efforts, The Structure of Social Action, appeared in 1937. The work consisted in large part in the presentation of four thinkers, two of whom-Alfred Marshall, the economist, and Vilfredo Pareto, the economist/sociologist-have not enjoyed such continuing significance for sociology. This book provided the world of English-speaking sociology with its first significant and systematic presentation of the ideas of Weber and Durkheim.
