ABSTRACT

To a very large extent post-war sociological theory has confined itself to dealing with integrated social systems. Thus, for example, functionalism, at least in the form in which Radcliffe-Brown presents it, revives the analogy between society and the organism, while Parsons in his The Social System confines his analysis to institutionalized roles, i.e. those roles in which the behaviour of ‘ego’ and ‘alter’ is governed by norms which they share, and each has a ‘need-disposition’ to act in accordance with the other's requirements. In political sociology, too, one finds the notion of balance and consensus concealed behind the question-begging term ‘legitimate authority’ in terms of which, following Weber, the state is defined.