ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the sociological theory of Durkheim and its critique and revision in the structural-functionalism of Talcott Parsons. Like structuralism, these theories have the advantage which comes from working with a sociological perspective; that is, they are not required to create social facts out of psychological or individual facts, by addition, extension, generalisation or less legitimate means. Perhaps the most famous of Durkheim's precepts to the sociologist was to 'consider social facts as things'. An important point which Parsons makes about Durkheim is the latter's belated recognition of the internalisation of values. The type of constraint exercised by the collective conscience in The division of labour, although normative, appears to be external in nature. Unlike Durkheim, Parsons carefully differentiates the normative, or moral, aspects of culture from the cognitive and expressive. Parsons himself, in his primary interest in the social system, is more concerned with value-orientations than with the other two systems (cognitive and cathectic) of culture.
