ABSTRACT
Classical sociology was interested in societies for which one could postulate or envisage a degree of correspondence among values, norms and roles, and in which the institutions played a centrai role. To think of the age of Parsons as the culmination of classical sociology is in the first instance to suggest that since the middle of the twentieth century the discipline has undergone an ever-deepening crisis which has bred centrifugal tendencies and worked towards its disintegration. The theoreticians of post-modernity did not invent new categories; they were not at the origin of the wide-scale introduction of new paradigms, whether in the social sciences or elsewhere, primarily in architecture. Throughout the world, globalization is an economic, political and cultural theme rather than a specifically social one. The study of institutions also has much to gain from the introduction of the subject's point of view. Classically, the institutions are conceived of as the focuses of socialization, of order and of public service.
