ABSTRACT
Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This chapter illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons’ model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons’ model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the 2008 U.S. recession. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is used to articulate the argument that vulnerability to such events results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons’ terms, structural change occurs in the relations between polity, economy, community, and culture. The Occupy movement has called attention to the need for such fundamental change. 7.1 IntroductionThis chapter revisits an early cybernetic and systems-theoretic model-today it might be called a complex systems model-
proposed by the sociologist Talcott Parsons [15-16] and argues that this model can help us understand some of the underlying causes of the 2008 recession that continues, as of 2013, to afflict the US economy. The recession, which followed a near total meltdown of the US financial system, has involved massive losses of jobs, homes, and savings. This chapter does not focus on concrete and proximal causes of this crisis, i.e., on actions by home owners, mortgage providers, banks, investments firms, regulatory agencies, Congress, the President, etc., about which there is no shortage of accounts. Instead, it poses the question of why the United States was vulnerable to such a crisis, more specifically, what aspects of the US societal structure generated this vulnerability.By approaching the recession crisis abstractly, Parsons’ model also sheds light on past crises, whose concrete and proximal causes were different, as well as illuminating societal problems of a completely different character. Finally, the model can be used not only to diagnose problems, but also to offer solutions. Specifically, it suggests that changes in societal structure might reduce vulnerability to such economic disasters.To be succinct, the model says: (i) A modern society, as distinct from a pre-modern traditional society, is differentiated in that economy, polity, community, and culture are distinguishable from, but in interaction with, one another. (ii) In general, differentiation of a whole can be flawed: different aspects of a system can be linked together too weakly or too strongly, or links can be of the wrong kind, or one component can unduly influence other components. (iii) The 2008 US political-economic crisis and similar crises in the past are arguably the result of flawed differentiation, i.e., relations between economy, polity, community, and culture are at least partially dysfunctional. This may be the underlying cause of many (but not all) of the crises endemic to Western societies. These crises are systemic, and avoiding them requires structural change.
