ABSTRACT
For sure, it is not an easy reading. The reader has in hand a long, complex, and uneven text written more than a quarter century ago. The problems are embedded in an esoteric system of theory, whose knowledge is sometimes taken for granted; the prose is complex up to the point of being sometimes irritating; the arguments are often developed in a peculiar way. As with most texts left unfinished at the time of the author’s death, the lack of a final revision makes room for occasional repetitions and ambiguities. What’s more, the author has somewhat already attained the status of a “classic,” in the sense of being one of those authors that everybody thinks should be read and nobody feels like reading. Many in the older cohorts of the discipline think they have already had enough of Parsons in bygone days. And many in the youngest cohorts apparently do not even see the point in reading his works: the disciplinary folklore transmitted by contemporary textbooks seems to suffice.
