ABSTRACT
Talcott Parsons's starting point is a theoretical distinction made by the German sociologist, Ferdinand Tonnies. Tonnies argued that human beings always live in two different kinds of social world which he called 'community' and 'society'. The notion of social behaviour is at the heart of 'transactional sociology' and what is called 'ethnomethodology'. Bureaucracy involves, according to Weber, the elimination of all irrational personal factors in social relationships. It assumes a form of authority in which it is the legal occupation of an office that matters, rather than an individual's personal qualities or hereditary position. The social worker or doctor has to be objective and detached. An interesting area of study is that which is concerned with the way in which a society of this kind brings deviants back into the fold. Dealing with such people is the task of the medical and social work professions.
