ABSTRACT
Parsons’ critique of my work was published in 1972, but I published my answer to it (see chapter 6 above) only in 1983. The reason for this delay was not only preoccupation with other work, but the feeling that I had already dealt with these matters. Part of my difference with Parsons’ systemic approach had been formulated in “Images of Society” (1959), but that formulation was still exploratory. It was not sufficient to show that the structural-functional approach was not the only way to go; it was necessary to formulate an alternative. To an extent, I had done this in the essay “Culture, Social Structure and Change” which I wrote for the first edition of collected articles that appeared under the title Embattled Reason in 1970. Since by then ten years had passed since the first publication of Max Weber, An Intellectual Portrait (1960), I knew that one day I wanted to write a piece in which Weber’s emphasis on action that made sense to the individual was related to the collective constraints which we have in mind when using the term “social structure.”
