Analyse the relevance of 'Pattern variables' in the study of social change. (UPSC CSE Mains 2020 - Sociology, Paper 1)
- Parsons organized his analysis of social action and activities within social systems is through pattern variables. Remember that social action is voluntary, oriented, and subject to guidance or influence of social norms. These pattern variables provide a way of categorizing the types of choices and forms of orientation for individual social actors, both in contemporary society and historically.
- The pattern variables are constructed as polar opposites that give the range of possible decisions and modes of orientation for a social actor. They are ideal types of social action that, for Parsons, provided a conceptual scheme for analyzing action within systems. In practice, individual choice is unlikely to be so starkly divided between the polar opposites and the social action of an individual may be a combination of the two, between the opposites. That is, there may be a continuity of possible forms of action bridging the extremes, so that much social action occurs between the poles.
There are in all five pattern variables, each side of it represents one polar extreme. These pattern variables are
i) affectivity versus affective neutrality
ii) self-orientation versus collectivity orientation
iii) universalism versus particularism
iv) ascription versus achievement
v) specificity versus diffuseness
- Parsons studies variability in patterns of actions of people in different situations. This perspective is derived from Max Weber’s concept of “ideal type” which was later systematised by Talcott Parson.
- The pattern variables, according to Parsons, not only define the nature of role interaction and role expectations in social system but provide in addition, the overall direction in which most members of a social system choose their roles. It also gives us an idea about the nature of the social system.
- According to Parsons sociology can approach the problem of social change if it delimits its analysis in two respects, first, change must be studied with the help of a set of conceptual categories or paradigms. The conceptual categories that Parsons puts forward for such analyses of change are those of motivational and value orientation, as well as those that relate to the functional prerequisites of the system. Second, social change, according to Parsons, must be studied at a specific historical level rather than in a general form applicable universally to all societies. Parsons, therefore, held the view that for sociologists it is relatively easier to study processes of change within the social system than processes of changes of the social system as a whole.
- Parsons argued that modern society or ‘modernity’ has seen a general shift in favour of universalism, performance, specificity and affective neutrality.
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