Reputation and Predecessor Selection: Parsons and the Institutionalists

Abstract

Previous research contends that when Talcott Parsons developed the substantive argument of The Structure of Social Action, he turned away from the theoretical emptiness of American social science and drew on the ideas offour European social thinkersWeber, Durkheim, Pareto, and Marshall. Such research exemplifies the content-fit model of predecessor selection, which assumes that intellectual predecessors are chosen on the basis of a fit between their ideas and the project of the thinker who engages them. This modelfails to explain Parsons's exclusion of the American institutionalists, most notably his Amherst teachers Walton Hamilton and Clarence Ayres, whose work fit directly with the argument of The Structure of Social Action. Institutionalist work was also characterized, however, by its negative reputation, particularly at Harvard University in the 1920s and 1930s, where Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim, and Weber were thinkers of growing standing. Examination of Parsons's involvement in the local Harvard network indicates that contemporary judgments decisively affected his choice of intellectual predecessors. This analysis also brings to light the organizational and institutional conditions under which a reputational model is required to understand the process of predecessor selection.