Explain the concept and define each component of Parsons’s AGIL scheme. Use a concrete contemporary example in your explanation.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Parsons maintains that there are four “functional imperatives” or requirements encountered by all action systems. That is, there are four basic problems that a society, group, or individual must confront in order to survive as a system of action. Parsons called these four problems or functions adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and latent pattern maintenance. Parsons’s students used the acronym “AGIL” to refer to this scheme. These four functions or requirements are evident at every level of every system, from entire social systems, to particular subsystems, to the level of the individual actor-ego. Adaptation (A) refers to responses to the physical environment. At the level of the social system, the economy typically fulfills the requirement of adaptation. That is, the economy is the subsystem that adapts to the environment for social purposes (providing goods and services). Goal attainment (G) refers to the problem of resolving the discrepancies between “the inertial tendencies of the system and its ‘needs’ resulting from interchange with the situation”. At the level of the social system, the requirement of goal attainment is typically met by the polity, as it is the realm in which goals and resources are prioritized, and discrepancies are resolved. The polity and government establish status and reward systems so that social goals can be attained. Integration (I) refers to the coordination of a system’s or subsystem’s constituent parts, since “all social systems are differentiated and segmented into relatively independent units”. Within the four systems of action (behavioral organism, personality, social system, and cultural system), the function of integration is met primarily by the social system. Latent pattern maintenance (L) refers to the “imperative of maintaining the stability of the patterns of institutionalized culture”. This function is carried out primarily by the cultural system, as it is through culture (made up of shared meanings and values) that specific patterns of behavior are maintained. Within the social system, the function of latent pattern maintenance, that is the maintaining of shared values, is most readily apparent in the realm of religion.