Talcott Parsons explained this scheme with a full theory of structural differentiation, where the four functional imperatives that all societies must meet allows a classification of societies in terms of the degree of institutional specialization around each of the functions these four functions were called the pattern variables, relating to the economy, polity, value system and motivation that all societies must satisfy. The AGIL (Adaptation, Goal-attainment, Integration and Latency) schema as Parsons believed was necessary for any social system to survive and develop. Let us briefly see what the AGIL scheme is all about.

• Adaptation: the securing of material resources available for distribution, which might be called the economic function
• Goal-attainment: akin to the political allocation of resources
• Integration: involving the development of a stable set of norms, as for example, embodied in law
• Latency: involving ordered patterns of value-commitment.

Parsons asserted that there were two dimensions to societies: instrumental and expressive. By this he meant that there are qualitative differences between kinds of social interaction.

He observed that people can have personalized and formally detached relationships based on the roles that they play. The characteristics that were associated with each kind of interaction he called the pattern variables.

An interaction can be characterized by one identifier of each contrastive pair:

• Affectivity versus Affective neutrality
• Self-orientation versus Collectivity-orientation
• Universalism versus Particularism
• Ascription versus Achievement
• Specificity versus Diffuseness

Further, feminist theory criticized each approach for the neglect of the sexual division of labour and the role of gender inequalities in capitalist modernity. Postmodern sociologists have emphasized the possibility of dedifferentiation as well as hyperdifferentiation, which are beyond the scope of this lecture.

Social Stratification

The more complex societies are, the more unequally they tend to distribute their scarce resource. The unequal distribution of scarce resources leads to social stratification, meaning that the society is divided into a number of strata or layers. Stratified societies use a system of ranking according to:

• Wealth or how much of the societal resources a person owns;
• Prestige or the degree of honour a person’s position in society evokes; and
• Power or the degree to which a person can direct others as a result of the preceding factors.

Wealth, which includes income and property, is an element of social class, whereas prestige is an element of status. To begin with, class, status and power are important dimensions of stratification. That is, stratification systems are analysed by looking at each of these phenomena.