Spencer and Parsons on functional differentiation: Some illustrative parallels

While Herbert Spencer is widely recognized as one of the first figures to speak about differentiation as an important sociological concept, accounts of the discipline’s development often give the impression that his ideas about this process have little in common with those of later thinkers, or were quickly superseded by more sophisticated efforts. Countering this view, the following article argues that the theories of differentiation articulated by Talcott Parsons and his followers in the middle of the 20th century were highly derivative of, and in some respects entirely identical to, those proposed by Spencer. By examining some illustrative parallels between Spencerian theory and its ‘structural-functionalist’ counterpart, I demonstrate that Parsons repeats Spencer in several key respects, and show that the similarities in question are a logical consequence of the metatheoretical commitments shared by both figures. The analysis suggests that these commitments will lead to common features, and generate common problems, in any account of differentiation that begins from their assumptions.