Parsons' sociology represents an attempt to develop a unified theoretical approach to the social sciences. It embodies a perspective which has been influential for several decades in academic sociology, although its unquestioned dominance has been challenged from a number of directions in recent years.¹ Parsons' seminal work, The Structure of Social Action, indicates some of the theoreticaluestions that were to influence his work as a whole. While not accepting all Weber and Sombart's major propositions, especially in so far as they were pessimistic concerning the future of Western-type societies, Parsons drew attention to Sombart's notion of a historically-unfolding, capitalist "Geist", and to Weber's analysis of the protestant ethic. He discovered in both a recognition of the autonomy of "value elements' in society and, more generally, saw this 'same system of generalized social theory" to be a distinctive focus of nineteenth-century sociological thought.²