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• Preface. 1. Theoretical Controversy 2. The Early Period: Interpretation and the Presuppositional Movement Toward Multidimensionality 3. The Middle Period: Specifying the Multidimensional Argument 4. The Later Period (1): The Interchange Model and Parsons’ Final Approach to Multidimensional theory 5. The later Period (2): Socialization, Social change and the Systemic and Historical Bases of Individual Freedom 6. The Methodological Error (1): Neopositivism and the Formalization of Parsons’ Theory 7. The Methodological Error (2): Neopositivist Strategy and the Conflation of Presuppositional Logic with Specific Commitments 8. The Presuppositional Error (1): Sociological Idealism and the Attack on Instrumental Order in the Early and Middle Work 9. The Presuppositional Error (2): Idealist Reduction in the Later Writings 10. Conclusion: ‘Paradigm Revision’ and Parsonianism. Appendix: Conflation and Reduction in the Interpretation of Parsonian Theory. Notes. Works of Parsons. Indices.

‘The most important volume ever published on Parsons.’ Theory and Society‘Alexander’s analysis of Parsons is subtle, insightful and penetrating.’ Contemporary Sociology