Breaking down the question
The command word here is critically analyse, and it governs the whole answer. It asks for two things in balance: a faithful exposition of how Talcott Parsons conceived society as a social system, and a reasoned appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of that conception. A purely descriptive account of the AGIL scheme will not satisfy an examiner; nor will a string of criticisms unmoored from an accurate summary.
The phrase society as a social system is the heart of the matter. For Parsons, society is not a mere aggregate of individuals but an ordered whole whose parts — institutions, roles, norms — are interdependent and tend towards equilibrium. Understanding that organic, systemic vision is the platform on which any critique must be built.
A well-rounded answer therefore moves through three registers: what a social system means for Parsons, the conceptual machinery he built to analyse it (functional prerequisites, pattern variables, value consensus), and finally a measured evaluation drawing on his major critics.
For the fuller theoretical background, use the note on Parsons' social system and pattern variables.
How to approach it
Open by defining the social system in Parsons's own terms — a plurality of interacting actors whose relationships are patterned by shared norms and oriented to a common value framework. Establish at once that his is a voluntaristic theory of action that grew into a systems theory, so the reader sees the arc of his thought.
Then set out the architecture: the four functional prerequisites of the AGIL scheme (adaptation, goal attainment, integration, latency), the pattern variables through which actors choose between alternative role orientations, and the twin mechanisms of socialisation and social control that hold the system in equilibrium. Keep this exposition tight and accurate — it earns the marks that the critique later spends.
Reserve the second half for critical analysis. Marshal the standard objections — the neglect of conflict and change, the charge of conservative bias, over-integration, and the abstraction of the grand theory — but attribute them to named critics and weigh them rather than merely listing them. Close with a balanced verdict that neither dismisses nor canonises Parsons.
Model answer
Talcott Parsons stands as the foremost figure of structural functionalism, and his enduring contribution is the idea of society as a social system. Beginning from a theory of social action, he came to see the interaction of individual actors as settling into stable, patterned relationships. A social system, in his definition, is a plurality of actors interacting with one another in a situation, whose relations are ordered by shared symbols, norms and a common value system. Society is the most inclusive and self-sufficient of such systems.
For any social system to survive, Parsons argued, it must meet four functional prerequisites, captured in the celebrated AGIL scheme. Adaptation secures resources from the environment and is performed pre-eminently by the economy. Goal attainment mobilises resources towards collective ends and is the province of the polity. Integration coordinates the parts and manages their relations, the work of legal and normative institutions. Latency, or pattern maintenance, sustains and transmits the culture and motivations of actors, the task of family, religion and education. Each subsystem specialises in one imperative, and their interchange keeps the whole in working order.
The behaviour of actors within the system is patterned by the pattern variables, paired alternatives between which every role orientation must choose: affectivity versus affective neutrality, ascription versus achievement, particularism versus universalism, diffuseness versus specificity, and collectivity versus self-orientation. Traditional societies cluster towards the first pole of each pair, modern societies towards the second; the variables thus become a tool for comparing social types.
Order is maintained through value consensus. Actors internalise the central value system during socialisation, so that shared values become part of the personality itself; where socialisation is imperfect, mechanisms of social control bring behaviour back into line. The result is a strong pull towards equilibrium — a self-regulating tendency by which the system absorbs disturbances and restores stability. Change, for Parsons, is typically gradual and evolutionary, a movement of structural differentiation in which functions once fused are progressively assigned to specialised institutions.
Powerful as this architecture is, it has drawn sustained criticism. David Lockwood and later conflict theorists charge that Parsons over-emphasises consensus and neglects the conflicts of interest and power built into the division of labour. For Ralf Dahrendorf, coercion and the clash of interests are as basic to social life as integration. The scheme also struggles to explain radical change: because equilibrium is the resting state, revolution and rupture appear as pathology rather than as a normal feature of history.
C. Wright Mills, in his critique of grand theory, objected that Parsons's abstractions float free of empirical reality and cannot be translated into researchable propositions. Robert K. Merton, though sympathetic, rejected the assumption of universal functionalism, insisting that some arrangements are dysfunctional and that we must ask functional for whom. Feminists add that the model naturalises the gendered division of labour, casting women's domestic role as functionally necessary. Finally, critics detect a conservative bias: by treating the existing order as an integrated, value-sharing whole, the theory risks legitimising the status quo and obscuring domination.
On balance, Parsons offers an unrivalled attempt to grasp society as an interconnected totality, and concepts such as AGIL and the pattern variables remain analytically fertile. Yet his relative silence on conflict, power and abrupt change limits the theory's explanatory reach. The most defensible verdict treats his social-system model not as a complete account of social life but as a rigorous statement of one side of it — the sources of order — that must be read alongside the theories of conflict it provoked.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward the candidate who honours both halves of critically analyse. A common failing is to spend the whole answer expounding AGIL and the pattern variables, leaving the critique to a hurried final paragraph; the reverse error — attacking Parsons before he has been fairly presented — reads as prejudice. Aim for a genuine two-part structure, roughly balanced.
Precision with the conceptual vocabulary signals command of the thinker. Getting the four AGIL imperatives right, pairing each with its subsystem, and naming the pattern variables correctly all mark out a serious answer. In the critical section, attributing objections to named theorists — Lockwood, Dahrendorf, Mills, Merton — lifts the response above a generic list of complaints.
The strongest scripts end with a considered judgement rather than a shrug. Recognising that Parsons illuminates order while underplaying conflict, and that his system belongs in dialogue with the conflict tradition it provoked, demonstrates the evaluative maturity the twenty-mark ceiling is designed to test.