Generalized Media of Exchange

What is Generalized Media of Exchange? In any type of exchange transactions are facilitated by symbolic media.

One of the ways in which Parsons introduces some dynamism, some fluidity into his theoretical system is through his ideas on the generalized media of exchange within and among the four action systems. Space does not allow extended consideration of other aspects of Parsons’ amazingly fertile sociological imagination as exhibited in works published in the 1960s. In a series of interrelated papers he now focused attention on what he termed “generalized media of exchange”, such as money and power.

Parsons argued that in any type of exchange transactions are facilitated by symbolic media. When it comes to the buying and selling of goods in an economy that is no longer based on barter, money is used so as to facilitate transactions and are really symbolic modes of communication. The money is not worth much by itself; its value is evident only in terms of what it says symbolically in an exchange relationship. What is more, money deposited in a bank by many individual depositors allows the bank to inject much larger sums of money into the economy, thus allowing an otherwise unattainable expansion of economic transactions. 

In similar ways, if many individuals empower political representatives and governmental personnel through the electoral process to act in their behalf, governmental action acquires the necessary power to expand the social and political system’s effectiveness. More precisely, within the social system, those in the political system are able to create political power, they can expend that power, thereby allowing it to circulate freely in, and have influence over, the social system. 

Through such an expenditure of power, leaders presumably strengthen the political system as well as the society as a whole. Thus, symbolic media of interchange have the capacity to be created and to circulate in the larger society, and more generally it is the generalized media that circulate between the four action systems and within the structures of each of those systems.

Thus, what Parsons proposes is that the links among action components are ultimately informational. This means that transactions are mediated by symbols. Parsons’ emphasis on information is consistent with the development of the idea of a cybernetic hierarchy of control. Informational exchanges, or cybernetic controls, are seen as operating in at least three ways. 

First, the interchanges or exchanges among the four subsystems of the overall action system are carried out by means of different types of symbolic media; that is, money, power, influence, or commitments. Second, the interchanges within any of the four action systems are also carried out by means of distinctive symbolic media. Finally, the system requisites of adaptation (A), goal attainment (G), integration (I), and latency (L) determine the type of generalized symbolic media used in an inter- or intra-systemic exchange.

Within the social system, the adaptive sector utilizes money as the medium of exchange with the other three sectors; the goal-attainment sector employs power – the capacity to induce conformity – as its principal medium of exchange; the integrative sector of a social system relies upon influence – the capacity to persuade; and the latency sector uses commitments – especially the capacity to be loyal. The analysis of interchanges of specific structures within social systems should thus focus on the input – output exchanges utilizing different symbolic media.

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You can visit some significant Theories by some Great Theorists:
Voluntaristic Theory of Action (Voluntaristic Action), Four-Function Paradigm (AGIL Model in Systemic Model), Cynicism (Circulation of Elites), Hierarchy of the Sciences (The Classification of the Science), The Philosophy of Money, Organicism, The Laws of Three Stages, Order and progress (Interrelation between Social Statics and Social Dynamics)

Reference:

• George Ritzer, Sociological Theory.
• Jonathan H. Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory.
• Kenneth Allan, Contemporary Social and Sociological Theory.
• Ruth A. Wallace and Alison Wolf, Contemporary Sociological Theory. 

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Related Questions:

What is the Generalized Media of Exchange?

The main core of the concept of Generalized Media of Exchange as proposed by Parsons.

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