Abstract
Alexander has succeeded Parsons for some years as the most influential American sociologist and, like Parsons, his work was first constructed by a critical reinterpretation of the classical authors of sociology. It is largely through a study of the Durkheimian writings conferring a special status on the FEVR that the two authors have elaborated, each in their own way, a voluntarist theory of social action. We shall see, in this article, that apart from differences in their interpretations based on their ways of identifying stages in the development of Durkheim's thought, their similarity is to reduce it to a theory of social action.
Keywords:
Talcott Parsons; Jeffrey Alexander; The Elementary Forms of Religious Life