I was not talking at all about structural-functionalism in general, but with a highly specific aspect of it, namely the concept of a role as the nexus between social structure and social action (or individual behavior).
My paper is not really concerned with structural-functionalism in general, but only with some reasons why this concept has proved so problematic. Role theory was certainly challenged by feminists concerned with gender roles, but the concept of role itself and its theoretical status were rarely interrogated. Most of the Marxist Left - from hippy California to the DDR - implicitly or explicitly accepted a structural-functionalist concept of role in their social ontology. At most it was admitted, that the concept of role could be defined in various different ways (the role of an individual (acquired or assigned), the role of a component in a social system, etc.). But Parsons already knew that. It is patently absurd to say that "there are no correct definitions" (except perhaps in Wikipedia!). There are correct and incorrect definitions, appropriate definitions and inappropriate ones. However, while a definition may be correct, it may not be adequate for a given purpose. A definition may be relevant or irrelevant, applicable or inapplicable, useful or useless. For example, a textbook definition of the "real interest rate" is simply any given nominal rate adjusted for inflation. That definition is correct, as far as it goes. But that definition is not really adequate in macroeconomic analysis, since what we are interested in there, is the real general level of interest rates, the average real rates, the most influential real rates, and relevant representative indicators of the trend in the real rates, where the (synchronic and diachronic) averaging process, the dispersion of interest rates, and the estimation of price inflation are of concern - we want to know how all this impacts on incomes and expenditures in the real world. When the general level of indebtedness is large, then as PostKeynesians acknowledge, even rather small shifts in interest rates can have substantial macroeconomic effects, and consequently they are politically charged variables. J.
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