THE PROBLEM OF ACTION AND STRUCTURE IN THE GENERAL THEORETICAL SOCIOLOGY - A CRITICAL-REVIEW OF FARARO,THOMAS,J. THE MEANING-OF-GENERAL-THEORETICAL-SOCIOLOGY

Thomas J. Fararo, who is one of the founders of contemporary mathemati cal sociology has made a comprehensive survey of the sociological trad itions in his book The Meaning of the General Theoretical Sociology. I n this book he has pointed out'' the unification process'' of three tr aditions of sociological theories - systems thinking, theory of action , structuralism - and draw a brief outline in the generative structura lism that is supposed to be generated from the process. In his idea th e microsociology and the macro-sociology, or the action theory and the structural theory harmoniously unified in the generative structuralis m. Yet because it is also based on the substantialism of action and st ructure, it may be not able to solve the problem of conceptual circula tion between action and structure which traditional sociological theor ies could not have solved. Therefore his idea of the generative struct uralism is not in the right direction of the unification process'' in the general theoretical sociology.