ABSTRACT
Despite ideological obstacles during the Communist regime (1948–1989), there is a vast body of evidence that attests to a lasting preoccupation of Czech sociologists with Parsons's way of doing sociology. The bulk of this chapter is devoted to the debates within Czech sociology in the 1960s when Parsons's work found resonance, especially in the account of social structure and the theory of modernization. The most ambitious study of Czech sociologists, Czechoslovak Society (1969), expounded on Parsons's implication that communist societies deviate from the progressive line of evolutionary development and conveyed a definitive statement regarding sociology's role in relation to its ambition to reconcile science and reform. It is argued that, on the whole, Czech sociologists turned to Parsons not only to unearth synthetic and explanatory perspectives that were found wanting but also to find direction in their understanding of sociological ambition. The chapter concludes with the account of the return to Parsons after 1989 in Czech debates on the transformation of society and social change.
