Abstract
This article deals with the concept of social role from a theoretical perspective. It outlines the history of how this term has been understood and used in sociological thought, which theoretical conceptions it is bound up with and what questions and problems it evokes.
The discussion of this concept peaked in the 1970s, and then subsided. The topic of social roles has been sidelined mainly because attention turned to the issue of the actor and its actions.
This article tries to show that it is nevertheless helpful to return to it, primarily because the social role concept may be key to solving the long-standing problem associated with the philosophical-theoretical antithesis of the individual and society, associated with the dualism of action and structure in sociology, or characterized as the antithesis of individualism and holism.
