Pitirim Sorokin

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The Russian-American sociologist, social critic, and educator Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968) was a leading exponent of the importance of values and broad knowledge in an era dominated by science and power.

Pitirim Sorokin was born in the village of Turya, Russia, on Jan. 21, 1889. His training was concentrated at the University of St. Petersburg, though he also studied at the Psycho-Neurological Institute in the same city. From 1914 to 1916 he taught at the institute and then at the university, where he was a professor of sociology from 1919 to 1922.

After serving as secretary to Kerensky, Sorokin was forced to leave the country by the Soviet government. A brief period in Czechoslovakia was followed by several lectureships in the United States, where he was appointed professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota (1924-1930). Sorokin founded the department of sociology at Harvard University, where he remained until his retirement in 1959. He was elected president of the American Sociological Association (1965) and continued to attend professional meetings all over the world until 1968.

Sorokin's massive publication list and personal influence encompassed many areas. During the Minnesota period, he was interested in social class, social change, and rural community life. The key works of that period were Social Mobility (1927) and Contemporary Sociological Theories (1928). In the former he distinguished vertical and horizontal forms of mobility and showed the importance of institutional channels as mechanisms of mobility. The latter work provided a unique and critical summary of numerous sociological theories, with particular emphasis on the shortcomings of nonhuman and excessively abstract explanations.

Though Sorokin and his associates cumulated and ordered a considerable body of material on rural-urban contrasts (Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology, 1929; A Systematic Source Book in Rural Sociology, 1930-1932), social change and its consequences came to be his major focus for many years. After analyzing the causes of revolution in The Sociology of Revolution (1925), he began the imposing four-volume study called Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937-1941). This work revolved around the controversial thesis that genuine change is traceable to basic cultural presuppositions which undergird each major social institution, and that these presuppositions change because each type apprehends only a portion of complex societal experience. Sorokin therefore posited a series of varyingly recurrent cycles in social change, from ideational (religiousintuitional) to sensate (objective-materialistic) to idealistic (a mixture of the preceding types).

From this standpoint, Sorokin criticized the application of natural science viewpoints to social science, first in Sociocultural Causality, Space, and Time (1943) and with gusto in Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology (1956). In a related vein, he wrote as a sociological Jeremiah against the excesses of modern sensate culture - especially in such books as The Crisis of Our Age (1941), Man and Society in Calamity (1942), The Reconstruction of Humanity (1948), and SOS: The Meaning of Our Crisis (1951).

As an antidote, Sorokin's last 2 decades of life were devoted to the cause of altruism and love, for which he established a research institute at Harvard. Some results of this interest were published in Altruistic Love (1950), Forms and Techniques of Altruistic and Spiritual Growth (1954), and The Ways and Power of Love (1954). However, Sorokin's fame rests on his scholarship and encouragement of sociological theory. His final work, Sociological Theories of Today (1966), was a detailed critique of trends in sociology since 1925. He died at Winchester, Mass., on Feb. 10, 1968.

Further Reading

Sorokin wrote two autobiographical works: Leaves from a Russian Diary (1924; rev. ed. 1950) and A Long Journey (1963). The latter is more comprehensive and illuminates his thinking during his long career in the United States. In addition, Frank R. Cowell, History, Civilization, and Culture (1952), provides a summary of Sorokin's approach to social change. Two volumes of appreciation and some critical analysis of his work appeared in 1963: Edward A. Tiryakian, ed., Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change: Essays in Honor of Pitirim A. Sorokin, and Philip J. Allen, ed., Pitirim A. Sorokin in Review. See also Jacques J. P. Maquet, The Sociology of Knowledge (trans. 1951), and, for Sorokin's period at Harvard, Paul Buck, ed., Social Sciences at Harvard, 1860-1920: From Inculcation to the Open Mind (1965).

Additional Sources

Johnston, Barry V., Pitirim A. Sorokin: an intellectual biography, Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Sorokin and civilization: a centennial assessment, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995.

Professor of sociology with special interest in the supraconscious, manifestations of genius, and creativity. He was born January 21, 1889, at Turya, Vologda Province, Russia. He studied at the University of St. Petersburg (M.A. criminal law, 1916; Ph.D. sociology, 1922). He became a lecturer at the University of St. Petersburg but was eventually banished by the Soviet government in 1922.

He moved to the United States and became a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota (1924-30). In 1930, he moved to Harvard University, where he founded and headed the department of sociology (1930-43). In 1943, he became the director of the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism where he remained until his retirement. Sorokin published 30 books on sociology and history.

He contributed an introduction to The Psychic Source Book, edited by Alson J. Smith, which includes an appendix in which Sorokin wrote on the importance of parapsychology. He died February 19, 1968.

Pitirim Sorokin (1934).

Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (Russian: Питирим Александрович Сорокин) (January 21, 1889 – February 11, 1968) was a Russian-American sociologist born in Komi (Finno-Ugric region of Russia). Academic and political activist in Russia, he emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1923. He founded the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. Like C. W. Mills, he was a vocal opponent of Talcott Parsons' theories. He is best known for his contributions to the social cycle theory.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 3 See also 4 Publications 5 On Sorokin 6 References 7 External links 8 See also

Biography

Supporting himself as artisan and clerk, he was able to study at the University of St. Petersburg and to teach sociology and law. Sorokin was imprisoned three times by the czarist regime of Russian Empire; during the Russian Revolution he was a member of Alexander Kerensky's Russian Provisional Government. After the October Revolution he engaged in anti-Communist activities, for which he was condemned to death by the victorious Communist government; the sentence was commuted to exile. He emigrated in 1923 to the United States and was naturalized in 1930. Sorokin was professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota (1924–30) and at Harvard University (1930–55), where he founded the Department of Sociology.

Works

His writings cover the breadth of sociology; his controversial theories of social process and of the historical typology of cultures are expounded in Social and Cultural Dynamics (4 vol., 1937–41; rev. and abridged ed. 1957) and many other works. He was also interested in social stratification, the history of sociological theory, and altruistic behavior.

Sorokin is author of books such as The crisis of our age and Power and morality, but his magnum opus is Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937-1941). His unorthodox theories contributed to the social cycle theory and inspired (or alienated) many sociologists.

In his Social and Cultural Dynamics he classified societies according to their 'cultural mentality', which can be ideational (reality is spiritual), sensate (reality is material), or idealistic (a synthesis of the two). He suggested that major civilizations evolve through these three in turn: ideational, idealistic, sensate. Each of these phases of cultural development not only seeks to describe the nature of reality, but also stipulates the nature of human needs and goals to be satisfied, the extent to which they should be satisfied, and the methods of satisfaction. Sorokin has interpreted the contemporary Western civilisation as a sensate civilisation dedicated to technological progress and prophesied its fall into decadence and the emergence of a new ideational or idealistic era.

Sorokin's papers are currently held by the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada where they are available for the public. In March 2009 the Sorokin Research Center was established at the facilities of Syktyvkar State University in the Republic of Komi for the purpose of research and publication of archive materials, mainly from the collection at the University of Saskatchewan. The first research project “Selected Correspondence of Pitirim Sorokin: Scientist from Komi on The Service of Humanity” (in Russian) has been drafted and will be in print in the Fall of 2009 in Russia.^[1]

See also

• Integral movement
• Social cycle theory
• war cycles

Publications

• Social and Cultural Dynamics: A Study of Change in Major Systems of Art, Truth, Ethics, Law and Social Relationships (1957 (reprinted 1970) ed.). Boston: Extending Horizons Books, Porter Sargent Publishers. ISBN 0-87558-029-7. 
• (with Lunden, W. A.), Power and morality: who shall guard the guardians? Boston, MA: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1959
• The crisis of our age, Chatam, NY: Oneworld Publications, Ltd, 1992

On Sorokin

• Cuzzort, R. P. and King, E. W., Twentieth-Century social thought (5th ed.). New York, NY: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1995
• Gambescia, C., Invito alla lettura di Sorokin. Rome, Italy: Edizioni Settimo Sigillo, 2002
• Johnston, B.V (1995). Pitirim A. Sorokin an Intelellectual Biography . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
• Mills, C. W., The Sociological Imagination. New York, NY: The Oxford University Press, 2000

References

1. ^ "Sorokin Research Center (Russia, Komi Republic, Syktyvkar)" (in Russian). Sorokin Research Center. http://www.pitirimsorokin.org. Retrieved 2009-09-11. 

External links

• Sorokin Research Center (Russia, Komi Republic, Syktyvkar)
• International Sorokin Website in progress
• Sorokin Research Center in LiveJournal
• Community in LiveJournal
• http://www2.asanet.org/governance/sorokin.html
• Pitirim Sorokin Collection in Canada

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See also

• Komi Republic
• Sorokin Research Center

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