Pitirim A. Sorokin

Contents

1. Annotation……………………………………………………………………………2
2. Biography……………………………………………………………………………..3
3. Sociology as a Science…………………………………………………………..4
4. Major Fields of Sorokin's Philosophy of History……………………..6
5. Sorokin's Sociocultural Congeries, Systems,

     and Supersystems………………………………………………………………...7

6. Main Cultural Systems and Supersystems……………………….….….9
7. Social Systems and Social Congeries (or Organized and Unorganized Groups)……………………………………………………….…..12
8. Interrelationship of Social and Cultural Systems…………….……..13
9. Writings on Social Change…………………………………………………….14

10.  Sorokin as a Social Change Writer……………………………………….15

11.  Social Change and Sorokin's Philosophy of History……………...16

12.  Systematization of Social Change………………………………….….…17

13.  Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….19

14.  Vocabulary...............................................................................19

15.   References……………………………………………………………………….…20

 

Annotation

Питирим Сорокин родился в 1889 году в селе Турья Яренского уезда Вологодской области, назван в честь епископа Питирима, признанного местным святым. Его отец - Александр Прокопич был ремесленником, занимался церковно-реставрационными работами, мать - Пелагея Васильевна, была зырянкой крестьянского происхождения. Питирим Александрович всегда проявлял интерес к знаниям, в 1902 году он поступает, а в 1904 заканчивает двуклассную гамскую школу и поступает в 3х - классную хреновскую церковно-учительскую школу. Однако закончить ее он не успевает в связи с арестом, который последовал вслед за его увлечением революционной деятельностью. В тюрьме (1906-1907 гг.) он знакомится с трудами Лаврова, Михайловского, Ницше, Бакунина и др., что и определило его интерес к социальному познанию. Сам он называет этот период “тюремные университеты”. Самообразование позволило ему сдать экзамены экстерном за полный курс гимназии, и в 1909 году Питирим Сорокин поступает в столичный психоневрологический институт, где по инициативе Бехтерева была создана кафедра социологии, а через год он переводится на юридический факультет университета, где учится под руководством выдающегося правоведа того времени Л.И.Петражинского. В 1915 году П.Сорокин сдает магистерский экзамен, с 1917 года он - приват-доцент Петербургского университета, а с 1920 - профессор, руководитель кафедры социологии. Он в своих трудах развивает социологические идеи Дюркгейма, с которым ведет активную переписку, вносит собственный существенный вклад в развитие мировой социологической науки. Отношения с новыми властителями России у П.Сорокина складывались крайне сложно и после ряда арестов, он был выслан из страны в 1922 году, вместе с Н.А.Бердяевым и другими видными учеными России. П.А.Сорокин вместе с женой - Еленой Петровной Боратынской - недолго прожив в Европе, отправляется в Америку, где становится ведущим специалистом в области прикладной и теоретической социологии, профессором Массачусетского университета, где и умирает в возрасте 79 лет в 1968 году. Характерно, что во всех справочниках и мировых энциклопедиях его называют выдающимся американским социологом.

Основные работы: “Система социологии”, “Структурная социология”, “Бойня - революция 1917 года”, “Социальная мобильность”, “Социальная  и культурная мобильность” и др.

 

Biography

Pitirim A. Sorokin was born in 1889 in Komi (province in Northern Russia) into a peasant family. During his early childhood he traveled with his father and two brothers earning their living by remodeling and painting rural churches. His strong interest in education, combined with a natural talent and work ethic, soon transformed him into a leading Russian social scientist and famous politician who was at the center of the Russian Revolution in 1917. In 1923, after his banishment by the Bolsheviks, Pitirim Sorokin started a new life in the United States. In less than 10 years the Russian émigré became a world-renowned sociologist and the founder of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. Over 30 major books were published over a period of 50 years of active intellectual life. His ideas attracted the attention of Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer, Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy, political activists and yoga followers, military and peace proponents. At the time of his death in 1968 Pitirim Sorokin was one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sociology as a Science

In  Contemporary Sociological Theories  Sorokin takes a panoramic walk through what he described as the forest of sociological theory. As in any forest, one finds sterile flowers, weeds, strong trees, healthy plants, and beautiful flowers. The wily sociologist should seek and use the beautiful, healthy, and strong forms while avoiding their barren or uncultivated counterparts. Sterile flowers are theories that exhaust themselves on questions such as these: What is sociology? What should it be? What is progress? What is the relationship between society and the individual? What are the differ­ences between cultural, social, and psychological phenomena? Many scholars spend entire careers in these "antechambers of sociology" and mistake them for the whole building. They pile words upon words without producing any genuine understanding of the social world. In Sorokin's mind these theorists were partly responsible for the anti-sociological sentiments of many intellectuals. Critics of sociology right­fully said, "Instead of a long and tedious reasoning of what sociology is, show it in fact. Instead of a discussion of how sociology ought to be built, build it. Instead of 'flapping' around the introductory problems of a science . . . give us a single real analysis of the phenomena." The sociological forest also abounds with weeds. The most trouble­some and damaging among them is the "sociological preacher," who is concerned with what is good or bad, how to save the world from evil, and how humans should best progress in the modern age. Practitioners of this style have pretended to be omniscient doctors who know how the world is to be saved and give their "prescriptions" about war eradication, birth-control, labor organiza­tion . . . and so forth. In this way, all kinds of nonsense have been styled, published, circulated and taught as "sociology." Every idler has pretended to be a sociologist. Shall we wonder that this again has discredited sociology greatly.Other weeds in the forest are those who overgeneralize from their find­ings, insufficiently study existing facts, are ignorant of past knowledge, and use sloppy logic combined with carelessness in testing and verifying hypotheses. These practices and the scholars who use them create major problems for the acceptance of sociology by serious scientists. Such underbrush must be cleared away so the strong plants and beautiful flowers of scientific sociology can bloom and replace the forest with a well-tended garden.To coun­ter this unfortunate tendency, Sorokin offered an operational approach to the discipline. Sociology is a study, first, of the relationship and correlations between various classes of social phenomena, (correlations between economic and religious; family and moral; juridical and economic; mobility and political phenomena and so on); second, that between the social and the nonsocial (geographic, biological, etc.,) phenomena; third, the study of the general characteristics common to all classes of social phenomena.All of the general schools concern themselves with different aspects of this definition. Whether sociologists like it or not, such seems to be the real subject matter of their discipline. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Major Fields of Sorokin's Philosophy of History

(1) The idea of cultural integration;

(2) The theory of social and cultural change;

(3) The identification of three cultural supersystems or ways of life through which, or around which, cultures are integrated;

(4) The idea of the alteration of these three ways of life with each other with the passage of time and the explana¬tion of this process; and,

(5) Sorokin's conception of the relations between types of culture and types of personality.

Sorokin's ideas on historical change cannot be understood unless Principle of Limits is kept always in the forefront of the mind. Sorokin's philosophy of history begins with the simplest concrete social processes and gradually works outward to the most complicated sociocultural rhythms.

Principle of Limits was first expressed in its most systematic form in the Journal of Social Forces, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in September, 1927, in an article entitled, "A Survey of Cyclical Conceptions of Social and Historical Processes". In this 1927 study Sorokin makes the point that "no social process ever continues endlessly in one direction". The large survey embraced in this article points out that any single movement of a social process has rigid limits. For instance a phenomenon like a death-rate or a divorce-rate cannot continuously increase or decrease. In this article Sorokin even implies that the limits of movement in one direction apply also to most known physical, chemical and other phenomena, due in part to changes of substance and to changes of meaning. When uranium changes greatly, to illustrate Sorokin's meaning, it becomes no longer uranium, but lead.

When Sorokin later develops this idea further, (see Dynamics One, [1 Volume Ed.], Ch. 39), he draws it still tighter as basic to understanding the inherent cyclical tendencies always immanent in the processes of cultural and historical change. In other words, the idea of limits is more restrictive, or allows less range for variation, in the more complicated and composite cultural phenomena than in single elements within the total phenomena. 
 
 
 
 
 

Sorokin's Sociocultural Congeries, Systems, and Supersystems

The central problem of Sorokin's philosophy of history is a detailed investigation of the structure and fluctuation of the cultural supersystems.

"A Quest for an Integral System of Sociology," Mexico, D.F. 1961. This is a reprint from the Memoire du XIX Congres International de Sociologie, Vol. HI, Mexico, D.F., 1961.

According to Sorokin the superorganic or sociocultural phenomena are basically and componentially different from the organic and the inorganic forms of being. In contradistinction to the inorganic phenomena that have only one physio-chemical component, and to the organic phenomena that have two components-physical and vital (life), the sociocultural or superorganic phenomena have the "immaterial" component of conscious, rational and supra-conscious meaning (or meaningful value or norm) superimposed upon the physical and vital components. Without it there are no sociocultural phenomena; its presence radically changes the very nature of the inorganic or organic phenomena upon which it is superimposed.

"Without its meanings, a book -say Plato's Republic- simply becomes a physical (paper) object possessed of a certain geometrical form, with certain physical and chemical properties which are noticeable even to mice and which they may nibble now and then. On the other hand, the meaning of Plato's Republic can be objectified and "materialized" not only in the paper book, but through quite different physical media, such as phonograph records, or air-waves when it is just read aloud or sung, or other physical "vehicles". Physically and biologically there are no human organisms that are "kings", "patriarchs", "popes", "generals", "scientists", "laborers", "peasants", "merchants", "prisoners", "criminals", "heroes", "saints", and so on. All these and thousands of other 'meanings' are superimposed upon the biological organisms by the sociocultural world or by persons and groups functioning not only as physical objects and biological organisms but mainly as 'mindful human personalities,' as bearers, creators, and agents of 'immaterial' meanings, values and norms. Thus any phenomenon that is an 'incarnation' or 'objectification' of mind and meanings superimposed upon its physical and biological properties is by definition a sociocultural phenomenon."

Such phenomena are found only in the world of mindful human beings, functioning as meaningful personalities, who meaningfully interact with one another and create, operate, accumulate, and objectify their meanings (or meaningful values and norms) in and through an endless number of "material vehicles"-all physical and biological objects and energies-used for a "materialization" of the "immaterial" meanings, values, and norms of the human minds.

"The totality of the 'immaterial' meanings-values-norms, not objectified as yet through the material vehicles but known to humanity; the totality of already objectified meanings-values-norms with all their vehicles; finally, the totality of interacting mindful individuals and groups-past and present; these inseparable totalities make up the total man-made sociocultural world, superimposed on physical and biological realms of the total universe."

Any meaning that is superimposed on the physical or biological phenomenon radically changes its sociocultural nature. Similarly, when an assort¬ment of physical and biological objects, "causally" unrelated to one another, becomes a vehicle for the same system of meanings-values-norms, a causal or empirically tangible interdependence appears between the physical and biological members of this assortment. And vice versa: causally connected physical and biological phenomena sometimes become causally unrelated when a meaningful component is superimposed on them."

"To sum up: all empirically rooted socio¬cultural phenomena are made up of three components: 1) meanings-values-norms; 2) physical and biological vehicles objectifying them; 3) mindful-conscious and supraconscious-human beings (and groups) that create, operate and use them in the process of their interaction. Respectively (1) The totality of meanings, values, norms possessed by individuals or groups makes up their ideological culture; (2) the totality of their meaningful actions, through which the pure meanings-values-norms are manifested and realized, makes up their behavioral culture; (3) the totality of all the other vehicles, the material, bio-physical things and energies through which their ideological culture is externalized, solidified, socialized and functions make up their 'material culture'. Thus, the total behavior and empirical culture of a person or group is made up of these three cultural levels-the ideological, the behavioral, and the material".

There are, according to Sorokin, "millions of singular sociocultural phenomena that make the superorganic world of reality appear to us in the form of the integrated systems and unintegrated congeries. If two or more singular superorganic phenomena are related to one another only by chance (by mere spatial or time adjacency) they are congeries having no real unity and interdependence between them. If two or more singular sociocultural facts are tied together meaningfully and causally in such a way that they articulate consistently the same set of meanings (values, norms) and empirically-in their vehicles and human members-show tangible (causal) interdependence of its important parts, such combination of any number of singular sociocultural phenomena makes an integrated cultural system or organized social system (Ganzbuten). Though overlooked by the majority of sociologists, the distinction between the systems and congeries is basic and important in many respects and especially for the purposes of adequate study of the sociocultural phenomena." 
 
 
 
 
 

Main Cultural Systems and Supersystems

Sorokin continues "In the total culture of any population, or of the whole mankind, there exists a multitude of cultural congeries and of causal meaningful systems. These range from the smallest (like 'A is B') to ever vaster ones. The 'two by two is four' is a little system; the multiplication table is a larger system; arithmetic is a still larger system; all mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, etc.) is a yet vaster system; the entire field of science is a still more embracing system. Similarly, we find a wide range of systems, beginning with the smallest and ending with the vastest, in other fields of cultural phenomena."

Among the basic vast cultural systems according to Sorokin "are language, science, philosophy, religion, the fine arts, ethics, law, and the vast derivative systems of applied technology, economics, and politics". The bulk of the meanings-values-norms of science or of great philosophical, religious, ethical or artistic systems are united into one consistent ideological whole. When grounded empirically, this ideological system is, to a tangible degree, realized in all the material vehicles or the material culture, and in the behavior of the bearers, agents, or members of each of these systems. Scientific ideology (of any and all sciences) is objectified in millions of books, manuscripts, instruments, laboratories, libraries, universities, schools, and in practically all gadgets and machinery, from an axe or shovel up to the most complex atomic-radio-electrical-steam machinery, and all objects made possible by science. Taken as a whole, the total scientific system in its ideological, material, and behavioral forms-occupies an enormous portion of the total cultural phenomena of mankind.

"Religious ideology likewise is objectified in millions of material objects, beginning with temple and cathedral buildings and ending with millions of religious objects; and then in numberless overt actions by its members-its hierarchy and its ordinary followers-from a simple prayer to millions of ritual actions, moral commandments and charity prescribed by the members of a given religion. Again, taken in all three of its forms - ideological, material and behavioral-the religious system occupies a very large place in the human population's total culture."

"With respective modifications, the same may be said of the systems of language, fine arts, law and ethics, politics and economics. In their totality these systems cover the greater part of the total culture of almost any population, the rest consisting partly of a multitude of other derivative systems, but mainly of a multitude of cultural congeries. In their totality these vast systems make up the central and the highest portion of any population's culture. Being essentially consistent, they are also a gigantic manifestation of human rational (and partly even superrational) creativity."

Sorokin holds that in addition to these vast cultural systems there are still vaster cultural unities which may be called cultural supersystems.

"As in other cultural systems, the ideology of each supersystem is based upon certain major premises or certain ultimate principles whose development, differentiation, and articulation makes the total ideology of a supersystem." Since the ideologies of the supersystems are the vastest, their major premises or ultimate principles deal with the ultimate and most general truth, proposition, or value. An ultimate or most general truth concerns the nature of the ultimate true reality or of the ultimate true value. Three main consistent answers have been given by humanity to the question 'What is the nature of the true, ultimate reality-value?'

"One is: 'The ultimate, true reality-value is sensory. Beyond it there is neither other reality nor any other non-sensory value'. Such a major premise and the gigantic supersystem built upon it is called Sensate."

"Another solution to this problem is: 'The ultimate, true reality-value is a supersensory and superrational God (Brahma, and other equivalents of God). Sensory and any other reality or value are either a mirage or represent an infinitely more inferior and shadow pseudo-reality and pseudo-value.' Such a major premise and the corresponding cultural system is called Ideational."

"The third answer to the ultimate question is: 'The ultimate, true reality-value is the Manifold Infinity which contains all differentiations and which is infinite qualitatively and quantitatively. The finite human mind cannot grasp it or define it or describe it adequately. This Manifold Infinity is ineffable and unutterable. Only by a very remote approximation can we discern three main aspects in it: the rational or logical, the sensory, and the superrational-supersensory. All three of these aspects harmoniously united in it are real; real also are its superrational-supersensory, rational, and sensory values.' It has many names: God, Tao, Nirvana, the Divine Nothing of mystics, the Supra-Essence of Dionysius and Northrop's ‘undifferentiated aesthetic continuum'. This typically mystic conception of the ultimate, true reality and value and the supersystem built upon are described as Integral."

Sorokin holds that each of these three super-systems embraces in itself the corresponding type of the vast systems already described. Thus, the Sensate supersystem is made up of: sensate science, sensate philosophy, sensate religion of a sort, sensate fine arts, sensate ethics, law, economics and politics, along with predominantly sensate types of persons and groups, ways of life and social institutions. Like¬wise, the Ideational and Integral supersystems consist respectively of Ideational and Integral types of all these systems. In each of these supersystems the ideological, behavioral, and material elements articulate, in all its parts-in its science and philosophy, fine arts and religion, ethics and law, way of life and social institutions-its major or ultimate premise concerning the nature of the ultimate, true reality-value.

"Thus, for instance, in the total Medieval European culture, from the sixth to the end of the twelfth century, we find that the Ideational supersystem was dominant and embraced the main portion of the total medieval culture."