Pitirim Sorokin

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Pitirim Sorokin (1917)

Pitirim Alexandrowitsch Sorokin (born January 21, 1889 in Turja , Ujesd Jarensk , Vologda Governorate , Russian Empire ; † February 11, 1968 in Winchester (Massachusetts) , USA) was a Russian / American sociologist . Sorokin researched social change and developed a theory of social cycles . He was the 55th president of the American Sociological Association .

Sorokin became a member of the Russian revolutionary Kerensky government in 1917 and was sentenced to death in 1922 , but pardoned for exile . In 1923 he emigrated to the USA. From 1924 to 1930 he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota . He was personally called to Harvard , where he was initially head of the Center for Altruism Research and established the Institute for Sociology there. Under the influence of Sorokin, Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton developed into the formative figures of structural functionalism .

Life

childhood

Sorokin was born in the village Turja (now the Knjaschpogostski rayon of the Republic of Komi north of Syktyvkar properly), the son of a Russian father and a Komi -Mother. He had two brothers, an older one (Wassili * 1885) and a younger one (Prokop * 1893). Sorokin's father was a master craftsman and worked on church restoration, which meant that the family had to move often. The mother died in 1894. Sorokin stayed with his older brother with the father, while the youngest brother was given to the mother's family. The father had a severe drinking problem . Once the drunken father hurt Sorokin so badly with a hammer that the scars on his upper lip could be seen for years. Thereupon the brothers left their father and worked themselves quite successfully in the arts and crafts.

At the age of 11, Sorokin passed the high school entrance exam. With the help of a scholarship, he attended a teachers' seminar of the Russian Orthodox Church in Chrenovo (east of Vologda ) between 1903 and 1906 .

Studies and first teaching activities

Between 1907 and 1918 Sorokin lived in Saint Petersburg (1914–1924: Petrograd), where he initially worked as an educator and private teacher. His goal was admission to university studies. Since he did not speak Latin or ancient Greek , he failed the entrance exam. However, Sorokin had intensive contacts with philosophers, writers and artists, mediated by a Komi compatriot, the philosopher and writer Kallistrat Schakow . This helped him to compensate for his educational deficits and so he then took up the study of psychology at the newly opened Psychoneurological Institute in Sankt Peterburg (Санкт-Петербургский научно-исследовательский, which was admitted to the May 1909 психоневрский психоневролтитигитихоневрский. Between 1910 and 1914 Sorokin studied at the University of Saint Petersburg, where he mainly studied criminology , sociology and economics. After graduating in 1914, he became a teacher at the Psychoneurological Institute, and in 1916 he received the title Mag. Jur. (Criminal Law) at the University of Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), and was a private lecturer in sociology from 1916–1917. For March 1917 he was defending his dissertation “Crime and Punishment, Heroism and Reward. A sociological study of the basic social behavior and moral forms ”for the Dr. jur. provided for in criminal law, but because of the revolutionary events it did not come about.

Political activities

Sorokin was close to the anti-tsarist movement of the Social Revolutionaries that had emerged in 1901 . As a supporter of the Narodniki movement, he rejected Marxism . In December 1906, Sorokin was arrested by the police at a Social Revolutionary meeting and imprisoned for four months. More clashes with the police ensued, and at the insistence of his friends, he retired to an aunt where he worked in the fields. Sorokin began to publish in 1911 and was arrested again in 1913 as the author of a revolutionary work.

After the Tsar abdicated after the February Revolution in March 1917, Sorokin was a leading functionary of the Social Revolutionary Party and editor of the Social Revolutionary newspaper " Volja Naroda " (People's Will). He was particularly committed to an all-Russian peasant Soviet as a counterweight to the Bolshevik- dominated workers' Soviet and made numerous trips to the countryside. In May 1917 he became secretary to the newly appointed Minister of War Alexander Fyodorowitsch Kerensky (1881-1970), who was Prime Minister from July 8 to October 26, 1917. After the October Revolution and the Bolshevik seizure of power, Sorokin was arrested in early 1918 and imprisoned for two months. After his release he moved to Moscow and participated in the founding of an anti-Bolshevik newspaper and the organization of anti-Bolshevik forces.

From 1918 he lived again in Petrograd [Saint Petersburg] and in 1919 he resumed teaching at the University of Petrograd as a professor of sociology. Shortly after the publication of his two volumes "Sistema sotsiologii" (System of Sociology), he was appointed head of the newly founded Institute for Sociology in 1920. In April 1922 he received his doctorate in sociology.

During a wave of arrests by the Russian intelligentsia, Sorokin fled to Moscow, where he surrendered and was imprisoned. Lenin (1870–1924) had already given the order to shoot Sorokin, but he was released after interventions on condition that he leave Russia.

Emigration to the USA via Berlin and Prague

On September 23, 1922 his emigration began, first with a stay in Berlin , 1922–1923 he lived in Prague at the invitation of the Czechoslovak President Tomáš Masaryk and lectured at the Charles University in Prague . In October 1923, Sorokin emigrated to the USA at the invitation of the sociologists Edward C. Hayes and Edward A. Ross . In early 1924 Sorokin gave his first lecture there at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie . From 1924 he was a lecturer at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis as a visiting professor , but with the salary of a full professor, and from 1925 as a full professor . Sorokin became a U.S. citizen in 1930. He was not supposed to return to Russia.

In 1930 Sorokin was appointed professor at Harvard University , first in the Department of Economics and, from 1931, in the Department of Sociology he created , which he headed as chairman until his resignation in 1942. Also in 1931, Sorokin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Lecturers appointed to the new department included Talcott Parsons and William I. Thomas . Well-known alumni included Robert K. Merton and Kingsley Davis .

In 1964 Sorokin retired. He died on February 10, 1968 in Winchester, Massachusetts .

Sorokin with his family (1934)

family

Sorokin was married to the scientist Elena P. Sorokin (1894–1975). With her he had two sons, the physicist Peter Sorokin (1931-2015) and the biologist Sergey Sorokin (* 1933).

plant

Sorokin wrote 37 books and over 400 professional articles. The works Society, Culture, and Personality: Their Structure and Dynamics, A System of General Sociology and, above all, Social and Cultural Dynamics: A Study of Change in Major Systems of Art, Truth, Ethics, offer an overview of his sometimes controversial sociological theories . Law and Social Relationships . Mainly, Sorokin dealt with questions of social differentiation , social stratification and altruism as well as with theories on social conflict and the social cycle .

Publications (selection)

  • Sociology of revolution , dt. The sociology of revolution. Lehmann, Munich 1928.
  • Society, Culture, and Personality. Their Structure and Dynamics. A System of General Sociology. New York 1947.
  • Leaves From a Russian diary, and Thirty Years After. Beacon Press, Boston 1950. OCLC 1476438 .
  • Cultural crisis and social philosophy. Modern theories about the emergence and decay of cultures and the nature of their crises. (= The University. 42). Stuttgart / Vienna 1953. Dt. Translation of: Social philosophies of an age of crisis. Boston 1950. (2nd edition 1951)
  • The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation. Templeton Foundation Press, Philadelphia 2002, ISBN 1-890151-86-6 . (First edition: Beacon Press, Boston 1954)
  • Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and Related Sciences. Chicago 1956 (reprinted 1976, ISBN 0-8371-8733-8 )
  • Social and Cultural Dynamics: A Study of Change in Major Systems of Art, Truth, Ethics, Law and Social Relationships. Porter Sargent Publishers, Boston, MA 1970, ISBN 0-87558-029-7 . (First published in 1957)
  • with WA Lunden: Power and morality. Who shall guard the guardians? Porter Sargent Publishers, Boston, MA 1959.

literature

  • PJ Allen (Ed.): Pitirim A. Sorokin in Review. The American Sociological Forum. Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1963.
  • Bálint Balla , Ilja Srubar , M. Albrecht: Pitirim A. Sorokin. Krämer, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-89622-051-9 .
  • RP Cuzzort, EW King: Twentieth-Century social thought. 5th edition. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, New York, NY 1995.
  • Karl-Heinz Hillmann : Sorokin. In: ders .: Dictionary of Sociology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 410). 4th, revised and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-41004-4 , p. 796.
  • Barry Johnston: V. Pitrim A. Sorokin: an Intellectual Biography. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1995.
  • Charles Wright Mills : The Sociological Imagination . The Oxford University Press, New York, NY 2000.

Web links

Commons : Pitirim Sorokin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Vincent Jeffries: Sorokin, Pitirim. In: Encyclopedia of Social Theory. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA 2005.
  2. ↑ agso.uni-graz.at
  3. ↑ B. Balla, I. Srubar, M. Albrecht (eds.): Pitirim A. Sorokin - life, work and effect. (= Contributions to Eastern European research. Volume 6). 2002, ISBN 3-89622-051-9 .
personal data
SURNAME Sorokin, Pitirim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sorokin, Pitirim Alexandrovich (full name); Сорокин, Питирим Александрович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Turja , Vologda Governorate, Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1968
Place of death Winchester, Massachusetts