P.A. Sorokin as a Russian sociologist.

Introduction.

Brief information about the life of P.A. Sorokin

Scientific interests of P.A. Sorokin.

a) Subject and method of sociology.

b) Social interaction and its structure.

c) Social space.

d) Social stratification and social mobility.

e) Sociology of revolution.

f) Sociology of law.

g) The doctrine of integralism.

h) The doctrine of creative altruism.

i) Doctrine of convergence.

The main works of P.A. Sorokin.

“Life, even if it is difficult, is the most beautiful thing,

a wonderful and delightful treasure."

Pitirim Sorokin.

Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1889–1968) - Russian-American sociologist and cultural scientist. Born on February 23, 1889 in the village of Turya, Vologda province, in the family of a wandering church craftsman-restorer.

Seriously engaged in science (in 1910-1914 he published about 50 works), Sorokin graduated from the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University and was left to prepare for a professorship. Among his teachers was the famous sociologist M.M. Kovalevsky. In 1917, Sorokin became one of the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, participated in the Socialist Revolutionary agitation, edited the newspaper "The Will of the People", and was a delegate to the 1st All-Russian Congress of Peasant Deputies . Prepared reviews on scientific issues for A.F. Kerensky. Sorokin sharply opposed the Bolsheviks, was hostile to the October Revolution, and participated in anti-Bolshevik organizations; campaigned against the new government and was arrested.

At the end of 1918 Sorokin abandoned political activity, announced his resignation from the Socialist Revolutionary Party and a return to his life’s work - the cultural education of the people. In 1919 he became one of the organizers of the Department of Sociology at St. Petersburg University, professor of sociology at the Agricultural Academy and Institute of National Economy. In 1920, together with I.P. Pavlov, he organized the Society for Objective Research of Human Behavior. In 1921 worked at the Brain Institute, Historical and Sociological Institutes.

A devastating book review N.I. Bukharin The “theory of historical materialism” and his rejection of the existing regime led to his arrest, which in September 1922 ended with his expulsion from Soviet Russia along with a large group of Russian cultural figures. Lived in Berlin and Prague. For some time he taught at the Russian University in Prague. He was elected professor of sociology at the University of Prague.

In 1923 he moved to the USA, where he gained fame as an outstanding sociologist of the first half of the 20th century, firmly occupying a place in the top ten leading sociologists in the world. In 1924-1930 he was a professor at the University of Minnesota, from 1930 until the end of his life he was a professor at Harvard University, where in 1930 he organized the department of sociology, and in 1931 - the sociology department. In 1964, Sorokin was elected president of the American Sociological Association. Sorokin died in Winchester (USA) on February 11, 1968.

Scientific interests of P.A. Sorokin covered a huge layer of problems in the study of society and culture. Here are just a few of them:

subject and method of sociology;

social stratification and social mobility;

sociocultural dynamics;

doctrine of integralism;

doctrine of convergence;

sociology of family and marriage;

sociology of altruism and love;

sociology of crime and punishment;

sociology of law;

sociology of religion and morality;

behavior of people in extreme conditions (hunger, devastation);

sociology of revolution;

history of sociology and social philosophy.

Subject and method of sociology

P.A. Sorokin gives the following definition: “Sociology is a science that studies the life and activities of people living in a society of their own kind, and the results of such joint activities.” Sociology P.A. Sorokin divides it into theoretical and practical. Theoretical sociology includes social analytics (the study of the structure of social phenomena and combinations of social phenomena), social mechanics (the study of the processes of interaction between people and the forces that cause these interactions), and social genetics or genetic sociology (historical trends in the development of society). Practical sociology is, in fact, social policy. Its task is, based on the laws of theoretical sociology, to manage social forces in accordance with the goals set.

Sorokin considered the subject of sociology to be the interaction of social groups operating in different historical and cultural circumstances. A sociologist solves the problem of determining the causes of various types of social behavior and must take into account a variety of motivations, influences, reactions (“pluralism of facts”)

Speaking about the method of sociology, P.A. Sorokin notes that it should be close to the method of the natural sciences, that is, based on observation and measurement, and not metaphysical reasoning about “mental reality,” which cannot be directly observed and measured. To do this, sociology must study only acts of behavior that are observable and measurable. The ideas of O. Comte and G. Spencer had a decisive influence on his views

Social interaction and its structure

P.A. Sorokin considers “social interaction” as the initial unit of sociological analysis. All social life, all social processes, from revolution and world war to futurism in art, according to P.A. Sorokin, are combinations of various social interactions, that is, the interaction of two or more individuals

He defines the structure of social interaction as the connection of three elements:

Minimum two individuals, which enter into an act of interaction and thereby determine each other’s behavior;

So-called acts, that is, the actions of individuals. Each act is, on the one hand, the result of the internal mental activity of the individual, and on the other, a stimulus that causes one or another reaction in other persons. P.A. Sorokin divides acts into intense and weak, instantaneous and prolonged, conscious and unconscious.

Provodnikov actions of individuals. P.A. Sorokin includes language, writing, painting, music, tools of labor and war, money, clothing, ceremonies, images, monuments, household items, railways, telegraph and telephone communications, etc. as conductors. The presence of certain conductors changes the nature of social interaction, for example, railways and telegraph communications reduce the social space and time of interaction. As P.A. Sorokin notes, if acts of social interaction are carried out and disappear, then conductors can accumulate, forming a new unnatural environment around the interacting people. Depending on the nature of the conductors, mechanical, thermal, sound, light-color, etc. are distinguished. interactions.

Thus, in his theory of social interactions P.A. Sorokin relied on the behaviorist “stimulus-response” scheme. Therefore, his cooperation in 1918-1922 was logical. with physiologists, including I.P. Pavlov and V.M. Bekhterev.

Social space

Social space- system of social relations. A person occupies his special place in society in accordance with the coordinate system of social space, by analogy with the coordinate system in mathematics. P.A. Sorokin considered gender, age, race, citizenship, religious affiliation, property status, etc. as such social coordinates. Social space is multidimensional: a person can simultaneously be Russian, Orthodox, a member of the Cadet Party, a journalist by profession, a member of a hunting club, etc. That is, the individual turns out to be a member (subscriber) of many social groups. Thus, social space, according to P.A. Sorokin, is a system of intragroup and intergroup relations of individuals.

P.A. Sorokin rejects simplistic attempts to divide society along any one basis (class, national, racial, professional, etc.). He gives a classification of social groups according to many characteristics.

First of all, groups are elementary (identified by one characteristic - gender, age, language, profession, income, religion, etc.) and cumulative (identified by several characteristics - classes, nations, nationalities, elites). The first level of relations in society is the relations between people in elementary groups, the second is the relations and layers of elementary groups that form a cumulative group, the third level is the relations between cumulative groups. Society is a complex formation of elementary and cumulative groups.

closed, belonging to which does not depend on the will of the individual - primary family, gender, race, caste, nation;

open, membership in which depends on the conscious choice of the individual and there is a free circulation of individuals - professional groups, political parties, scientific groups, etc.;

intermediate, partially combining the properties of the previous two - secondary family, estate, class.

In addition, P.A. Sorokin also classifies social groups by size, by type of social control, by the duration of the group’s existence, by the ways in which individuals enter and leave the group (for open elementary groups). P.A. Sorokin describes the state as one of the elementary groups, meaning by it actually a group of subjects (citizens) of a certain state.

Social stratification and social mobility

P.A. Sorokin assigned a special role to groups occupying certain positions in a certain hierarchical system of groups. Strata- these are large groups of people that differ in their position in the social hierarchy, due to the uneven distribution of rights and privileges, responsibilities and duties in society (P.A. Sorokin’s work “Social Mobility”, 1927). Social stratification- division of society into strata. P.A. Sorokin considers social stratification a natural property of society, and a society without stratification is a myth. There are several forms of social stratification. The most important of them are economic, political and professional. Each of these forms forms a complex hierarchical structure.

Social mobility- various movements of people from one stratum to another. P.A. Sorokin considers two vectors of mobility - horizontal and vertical. Horizontal - movement of individuals within one stratum (change of place of work, place of residence, marital status), vertical - transition from one stratum to another, which can be ascending or descending. There are a number of mechanisms that make it possible to move from one stratum to another vertically, for example, the army, the church, political parties, advantageous marriages.

Vertical mobility (increasing social status) is an indicator of the degree of “openness” of the social system. In a “closed” society, the dynamics of social life are reduced to a minimum, which inevitably leads “closed” systems to crisis. In the historical process, Sorokin believed, there is a periodic change of various “supersystems”, each of which is characterized by a special cultural and historical “style”, a unique “value system”. The scientist identified three types of “supersystems”:

“ideational”, in which altruism, mysticism and asceticism play a decisive role;

“sensual”, in which urban features and intellectualism predominate;

“idealistic”, characterized by a combination of features of the first two types.

Sociology of revolution

P.A. Sorokin was not only a witness, but also an active participant in the revolutionary events in Russia. Therefore, his scientific interest in the problems of the nature of revolutions in general was natural. In the works “Public Textbook on Sociology” (1920), “Sheets from the Russian Diary” (1924), “Sociology of the Revolution” (1925), etc., he sets out his theoretical views on these issues.

Any revolution, according to P.A. Sorokin, is caused by the suppression of the basic instincts of the majority of the population - the need for food (hunger), the need for housing and clothing, the instinct of property (the poverty of some against the backdrop of the prosperity of others), the instinct of self-preservation (despotism, reprisals, mass executions), the need for collective self-preservation (family, religious association, party), sexual instinct, instinct of self-expression, the need for creative activity, the need for freedom.

The revolution, as P.A. Sorokin notes, leads to devastating consequences for society - the collapse of its legal and moral foundations, cruelty and aggression in society, an unprecedented increase in the scale of crime, the destruction of family values, mass emigration, mass deaths as a result of acts accompanying the revolution violence, hunger, epidemics, suicides. Moreover, the consequences of all this continue to affect many years after the revolution. P.A. Sorokin believes that during the revolution, first of all, the most outstanding, energetic, gifted people die in comparison with the general mass of the population; morally and biologically defective persons suffer to a lesser extent. As a result, the country remains literally bloodless.

P.A. Sorokin sees an alternative to the destructive elements of revolution not as the desire to preserve the existing order at all costs, but as a change in society through reforms. Reforms should be based on the following principles:

any reform should not belittle human dignity and should not be accompanied by opposition to the basic needs of people;

every reform must be preceded by deep Scientific research aimed at studying the social conditions of society;

each reform must be carried out exclusively by constitutional methods.

Sociology of law

P.A. Sorokin associates the normal development of society with the peaceful, non-violent course of history, without shocks accompanied by the destruction of the legal foundations of society. P.A. Sorokin paid attention to issues of the sociology of law throughout his entire creative life.

P.A. Sorokin considers law to be the force that, along with morality, motivates human actions. Law presupposes categorically obligatory volitional foundations of behavior, and morality presupposes recommended and desirable ones. Official law, proclaimed in laws, is a categorically mandatory requirement for the behavior of members of society on the part of the state authority (government). Law affects individuals and society in the following ways:

how motivational force contributes to the formation of citizenship;

how coercive force carries out acts of coercion on the part of the state or society, the threat of punishment or encouragement with legal reward, and even carries out “social selection” (when using the death penalty);

how a training force contributes to the development of certain habits among members of society and the eradication of others.

The highest degree of manifestation of law is the individual’s awareness of his rights and responsibilities.

In the process of historical development, certain legal ideals are formed, that is, ideas about what legal norms should ideally be. P.A. Sorokin speaks about the law of social illusionism, about the unattainability of the legal ideal in conditions of the dominance of arbitrariness and violence. Revolutions, seeking to establish new ideals by violent means, become reactions. P.A. Sorokin sees an alternative to legal ideals imposed by violent methods in the ideal of the law of socially benevolent behavior. Its essence lies in mutual solidarity and love of people for each other. P.A. Sorokin identifies the following criteria for compliance with this legal ideal:

criterion of individual interests;

criterion of legal equality between individuals;

criterion for quantitative and qualitative growth of solidarity and socially benevolent behavior;

criterion for the decline in punishments and rewards, in particular, a decrease in the severity of punishments, a decrease in the number of punished persons;

a criterion for the quality of the means by which socially benevolent behavior is ensured, in particular, the liberation of a person from unnecessary guardianship by the state or groups.

P.A. Sorokin saw the future of humanity in gradually approaching this ideal.

Doctrine of integralism

P.A. Sorokin actively introduced into the social sciences the ideas of integralism or a comprehensive, synthetic, unifying approach to the study of society and man. He proposes to study society both from the point of view of objective changes in sociocultural supersystems, and from the point of view of the integral essence of man. In his work “Integralism is my philosophy” (1957), P.A. Sorokin considers reality as an infinite number of different qualities and quantities: spiritual and material, changing and unchanging, etc. P.A. Sorokin considers active intelligent creativity to be the highest form of reality.

From the point of view of methods of cognition, P.A. Sorokin distinguishes:

the empirical aspect of reality (comprehensible by experience);

rational (comprehended by reason, that is, through logic and mathematics);

supersensible-superrational (comprehended by creative insight and intuition);

The most complete truth is that obtained through all three of these aspects, and not any one of them.

Man himself is also an integral being. He is both a cognizing subject, and a rational thinker, and a supersensible and superrational being. Man is not only a conscious creation, but also a superconscious creator, creating cultural phenomena that differ from the phenomena of inanimate nature and the organic world.

The most important component of the superorganic world is meaning. The highest integral semantic value is the unity of Truth (Truth), Good (non-selfish love) and Beauty (aesthetic values, works of art). Thus, P.A. Sorokin’s integralism acts not only as a cognitive, but also a moral and ethical doctrine. And these concepts are inseparable for him. Each discovered truth, according to P.A. Sorokin, is both a contribution to goodness and beauty. Any act of non-selfish love (goodness) enriches the world of truth and beauty. At the same time, P.A. Sorokin states that over the past centuries, the activity of mankind in the field of truth (scientific discoveries) and beauty (works of art) has been ahead of activity in the field of good (non-selfish love). Therefore, he failed to open the way for the moral ennoblement of the superorganic world and control over his animal addictions. Hence his interest in the theory of creative altruism, which he developed in the 1940s - 1950s.

The Doctrine of Creative Altruism

P.A. Sorokin considered creative altruism, selfless, creative love as the most important means of overcoming the lack of spirituality of modern civilization. He noted that neither democratic transformations nor the creation of international instruments such as the UN by themselves can lead to the prevention of wars and conflicts. Democracy can be just as aggressive as autocracy. Only a significant increase in the degree of altruism of individuals, institutions or cultures can establish lasting peace and harmony among people. Altruism, altruistic love, as P.A. Sorokin notes, is a huge force, but provided that we know how to produce, accumulate and use it.

P.A. Sorokin describes three types of altruistic personalities:

“lucky” altruists, who have shown minor egoistic tendencies since childhood and successfully integrated a number of moral values;

“catastrophic” or “late” altruists, who became such in adulthood as a result of the disintegration of egoistic values, which is facilitated by the social catastrophes they experienced;

“intermediate” altruists who are in constant search of moral perfection.

P.A. Sorokin studied the personalities of Buddha, Mohatma Gandhi, Christian saints, conducted field research in universities, hospitals, prisons, and on their basis formulated the so-called law of polarization. The idea is that people react to social and personal disasters in polar opposite directions (positive and negative moral polarization). In the case of positive moral polarization, altruistic transformation takes place; in the case of negative polarization, there is a search for hedonistic, self-oriented pleasure, bitterness, aggression, or dull submission to fate, or suicide. A part of modern humanity is moving towards positive polarization and is resisting the destructive process of demoralization of another part of humanity, moving towards negative polarization. The tasks of human survival, P.A. Sorokin believes, require altruistic re-education of both rulers and the masses.

Doctrine of convergence

The foundations of the theory of convergence were outlined by P.A. Sorokin in his work “Russia and the United States,” written in 1944, when the USSR and the USA were allies in World War II. But even later, already in the years Cold War, in particular, in the works “Mutual convergence of the United States and the USSR to a mixed sociocultural type” (1960) and “Main trends of our time” (1964), P.A. Sorokin suggests that there is a gradual convergence (convergence) of traits characterizing Soviet and Western societies, the USSR and the USA. He believed that if a new world war could be avoided, then the dominant form of society would be neither capitalism nor socialism, but some kind of integral form that combines the best of both systems. But at the same time, it will be characterized by a new type of personality, new social institutions, new cultural values ​​that cannot be reduced to either “capitalist” or “socialist”. For the West, convergence will mean abandoning the illusory material values ​​of the sensory phase and limiting the power of money. For the USSR, convergence would mean respect for human rights and an increase in the material standard of living of the masses. Gradually, both the West and the Soviet Union will come to a mixed type of economy, different from both the free enterprise economy and the purely state economy. In the Soviet Union in the 1970s, the idea of ​​convergence was shared by academician A.D. Sakharov. In the second half of the 1980s. M.S. Gorbachev also expressed thoughts about convergence. And although the real paths of development of the USA and especially the USSR turned out to be somewhat different than predicted by P.A. Sorokin, the doctrine of convergence had a great influence on various theories of the emerging and future type of human society (models of post-industrial society, etc.).

The main works of P.A. Sorokina:

“Remnants of animism among the Zyryans” (1910), “Marriage in the old days: (polyandry and polygamy)” (1913), “Crime and its causes” (1913), “Suicide as a social phenomenon” (1913), “Symbols in public life", "Crime and Punishment, Feat and Reward" (1913), "Social Analytics and Social Mechanics" (1919), "System of Sociology" (1920), "Sociology of the Revolution" (1925), "Social Mobility" (1927), “Social and cultural dynamics” (1937-1941), “Society, culture and personality: their structure and dynamics; system of general sociology" (1947), "Restoring Humanity" (1948), "Altruistic Love" (1950), "Social Philosophies in an Age of Crisis" (1950), "The Meaning of Our Crisis" (1951), "The Ways and Power of Love" (1954), “Integralism is my philosophy” (1957), “Power and morality” (1959), “Mutual convergence of the United States and the USSR to a mixed sociocultural type” (1960), “The Long Road. Autobiography" (1963), "The Main Trends of Our Time" (1964), "Sociology Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" (1968).

In 1914, Sorokin published his first work, Crime and Punishment, Feat and Reward. A sociological study on the basic forms of social behavior and morality. The ideas of O. Comte and G. Spencer had a decisive influence on his views (Sorokin himself called himself an “empirical positivist”). In the work Crime and Punishment... crime is considered as a result of the fundamental heterogeneity and even “discontinuity” of the system of social relations, the inconsistency of “patterns of behavior” of different social groups. In the future, humanity is able to solve the problem of crime by moving to a qualitatively different level of social integration and harmony.

In 1920, his two-volume System of Sociology was published. In 1922 his book " Current state Russia", in which Sorokin stated that the most important consequence of the revolution was the degradation of the population of Russia.

Published the work The current state of Russia(1923). In subsequent years, he published a number of works that brought him worldwide recognition ( Social mobility, Modern sociological theory and etc.). The last significant work of the scientist is dedicated to Russia: Main features of the Russian nation in the twentieth century(1967). Among Sorokin’s students are major American sociologists, such as R. Merton, R. Mills, T. Parsons and others.

In the second half of the 1920s, having become disillusioned with the positivist model of evolution, Sorokin developed the theory of sociocultural cycles, which was substantiated in his works Social and cultural dynamics(in 4 volumes, 1937–1941) and The crisis of our time(1941). Other works of the scientist are also devoted to the problem of the typology of “crises” in history: Sociocultural causality, space, time (1943), Society, culture and personality: their structure and dynamics. System of general sociology (1947), Social philosophy in times of crisis(1950), etc. In the late 1940s, Sorokin became increasingly attracted to problems of moral relations; in 1949 he created the Research Center on Creative Altruism at Harvard. His research-manifestos are devoted to the role of love and altruism in human relationships: Altruistic Love: A Study of American« good neighbors» and Christian saints (1950), The ways and power of love(1954), etc.

Sorokin concluded his memoirs - “The Long Road” (M., 1992): “No matter what happens in the future, I now know three things that I will keep in my head and heart forever. Life, even the hardest, is the best treasure in world. Following duty is another treasure that makes life happy and gives strength to the soul not to change its ideals. The third thing that I learned is that cruelty, hatred and injustice cannot and will never be able to create anything eternal, either in the intellectual, neither morally nor materially."

Quotes from the works of P.A. Sorokina

“The structure of any society, the perfection of its social life, spiritual and material prosperity and, finally, its historical destinies depend primarily on the nature, properties and behavior of the members of this society. You cannot build a good building from bad material.”

“People are the most important thing. It depends on them whether they will turn the palace given to them by fate into a “pig sty” or a simple hut into a clean and comfortable home. Therefore, it is necessary to concentrate on people.”

“The nature, properties and behavior of both the individual and the whole society are the consequence of two main causes - heredity and the environment in which he was born, raised and lives. If a person or an entire people does not have positively, hereditarily received gifts, no environment can make their talented or outstanding in their properties... The growth, build, strength, health and a number of other anthroposomatic properties of the people depend on the “hereditary fund”, and their “spiritual” qualities also depend on it: will, temperament, skills, inclination and mental talent"

Sociology is active... great merit How sociologist. An important milestone in development Russian sociological thought were the works of P.A. Sorokina (1889 ...

The main ideas of P.A.’s work Sorokina Human. Civilization. Society

Coursework >> Sociology

Introduction Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin- outstanding sociologist 20th century, founder Russian and American... M.: Politizdat, 1992. -291 p. Golosenko I.A. Pitirim Sorokin How historian sociology. // Magazine sociology and social anthropology. 1998. No. 4.

Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1889–1968)– lawyer, philosopher, sociologist. Born in the village of Turya, Yarensky district, Vologda province. Pitirimom is named after St. Pitirim, the celebration of which falls in January, the month of birth of P. A. Sorokin.

Sorokin's father was engaged in church restoration work. Pitirim worked constantly with his father in temples. Soon, with brother Vasily, they began to independently continue their work activities, moving from church to church. P. A. Sorokin graduated from the church-teachers' school. Having a passionate desire to study, with great difficulty he reached St. Petersburg, entered the psychoneurological institute, and a year later transferred to the law faculty of the university. After graduating from university, Sorokin remained to work at the department of criminal law. Soon he passed his master's exams and received the title of private assistant professor at Petrograd University. As a sociologist P. A. Sorokin began his activities in Petrograd. He was just over 30 years old when he founded the sociological department at Petrograd University.

In 1920, his two-volume work “System of Sociology” was published, which caused discussions in scientific circles. P. A. Sorokin “made a revolution in the theory of sociology, subordinating it to values ​​as the main driving force in society,” showing that “sociology is primarily a theory of values.” Sorokin, the first scientist-philosopher who gave a sociological analysis of the revolution in Russia, became the founder of the “sociology of revolution.”

In sociology, P. A. Sorokin identified three sections: social analytics, social mechanics and social genetics. He formed the concepts and theory of social stratification and social mobility.

Sorokin created the concept of the world-historical development of human culture and studied the sociodynamics of culture.

In 1922, P. A. Sorokin was forced to leave Russia. The dream of returning to my homeland one day was not destined to come true. Sorokin died in America at the age of 79. In his diary, he wrote: “Whatever happens in the future, I firmly know that I have learned three lessons... Life, even if it is difficult, is the most beautiful, wonderful and delightful treasure of the world. To follow duty is so beautiful that life becomes happy, and the soul acquires unshakable strength to uphold ideals - this is my second lesson. And the third is that violence, hatred and injustice will never be able to create a mental, moral or even material kingdom on earth.”1

In 1930, P. A. Sorokin headed the sociology department at the world-famous Harvard University and wrote works on the philosophy of culture. He believes that humanity masters and further develops the social, spiritual and moral experience of previous generations, creating in each specific era a spiritual culture, a “culture of the soul.”

The level of culture of society is determined specific system sociocultural relations, influencing the spiritual potential of the individual.

The concept of culture has many meanings. Having an integrative property, culture can characterize the qualitative state of society at each stage of its development, the features of civilization. Culture includes the main trends and distinctive features of the spiritual development of different countries and peoples. Culture reflects the essential aspects of a society’s way of life, social communities, the level of development of various spheres of social life (culture of production, work, communication, everyday life, etc.). Culture also reflects the level of social and spiritual development of an individual.

For the sociological knowledge of culture, important methodological significance is, firstly, the analysis of culture as a subsystem of society, “permeating” the material and spiritual production, economic, political, moral and aesthetic relations. Secondly, the social conditioning of culture is considered, as a result of people’s needs, their intellectual, aesthetic, and practical interests. Thirdly, a sociological analysis of culture presupposes its characterization as a system of norms, values, and ways of life of both individuals and various communities.

The foundations of the sociological theory of culture were laid by M. Weber. He viewed culture as the result of morally oriented activity, as the most important factor in social development.

An equally significant contribution to the development of the sociology of culture was made by the most prominent sociologist of the 20th century, P. A. Sorokin. He devoted a number of works to the problems of culture: “Sociocultural and cultural dynamics”, “Society, culture and personality”, “The crisis of our century”, “Man, civilization, society”, etc. In the process of studying the mechanism of sociocultural dynamics, Sorokin draws conclusions about the patterns of development culture, slowing down and accelerating the pace of sociocultural changes.

P. A. Sorokin notes that every great culture is not just a sum of phenomena, but represents a unity, all of whose components are permeated with a fundamental principle and express one and the main value. The main value or fundamental principle of culture reflects the mood of public consciousness; science, aesthetic consciousness, philosophy, religion, ethics, law, as well as the basic forms of social, economic, political organization of morals, customs, ways of life and thinking (mentality). The components of integrative culture are interconnected and convey the state of the spiritual culture of society; if one of them changes, the rest inevitably undergo transformation.

As an example, P. A. Sorokin considers the Middle Ages. Medieval culture, in the palette of its values, conveyed the fundamental principle of Christianity and the ideas of theology.

The architecture and sculpture of the Middle Ages were the “Bible in stone.” Literature was permeated with religion and the Christian faith. Painting expressed biblical themes in line and color. The music was religious in nature. Science complemented the Christian religion. Ethics and law represented the development of the commandments of Christianity. The political organization was theocratic and based on God and religion. Even the economic system was controlled by religion, and bans were imposed on many forms of economic relations. The prevailing morals and customs, way of life, thinking emphasized their unity with God as the only and highest goal, at the same time there was indifferent attitude to the sensory world, its wealth, joys and values. Sorokin calls such a unified culture, based on the principle of the supersensibility and superintelligence of God as the only real value, an ideational culture.

The decline of ideational culture occurred in the 13th-14th centuries. A new culture is emerging that highlights objective reality as a unity of infinite diversity. Sorokin calls this cultural system idealistic. Since the 16th century, according to Sorokin’s research, a modern form of empirical, secular culture, “corresponding to this world,” arose. Sorokin calls it sensory culture. It is based on the principle: objective reality and its meaning are sensory.

Thus, the basic principle of medieval culture made it otherworldly and religious. The basic principle of idealistic culture was partly supersensory and religious, partly secular. The basic principle of modern sensual culture is secular, “corresponding to this world.” Sorokin concludes that all types of culture: ideational, idealistic and sensual - manifest themselves in the history of the spiritual culture of each people, and the replacement of one form of culture with another does not lead to the death of society. He examines the change in cultural forms using the examples of the change in Greco-Roman and medieval culture. Sooner or later, every form of culture is destined to exhaust its creative potential.

P. A. Sorokin considers cultural phenomena as “different parts of the same indivisible sociocultural world,” any society can be described only through the prism of its inherent “system of norm-values.” This system manifests itself as a cultural quality. The qualities hidden in individuals and societies are revealed in all the achievements of human civilization. Based on the theory of the interculturalist sociology of culture that he created, Sorokin recognized the cultural factor as the most important and decisive, asserting the dominant role of culture in the development of mankind. The cultural factor is an indicator of the state of science, philosophy, religion, ethics, law, politics, and economics. Sorokin considers humanism, diverse in its forms, to be a historically developing criterion for cultural progress.

Sorokin writes a major work “Social and Cultural Dynamics” - a sociological work unprecedented in volume and empirical coverage. In 1960, he published the work “Mutual rapprochement of the United States and the USSR towards a mixed socio-cultural type,” written in an atmosphere of rather tense Soviet-American relations, when each of the parties “had no doubt” about the absolute correctness of their development path. Sorokin wrote that Western leaders claim that the future belongs to the capitalist type of society and culture. The leaders of communist nations expect a communist victory. The scientist does not agree with both predictions and believes that if humanity avoids new world wars and overcomes critical moments in its development, then the dominant type of emerging society and culture will be neither capitalist nor communist, but a specific integral type.

According to Sorokin's logic, two processes are taking place in social life - the decline of the capitalist system and the inability of the communist system to satisfy the vital needs of people. He views communist ideology and economic system as one of the varieties of totalitarian regimes. Sorokin considers the basis of convergence to be the proximity of systems of values, law, education, art, science, culture - precisely that convergence leads to the formation of a mixed sociocultural type, which under Western conditions can develop into a “brilliant integral order in both powers, as well as in the entire human universe." The scientist’s worldview was permeated with an integral synthesis of his philosophical conclusions. Sorokin forms the principles of the sociology of culture: 1) social analytics; 2) social mechanics; 3) social genetics. His great work “Society, Culture and Personality” is based on these conclusions. Sorokin believes that social behavior is determined by psychophysical mechanisms; the integral factor of all social life is the collective reflex. “The ever-increasing suppression of the basic instincts of the population; their basic character and the impotence of groups guarding order - these are the three elements of an adequate description of the conditions of a revolutionary explosion.” P. A. Sorokin comes to the conclusion that basically revolutionary movements in society, there are basic instincts - digestive, sexual, instincts of property, self-expression, self-preservation and others.

In “The System of Sociology” P. A. Sorokin considers interaction as a model of a social phenomenon. He considered the actions of individuals and conductors of communication to be its elements. Actions consist of external stimuli and internal realization of psychological life. Conductors are symbols of the transmission of reactions between subjects (language, writing, music, art, etc.). Interaction can be antagonistic or solidaristic, one-sided or two-sided. In his work “Social Mobility” P. A. Sorokin explores the issues of stratification and mobility. The scientist recognizes that social mobility is a normal state of society. It implies not only the social movements of individuals and groups, but also cultural values, that is, everything that is created in the process of human activity. Horizontal mobility involves the transition from one social group to another, located at the same level of social stratification. By vertical mobility, Sorokin means the movement of an individual from one layer to another, and deduces two types of vertical mobility: upward and downward. The main obstacle to social mobility, according to Sorokin, is the presence of “sieves” that, as it were, sift through individuals, providing the opportunity for some to move upward, inhibiting the movement of others. This “sieve” is the mechanism of social testing, selection and distribution of individuals; it, as a rule, coincides with the main channels of vertical mobility, with changes in cultural values. Based on rich empirical material, Sorokin concludes that “in any society, the social circulation of individuals and their arrangement is not carried out by chance, but is of the nature of necessity and is strictly controlled by various institutions.” Social stratification is a constant characteristic of any organized society.

Changing in form, social stratification existed in all societies that proclaimed the equality of people. Sorokin comes to the conclusion that an unstratified society with a genuine implementation of the principle of equality of its membership is a myth that has never been realized in practice.

All people, Sorokin believes, enter into a system of social relationships under the influence of a whole complex of factors: unconscious (reflexes), bioconscious (hunger, thirst, etc.) and conscious (norms, cultural values). Only society (and not the crowd) is able to understand the meaning of cultural values, therefore any society can be described only through the system of spiritual values ​​inherent in it; that is, through a certain level of culture.

Cultural values ​​are found in all periods of human civilization, including discrete periods of cultural history (wars, revolutions). Socio-empirical studies of cultural qualities make it possible, Sorokin believes, to identify long periods of history in which identical cultural patterns appear - types of activity, thoughts, creativity, beliefs, etc. The cultural life of a society is a product of logical significant cultural systems.

Logically significant cultural value systems are formed under the influence of the dual nature of man - a thinking being and a feeling being. Sorokin defines socially significant human activity through four categories. These are values ​​that result from cognitive activity (truth), aesthetic satisfaction (beauty), social adaptation and morality (goodness), and a category that unites these values ​​into a single social whole (benefit).

Any individual fits into a system of cultural values, culture becomes integral when society achieves success by harmonizing the energy of people devoted to the service of truth, beauty and goodness.

P. A. Sorokin wrote, if we imagine a society in which each member has the standard of living of a millionaire, but the main spiritual values ​​there are not uniform, they are extremely loose, and the system corresponding to them is incompatible social relations is not crystallized, then such a society will be more turbulent and disorganized than other societies in which only basic physiological needs are poorly satisfied, but the sociocultural foundation is strong and members of the society believe in the same values ​​and live for them.

The thought of P. A. Sorokin is surprisingly consonant with the verse of the Gospel of Matthew: “And again I tell you: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Gospel of Matthew 19:24).

P. A. Sorokin viewed the real world as a unity of the social and cultural, and the unity is dialectical, in which cultural values ​​still play a decisive role.

Sorokin sees the culture of being as the Absolute in a state of peace, in which spiritual, pious and religious attitudes towards nature predominate - humble, respectful, understanding of oneself as an organic part of infinite being, where needs are satisfied along the paths of internal self-restraint and asceticism. In spiritual culture, P. A. Sorokin especially emphasizes the ethics of Christian charity.

Pitirim Sorokin - President of the American Sociological Association

Pitirim Sorokin Alexandrovich. Biography

• Sorkin Pitirim Aleksandrovich (01/23/1889, Turya village, Yarensky district, Vologda province - 02/10/1968, Winchester, Massachusetts, USA) - American sociologist and cultural scientist. Founder of the theories of social stratification and social mobility.

  Pitirim entered rural school letters in the village of Palevitsy (by that time his mother Pelageya Vasilievna, a Komi-Zyryanka native of Zheshart, died of cancer). And he and his older brother Vasily left their father, a traveling artisan “master of gold, silver and icon decoration,” but a drunkard and rowdy. One was 10 years old at the time, the other was 14.

  Having completed his studies at primary school in the spring of 1901 and, by chance, finding himself with his brother in the village of Gam, Pitirim was accepted, “victoriously passing all the tests,” into the new, just opened, Gam second-grade parochial school, from which he graduated with honors in 1904. After graduating from it and under the patronage of his teacher A.N. Obraztsov, Pitirim entered the Khrenovsky church-teachers school in the Kostroma province.

  In 1905, Sorokin joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, in December 1906 he was arrested for campaigning activities, and spent 4 months in prison in Kineshma. Naturally, he was expelled from the seminary.

  In 1907, Pitirim Sorokin moved to St. Petersburg, where he met a fellow countryman from the Komi region, Professor Kallistrat Zhakov, and, under his patronage, entered the Chernyaevsky courses. Then, in February 1909, in Veliky Ustyug, he passed all exams for gymnasium courses as an external student and in the same year entered the paid St. Petersburg Psychoneurological Institute (K.F. Zhakov also taught here). But at the beginning of 1910, having failed to pay off his student debt, he was suspended from classes along with his fellow sufferer Nikolai Kondratiev (the future Soviet economist who substantiated the NEP).

  In July 1910, Pitirim Sorokin was enrolled in the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. In the same year, 1910, Sorokin’s first publications appeared (the article “Remnants of Animism among the Zyryans”, the story “Dig-Fuck”), in which he summarizes the results of his ethnographic expeditions. After graduating from the university in 1914, which, by the way, he graduated with a first-degree diploma, Pitirim remained at the department of criminal law at the university, and since 1916 he has been a private assistant professor.

  In 1917, Pitirim Sorokin took part in the revolution on the side of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He was elected as a deputy of the Constituent Assembly on the list of this party. After February 1917 - Kerensky's secretary and one of the editors of the Socialist Revolutionary newspaper "The Will of the People". In 1918 he was arrested twice by the Bolsheviks, and he was on the verge of execution. He was saved only by a complete renunciation of political activity - he renounces the title of member of the Constituent Assembly and announces his resignation from the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Since 1919, P. Sorokin again taught at Petrograd University. In January 1920, he was awarded the title of professor without protection.

  In 1922, P. Sorokin and other outstanding scientists and philosophers were expelled from Soviet Russia on the orders of Lenin. Expelled from Russia, P. A. Sorokin ended up in Germany, later in the Czech Republic, and a year later he moved to the United States, where he managed to find a second homeland.

  From 1923 to 1930, Pitirim Sorokin taught at various universities in the United States, and at the same time published several major works.
  Among the numerous works that appeared from the pen of P. A. Sorokin at a later time, the fundamental four-volume monograph “Social and Cultural Dynamics”, which was met with great interest throughout the scientific world, stands out.

  It is noteworthy that both supporters and opponents of P. Sorokin admitted “that, judging by the abundance of the most daring hypotheses, there is no other similar book in modern sociological literature.” In 1930, at Harvard University, P. Sorokin organized the first sociology department in the United States, of which he remained dean for twelve years.

  At Harvard, Sorokin trained a galaxy of brilliant American scientists. Evidence of Pitirim Sorokin's merits was his election in 1964 as president of the American Sociological Association.

  It is worthy of special attention that, while in America, P. Sorokin did not forget about his native land and his fellow countrymen. P. P. Krotov and A. V. Lipsky quite recently managed to find people in Rimya who knew Pitirim Sorokin’s aunt Anisya well and still remember her. “It turned out that Sorokin constantly wrote letters to her, sent dollars and white flour, from which Anisya baked “French buns”, treating her fellow villagers... One of Sorokin’s messages, according to the recollections of Anisya’s fellow villagers, began like this: “I went from a simple village guy to leading scientists not only in Europe, but also in America."

  

Pitirim Sorokin. Major works

• Digging with a fart: A story about the life of a northern village, - Arkhangelsk Provincial Gazette, 1910 No. 203;
• P Sorokin. Housing. Modern Zyryans (1911)
• P Sorokin. Forestry. Modern Zyryans (1911)
• Marriage in the old days: Polyandry and polygamy, Riga, 1913;
• Suicide as a social phenomenon, Riga, 1913;
• Crime and punishment, feat and reward, St. Petersburg, 1914;
• L. N. Tolstoy as a philosopher, Moscow, 1914;
• Autonomy of nationalities and unity of the state, Petrograd, 1917;
• The problem of social equality, Petrograd, 1917;
• System of sociology. Volumes 1-2. - Petrograd, 1920;
• Hunger as a factor: The influence of hunger on human behavior, social organization and public life. - Petrograd, 1922;
• The current state of Russia, - Prague, 1922;
• Popular essays on social pedagogy and politics. Uzhgorod, 1923;
• Social and cultural dynamics. The main work of Pitirim Sorokin in 4 volumes in 1937-1941. It gained fame as a classic work in the field of sociology and cultural studies.
• Sociocultural Causality, Space and Time, 1943;
• Russia and the USA, 1944;
• Society, culture and personality: their structure and dynamics. System of General Sociology, 1947;
• Social Philosophy in an Age of Crisis, 1950;
• The Ways and Power of Love, 1954;
• American Sexual Revolution, 1957;
• Main features of the Russian nation in the 20th century, 1967

  Interview with the head of the Pitirim Sorokin Center, Ph.D. Pavel Krotov about the legacy of P. Sorokin, his family and future plans. According to the scientist, the Vym village of Turya, the birthplace of P. Sorokin, and the Komi Republic as a whole, can present tourists not only with beautiful nature, but also “pages of the biography” of the outstanding philosopher. He is convinced that “it is impossible to imagine cultural tourism in Komi without Pitirim Sorokin.”

• Pitirim Sorokin’s autobiographical book “The Long Road,” where he describes the years of his life in the Komi region, is being translated into the Komi language. The translation from English into Russian was carried out by the head. Department of Syktyvkar State University Vera Chernykh, from Russian to Komi - Komi philologists scientific center Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Ulyashev and Galina Fedyuneva.
• Video translation. On the website business-sound.ru you can order a video translation service, for example, a video in English translated and voiced in Russian. And vice versa. And also choose accompaniment: music and effects, make a script.

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal Agency for Education State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education

All-Russian Correspondence Financial and Economic Institute

TEST

in sociology:

Option #7:

Integral sociology P.A. Sorokina

Teacher:

Work is done:

Penza - 2010

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………. 1. Basic principles of sociology P.A. Sorokina, its subject and structure. The theory of social stratification and social mobility, the problem of social equality, reforms and revolutions.. 2. The problem of sociocultural dynamics is a central theme in the works of P.A. Sorokin ………………………………………………… 3. Comment on the content of the law of “moral and religious” polarization from the position of modern society. Is it confirmed? …………………......................................... .................... Conclusion …………………………………………………………………… List of used literature……………………………………………………………

Introduction:

Sorokin P.A. - one of the outstanding sociologists of the twentieth century and one of the founders of American sociology, who emigrated from the USSR to the USA in the 20s. American sociologist of Russian origin. Pitirim Sorokin has always focused on people, society and culture. Being a Russian by birth, P. Sorokin paid great attention to Russia. Pitirim Sorokin made a truly enormous contribution to the development of science. All works by Sorokin P.A. covered a huge range of problems in the study of sociology.

The relevance of studying sociology P.A. Sorokina is caused primarily by a new stage in the development of Russian society, the desire to comprehend one’s own scientific heritage, and determine the future of the state. In addition, the enduring value of P.A.’s ideas and insights is undeniable. Sorokin, his forecasts, especially in light of the events that are taking place in our country and throughout the world at the present time.

1. Basic principles of sociology P.A. Sorokina, its subject and structure. The theory of social stratification and social mobility, the problem of social equality, reforms and revolutions.

Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968) - an outstanding sociologist of the twentieth century, the founder of the Russian and American sociological schools. His sociological views were formed mainly under the influence of the works of E. Durkheim, M.M. Kovalevsky and E.V. De-Roberti. Pitirim Sorokin is the author of 40 books, repeatedly republished in Europe, Asia and America, many essays and more than two hundred articles. His works have been translated into 48 languages ​​of the world.

Major works:

· “Crime and Its Causes” (1913) ,

· “System of Sociology” (1920),

· "The Current State of Russia" (1923),

· “Sociology of Revolution” (1925),

· “Social mobility”, “Modern sociological theory”, “Social and cultural dynamics” (4 volumes, 1937-1941),

· "The Crisis of Our Time" (1941),

· "Sociocultural Causality, Space, Time" (1943),

· “Society, culture and personality: their structure and dynamics. System of General Sociology" (1947),

· "Social Philosophy in an Age of Crisis" (1950),

· Altruistic Love: A Study of American Good Neighbors and Christian Saints (1950)

· "The Ways and Power of Love" (1954),

· “Integralism is my philosophy” (1957),

· “The main features of the Russian nation in the twentieth century” (1967).

The sociological teaching of P. Sorokin proceeded mainly from the same principles, therefore the identification of the Russian and American periods in it is very conditional. Sorokin based his scientific knowledge on the principle integralism.

In “The System of Sociology” P. Sorokin explains in detail the scientific principles on which this work is based.

Their essence is that:

1. Sociology as a science should be built on the type of natural sciences. There can be no talk of any opposition between the “sciences of nature” and the “sciences of culture”. The objects of study of these and other sciences are different, but the methods of studying these objects are the same;

2. sociology should study the world as it is. Any normativism, i.e. subjective interference in science from the standpoint of moral and other norms must be expelled from sociology. In this sense, truth must be separated from Good, Justice and similar principles and norms;

3. sociology must be an “objective discipline”, i.e. study real human interactions that can be objectively measured and studied;

4. since sociology wants to be an experimental and precise science, it must stop all “philosophizing” in the sense of creating speculative constructions not proven by science. In this regard, wrote P. Sorokin, a good statistical diagram is worth any socio-philosophical treatise;

5. a break with philosophizing also means a break with the idea of ​​monism, i.e. reduction of any phenomenon to one beginning. For, as M.M. Kovalevsky argued, monism in sociology is an attempt to solve infinitely complex problems of social phenomena using the method of equations with one unknown. Instead of monism, Sorokin proclaimed consistent sociological pluralism

These are the “basic and guiding principles” of P. Sorokin’s sociology.

Reliance on real experience and scientific data are the starting positions of sociological positivism, substantiated by O. Comte, E. Durkheim and other representatives of this direction. P.A. Sorokin always defended them and developed them in the new historical conditions of the 20th century. on a new level scientific knowledge.

P.A. Sorokin divided sociology into theoretical and practical.

Theoretical sociology he, in turn, divided it into three departments: social analytics, social mechanics and social genetics.

Social analytics studies the structure of a social phenomenon and its main forms. Item social mechanics(or social physiology) - processes of interaction between people, in other words, - the behavior of people and the forces by which it is caused and determined. Social genetics studies the development of social life, its individual aspects and institutions. The development of a social phenomenon is determined by its structure and interaction with other phenomena, so that social genetics contains social analytics and social mechanics.

Practical sociology characterized by P.A. Sorokin as an applied discipline. Based on the laws that theoretical sociology formulates, it should help society and people manage social forces in accordance with their goals. Practical sociology essentially manifests itself as social policy, guides and justifies it.

Objects of study of neopositivist sociology Sorokin are, first of all, the social behavior and activities of people, social groups and the structure of society as a whole, as well as the social processes occurring in it. At the same time, all social life and all social processes can be decomposed into phenomena and processes of interaction between two or more individuals. It is these interactions between people that Sorokin declares to be the direct subject of sociological study.

This is the significant difference between Sorokin’s neo-positivist sociology and Comte’s classical positivism. If Comte's positivist sociology is aimed primarily at studying society as an integral social organism, then the subject of direct study of Sorokin's neo-positivist sociology is the interaction of two or more individuals forming so-called small groups. Social processes are formed from these kinds of elementary interactions.

The interaction of two individuals is the simplest social phenomenon. It occurs “when a change in the mental experiences or external acts of one individual is caused by the experiences and external acts of another.” Such interactions are called Sorokin " social cells", from which all other, more or less complex social phenomena are formed.

P.A. Sorokin proposed his criteria classifications of social groups - unilateral and multilateral. In accordance with these criteria, social groups are distinguished according to one particular characteristic, for example, language, territory, gender, age. Classes, nations and other complex social groups are distinguished based on many characteristics.

The heterogeneity of society, its objective division into different social groups are reflected in theories of social stratification and social mobility. According to this theory, the entire society is divided into different layers, which differ in income levels, types of activities, political views, cultural orientations, etc. To the main forms social stratification(or stratification of society) Sorokin classified economic, political and professional. Social stratification is a natural and normal state of society. It is objectively determined by the existing social division of labor, property inequality, different political orientations, etc.

By changing his profession or type of activity, his economic status or political views, a person moves from one social stratum to another. This process is called social mobility. Sorokin divided social mobility into horizontal and vertical.

Horizontal mobility means the transition of a person from one social group to another, which is generally at the same level of social stratification. Vertical mobility - the transition of people from one social layer to another in a hierarchical order

P.A. Sorokin attached great importance to questions social equality. In 1917 The book “The Problem of Social Equality” was published in Petrograd. He constantly addressed this problem in his latest works. Pointing to the complex and multilateral nature of the problem of social equality, he believed that the main thing in it is providing each person with material and spiritual benefits according to his merits, i.e. according to the degree of his personal socially useful work. He noted the real equality of all before the law, equality for holding public positions, the right to equal political benefits

P.A. Sorokin was not only a witness, but also an active participant in the revolutionary events in Russia. Therefore, his scientific interest in the problems of the nature of revolutions in general became natural. In the works “Public Textbook on Sociology” (1920), “Sheets from the Russian Diary” (1924), “Sociology of the Revolution” (1925), etc., he sets out his theoretical views on these issues.

Any revolution, according to P.A. Sorokin, is caused by the suppression of the basic instincts of the majority of the population - the need for food (hunger), the need for housing and clothing, the instinct of property (the poverty of some against the backdrop of the prosperity of others), the instinct of self-preservation (despotism, reprisals, mass executions), the need for collective self-preservation (family, religious association, party), sexual instinct, instinct of self-expression, need for creative activity, need for freedom. To be a prerequisite for revolution, such suppression of the basic needs of the population must be widespread and accompanied by the impotence of groups maintaining order.

The revolution, as noted by P.A. Sorokin, leads to devastating consequences for society - the collapse of its legal and moral foundations, cruelty and aggression in society, an unprecedented increase in the scale of crime, the destruction of family values, mass emigration, mass death of people as a result of acts of violence accompanying the revolution, famine, epidemics, suicides. Moreover, the consequences of all this continue to affect long years after the revolution. P.A. Sorokin believes that during the revolution, first of all, the most outstanding, energetic, gifted people die in comparison with the general mass of the population; morally and biologically defective persons suffer to a lesser extent.

An alternative to the destructive elements of the revolution P.A. Sorokin sees not a desire to preserve the existing order at all costs, but a change in society through reforms. Reforms should be based on the following principles: any reform should not belittle human dignity and should not be accompanied by opposition to the basic needs of people; each reform must be preceded by in-depth scientific research aimed at studying the social conditions of society; each reform must be carried out exclusively by constitutional methods.

The main point of reforms, according to Sorokin, is that they should proceed from the integral essence of man and in no case interfere with his basic instincts. For this, at a minimum, it is necessary: ​​1) that the form of production and distribution of goods correspond to the essence of man; 2) so that the functions of the state ultimately stimulate the creative activity of the population; 3) so that a moral and legal order is established, uniform for both the authorities and the population.

Sorokin was deeply convinced that all problems arising in society should be solved on the basis of reasonable management, conscious resolution of social contradictions and providing every person with opportunities for creative self-expression. He was opposed to all social upheavals, including revolutions, and advocated a normal evolutionary path of development. In his work “The Sociology of Revolution,” he argued that more or less successful development of society after the revolution that destroys it occurs thanks to its “return to its values, vulgar instincts and traditions, creative work, cooperation, mutual assistance and unity of all its members and social groups.

2. The problem of sociocultural dynamics is a central theme in the works of P.A. Sorokina

Central to his work is the theme of sociocultural dynamics, in the development of which the main concept is “value”. He writes that “it is value that serves as the basis and foundation of any culture.” In his works, P. Sorokin gives a definition and description of such concepts as “cultural integration”, a system of cultures: ideational (speculative), sensual, idealistic and mixed; social processes: their forms, sociocultural fluctuations. He explores fluctuations in the cultural system: in the field of art, science, ethics and law, the relationship between types of cultures and personality types, why and how sociocultural changes occur.

In a broad sense, he calls this entire world, which is created by man, sociocultural. Its components can be generally attributed to spiritual, material and social culture. At the same time, he uses the concept of “meanings” that integrates them. Spiritual culture is presented as an ideological universe of meanings, material culture - as their embodiment, social culture- as actions and deeds in which individuals and groups of individuals apply these meanings. Socioculture in a narrow sense is defined as one of the civilizations, which is interpreted as a cultural supersystem. It has its own mentality, its own system of knowledge, philosophy and worldview, its own religion, art, morals, laws, social organization, social relationships and his own type of personality with his own unique mentality and behavior. He explores culture as a broader, capacious concept that includes society.

The main cultural qualities in his sociocultural system or supersystem are concepts such as meaning, norm, value . The study of art, science, religion, law, etc. led P. Sorokin to the conclusion that there are three supersystems that differ in their inherent values. In history they periodically replace each other: idealistic and sensual. Each type of culture is characterized by the following features: 1) one or another understanding of reality; 2) the nature of needs; 3) the degree of satisfaction of needs; 4) the way to satisfy them.

Each supersystem has its own determining cultural qualities. In the Western culture of the Middle Ages, which he calls ideational (speculative), the main value was God, an orientation toward the transcendent (supersensible, otherworldly). The emergence of new values ​​- sensuality, visibility, audibility, tangibility of objective reality - led at the end of the 12th century. to the collapse of this system. In combination with the values ​​of the first type, they gave rise to a new type of culture - idealistic. It existed until the 14th century and was transitional. The third type of culture is sensual. It is based on empirical values, on recognition of the meaning of objective reality, the prevailing values ​​are material world. There is another, mixed type of culture. By integrating, it combines the characteristics of all previous ones that coexist in certain periods of history. This type of culture is associated with an era of decline.

P. Sorokin sees cultural dynamics in the cyclical change of sociocultural types. He attributes contemporary culture to the “sensual” type, but states its state of crisis, caused by the transition from one type to another. They are offered a moral and religious revival, a transition to a new, more creative “speculative” culture, and a whole program for transforming the system of values, meanings, and norms is being developed.

Every sociocultural system, according to P. Sorokin, is a creation of man. But man himself is an integral being, a product of socioculture who has internalized certain values. Any person is included in the sociocultural system. People enter into a system of social relations under the influence of unconscious (reflex), bioconscious (feelings of hunger, thirst) and socioconscious (meanings, norms, values) regulators. At the same time, the unconscious and bioconscious are controlled and regulated by the socioconscious.

Society is capable of producing meanings, norms, values ​​that exist, as it were, within the socio-conscious “egos”, i.e. members making up the society. Therefore, any society can be understood and described only through the prism of its inherent system of values, meanings, norms, which constitute a one-time cultural quality. It manifests itself in all spheres of human activity, giving rise to patterns of cultural life.

P. Sorokin concludes that with the help of socio-empirical studies of cultural qualities (meanings, values, norms) hidden in the social consciousness of individuals and manifested in their activities, it is possible to detect periods of human history that are different from each other, i.e. various civilizations. Each of them is unique and inimitable, experiences periods of origin, prosperity and decline, and some values ​​are replaced by others. Thus, he developed a civilizational theory in which socioculture and civilization are synonymous. In modern sociological theory, there has been a tendency to clearly distinguish between these two concepts, which is largely due to the new qualities that characterize historical progress.

The doctrine of the sociocultural system and its driving motives and factors, the cyclical change of types of sociocultural system is the core of the teaching of integralism, the foundations of which were developed by Pitirim Sorokin and which, in our opinion, will become one of the main fundamental features of the post-industrial paradigm of social sciences, replacing liberalism and Marxism as two varieties of the industrial paradigm of social science.

3. Pitirim Sorokin, studying the impact of wars, famines, epidemics, revolutions and other social cataclysms on people’s behavior, derived the law of “moral and religious polarization.” According to this law, people react to disasters depending on the type of personality: either by increasing creative efforts, becoming more religious, altruistic, or by suicide, mental disorders, bitterness, and a cynical perception of the world around them. The law also states that all great religious and moral systems arose and strengthened in social eras that were catastrophic for anyone.

Comment on the content of this law from the perspective of modern society. Is it confirmed?

Answer:

By identifying general patterns in these areas of research, for example, “the law of moral and religious polarization”, “the pattern of expansion of government control during the emergence of social disasters”, Pitirim Sorokin made his contemporaries, as well as us, think about what awaits the Russian and world community in the conditions disasters that befell humanity in the last two centuries of this millennium. In the book “Man and Society in an Age of Disaster” (1941), Sorokin formulated the law of polarization.

In crisis periods of social development, in conditions of disintegration of the decaying socio-cultural system and the integration of previously disparate elements of the new system that opposed it, there is a tendency to polarize the majority of society. Moreover, at the initial stages of the crisis, negative polarization predominates, while at its last stage and after its completion, positive polarization prevails.

Pitirim Sorokin analyzes in detail the manifestations of negative religious and moral polarization, concluding that we are indeed living in an age of enormous negative moral polarization, which has rarely been observed in the past history of mankind. However, the situation is not so tragically hopeless. “A review of religious and moral phenomena based on facts shows that along with the outbreak of forces of negative polarization, forces of positive religious and moral polarization have emerged and are growing. Although at present the forces of negative polarization still predominate, the forces of positive polarization have already fully declared themselves... Constructive religious and moral forces must grow sufficiently to ultimately defeat the destructive ones and create a new social, cultural and personal order in the human universe.”

Analysis of trends in negative and positive polarization allowed Pitirim Sorokin to make a global long-term forecast, the main provisions of which can be summarized as follows. An epoch-making confrontation between destructive and constructive forces is unfolding, the results of which no one can predict with certainty. On the other hand, history human race indicates that it is somehow capable of overcoming many disasters throughout its long historical existence. In cooperation with all creative factors, the forces of positive polarization must do everything to prevent the mournful end of human history. For this purpose, all religious and moral forces must use their possible influence.

All the great religions that “emerged in catastrophic conditions and in the first initial period were first and foremost “moral social movements” must once again unite their efforts to save humanity. They must replace the previously dominant tribal views (“religious tribalism”) with universal, universal ones, relating to all human beings regardless of religion, race, nationality, social status, etc., abandon monopolistic claims to exclusive truth and undeniable superiority over other religions. "All religions must also establish harmonious relationships and genuine collaboration with science.” Although their starting positions are in many ways different, cooperation can extend to the area of ​​basic concepts of absolute and true reality, the true nature of the human person.

The general conclusion that Pitirim Sorokin comes to as a result of the forecast is optimistic: if the growth of the forces of positive polarization “is not interrupted by a new war and other disasters, then these forces will, of course, prevail over the forces of negative polarization; they will ultimately usher humanity into a new era of creative history. It is hoped that in this era spiritually and morally ennobled religion will co-operate sincerely with morally responsible science and the enlightened and refined arts. Truth, goodness and beauty will once again unite into the highest triad of values, revealing more and more secrets Supreme Reality and dedicated to serving humanity in its creative mission on this planet and beyond. Our timing is favorable for this great opportunity.”

Over the three and a half decades since the publication of these provisions, many new pro and contra arguments have emerged regarding this forecast, which makes it possible to clarify it and extend it into the next century. On the one hand, the forces of positive religious and moral polarization have increased. With the abandonment of socialist ideals in Russia and other post-socialist countries, the number of believers has increased. Among them are many former atheists in party positions, who have turned into zealous supporters of the prevailing religion, but there are also more sincere believers, which provides a certain moral ground and supports religious and moral commandments on the shaky ground of a transitional society. The number of various religious teachings and sects, as well as organizations calling for moral revival and purification, and counteracting the bacchanalia of crime, has also increased. However, opposing trends are no less obvious. Religious fundamentalism has intensified, causing the revival of seemingly long-forgotten religious wars(so far at the local level - for example, in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina). The fall of the Iron Curtain opened the way for a dirty wave of moral permissiveness, sexual promiscuity, crime, and the devaluation of human life and dignity in Russia and other former socialist countries. The path to a “new era of creative history” has to begin from a lower starting position, with increasing negative polarization in conditions of a general crisis.

But this does not mean the final victory of this trend, but only confirms the pattern noted by Pitirim Sorokin: in the initial period of great crises, negative polarization prevails, last stage and after its completion - positive. Analyzing the trends of the crisis transition from industrial to post-industrial society, we can expect that in the first quarter of the 21st century the forces of positive polarization will prevail and make the optimistic global forecast of Pitirim Sorokin a long-awaited reality (although in the future sociocultural cycles with crisis transition phases and changes in the ratio of negative and positive will remain polarization).

There is an opinion that it is much easier to judge the eras from which a certain period of time separates you, because history reveals wrong or correct actions, but judging the society of your time is not an easy task, to a greater extent, because you yourself are an element of this society . It is also difficult to talk about comparing personality types of a constant past and a changing present; at the same time, it is problematic to determine the most suitable structure of society (on moral and regional grounds) that could best withstand disasters of various types. However, as in previous centuries, society is characterized various types individuals who are in continuous interaction with each other. The characteristic qualities of each personality are manifested in moments of critical social situations. Wars, disasters, epidemics, etc. - all of these are precisely those very critical events that “reveal” a person from the position of personality, thereby revealing all the noble and base traits of a person.

Based on the fact that a person has a natural desire to express himself, to react to what is happening around him and to adapt to new conditions, in times of great cataclysms there is a revaluation of all values ​​(and maybe the creation of new ones) and a reshaping of society, due to the unity of social groups to survive in new conditions . In “catastrophic” conditions, people will seek strength in religion to withstand trials, in creativity - pacification, and the creation and cultivation of new moral norms will help avoid the moral collapse of society. And people who are weak-willed, desperate and have lost hope for anything will undoubtedly try to either die, or, perceiving reality in a black light, will turn into an immoral herd.

From all of the above, we can conclude that the law is fair, moreover, it will work within the framework of modern society, because in society to this day, there are a huge number of people with outstanding personal qualities, which can become the backbone that supports society in local or global cataclysms.

Conclusion:

P. A. Sorokin went down in history as one of the most outstanding thinkers in the field of sociology of the 20th century.

In the development of classical sociology, two directions were clearly outlined: objectivist, one of whose representatives was E. Durkheim, and cultural-analytical, which was developed by M. Weber, G. Simmel and others. In building their theories, they sought to separate sociology from the natural sciences, they were looking for your subject and research methods. At the same time, Durkheim believed that sociology should study objective reality, social facts, which included collective ideas and collective consciousness. It is the recognition of the latter as social facts that brings him closer to the sociology of culture.

Unlike Durkheim, the “understanding” sociology of Weber and Simmel, on the contrary, tends towards psychologism and subjectivism. According to Weber, subjective motivation, intention, and orientation toward other people are subject to sociological study as being between social action and the environment. He proposes to take ideal types as the basis for the study, correlating them with people’s actions will make it possible to understand the internal mechanisms of their actions.

The greatest influence of psychology is manifested in Simmel's theory. He understands the history of society as the history of mental phenomena, while separating form and content, contrasting them, and believes that sociology should study the individual with his desires, statements and other subjective manifestations separately from the objects that caused them.

P. Sorokin, having developed his system, opposed previous sociology, subjectivism and psychologism. His main thesis that social behavior is based on psychophysical mechanisms involves the study of both behavior and its motives. At the same time, he considers it necessary to study the activities of individuals, which allows us to see their subjective meaning, values, values, and norms. The latter determine the nature and characteristics of the supersystems, or types, of civilizations identified by them.

List of used literature:

1. Sociology: Textbook for universities / Edited by prof. V.N. Lavrinenko. - 2nd ed., revised. and additional - M.: UNITY-DANA, 2001.

2. Sociology: Textbook for students of higher educational institutions / R.T. Mukhaev. - M.: UNITY-DANA, 2005. - 397 p.

3. http://www.psorokin.newparadigm.ru/

Fluctuation- random surge, deviation from the average level; spontaneous excitation of the environment, caused by its internal, latent factors and therefore unpredictable under given conditions.

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………3

1. Biography of P. A. Sorokin…………………………………………………………..5

1.1 Life and work of P. A. Sorokin in Russia…………………………5

1.2 Life and work of P. A. Sorokin in America……………………….9

2. Basic theories of P. A. Sorokin………………………………………11

2.1 “Basic and guiding principles” of sociology…………………11

2.2 Theoretical and practical sociology. Neopositivist sociology…………………………………………………………………………………12

2.3 Theory of social stratification and social mobility…………15

2.4 Cyclic theory…………………………………………………….17

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….22

Literature………………………………………………………………………………..25

Introduction

Pitirim Aleksandrovich is referred to in encyclopedic literature either as a Russian-American sociologist and cultural scientist, or, as I. A. Golosenko writes, as an American sociologist of Russian origin. In addition, P. A. Sorokin, a lawyer by training, can also be called a Russian-American lawyer, because he paid a lot of attention to the consideration of the philosophy of law, focusing on moral and psychological aspects - legal pain, legal sense, moral and legal criteria.

Sorokin spent the first part of his life in Russia, then was expelled from the country and lived in the United States. The sociological teaching of P. Sorokin was generally based on the same principles, so the identification of the Russian and American periods in it is very conditional.

At the heart of Sorokin’s idealistic concept is the idea of ​​the priority of a superorganic system of values, meanings, “pure cultural systems”, the bearers of which are individuals and institutions. The historical process, according to Sorokin, is a cyclical fluctuation of types of culture, each of which is a specific integrity and is based on several main premises (ideas about the nature of reality, methods of knowing it). Sorokin identifies three main types of culture: sensual - it is dominated by direct sensory perception of reality; ideational, in which rational thinking predominates; idealistic - the intuitive type of knowledge dominates here.

Each system of “truths” is embodied in law, art, philosophy, science, religion and the structure of social relations, radical transformations and changes of which occur as a result of wars, revolutions, and crises. Sorokin associated the crisis of modern “sensual” culture with the development of materialism and science, and saw a way out of it in the future victory of religious “idealistic” culture.

Sorokin criticized the prevailing empirical trend in the United States and developed the doctrine of “integral” sociology, covering all sociological aspects of a widely understood culture. Social reality was considered by Sorokin in the spirit of social realism, which postulated the existence of a super-individual sociocultural reality, irreducible to material reality and endowed with a system of meanings. Characterized by infinite diversity, surpassing any of its individual manifestations, sociocultural reality embraces the truths of feelings, rational intellect and super-rational intuition. All these methods of cognition should be used in the systematic study of sociocultural phenomena, but Sorokin considered the highest method of cognition to be the intuition of a highly gifted individual, with the help of which, in his opinion, all great discoveries were made.

In Western sociology, both Sorokin's concept of sociocultural dynamics and his empirical studies of social mobility and social stratification are highly valued. His authority as a critic of the excessive reliance on quantitative methods and other formal procedures in sociology to the detriment of meaningful analysis is also significant.

1. Biography of P. A. Sorokin

1.1 Life and work of P. A. Sorokin in Russia

The future Russian and American sociologist was born in the village of Turya, Yarensky district, Vologda region (now Zheshart, Komi) on January 21, 1889. His father was an artisan, engaged in church restoration work (he named his son after the local bishop, recognized as a saint in those places), and his mother - a peasant woman from the Zyryans, as the Komi people used to be called. At the age of 11, the boy was completely orphaned.

In the capital of the empire, a 15-year-old ignoramus, who only a year before had mastered literacy, arrived with a specific education - “incomplete lower” and “revolutionary higher”. In other words, the future sociologist was expelled from the church teaching school, located in the village with the wonderful name Khrenovo, due to his arrest - of course, not for criminality, but for “politics” itself.

It was difficult to expect that on the eve of the first Russian revolution the young man would do anything else in St. Petersburg. So it was: Marxist circles, the works of Bakunin and Nietzsche, barricades, three months in prison, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the right wing of which he eventually headed... However, the young socialist revolutionary also did not forget about his incomplete education: he graduated from evening school, already in At the age of 20, he passed the exams for the gymnasium course, and in 1909 he entered the Psychoneurological Institute, Faculty of Sociology, created by the famous Bekhterev. But, without studying for even a year, he transferred to the law faculty of the university. The reason for such a sharp change of interests was not ideological, but purely utilitarian: Pitirim Sorokin was threatened with conscription into the army, and his institution of the right to a deferment military service did not give - unlike the capital's university. So the future sociologist had to “mow” in the most vulgar way, as they would say now.

Already in his third year, student Sorokin, who showed considerable ability, published a scientific monograph. True, the fact that this essay was written by a student is revealed by the very non-academic title - “Crime and Punishment, Feat and Reward.” In all other respects, it was a real scientific work that expressed the original philosophical system of the author.

The fact that this nugget from the Far North is a talent, to say the least, became clear relatively quickly. Having defended his diploma in 1914, Pitirim Sorokin, through the efforts of faculty professors, was retained at the department and two years later passed the oral exam for a master's degree in criminal law. If you follow the dates, it’s easy to figure out what followed: the year was 1917.

In short, Sorokin defended his master’s thesis only in 1922. And during this time he managed to take part in two revolutions. After the February victory, he was elected to constituent Assembly, worked as a secretary for the chairman of the Provisional Government A.F. Kerensky, was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “The Will of the People”. And after Oktyabrskaya’s victory, he fought ideologically with the new victors, literally “went into the woods” and was repeatedly arrested. Once he was even sentenced to death, but it passed, otherwise the sociology of one of its founding fathers would not have been seen!

In general, these were hard times - and Pitirim Sorokin fully corresponded to them, stubbornly not fitting into the image of an armchair scientist in a black cap and pince-nez in a gold frame. By the way, he wore pince-nez - without taking it off even during interrogations at the Cheka, which alone could draw him to the highest measure: an intellectual, a contrarian, in a word!

And with such non-academic baggage, the philosopher Sorokin returned to the university again - to defend his dissertation, which was postponed due to his “departure for the revolution.” Only this time, as a dissertation, the future master of law presented, oddly enough, a book that had a very indirect relationship to jurisprudence - the two-volume “Systems of Sociology.” Since then, this, like many of Sorokin’s subsequent works (in total, he wrote more than three dozen books, translated into 17 languages), has become a classic of the relatively young scientific discipline - sociology.

After the February Revolution, it received official recognition in Russia, and even the Bolsheviks initially maintained a certain tolerance towards the future “bourgeois pseudoscience”. Perhaps they were impressed by the fact that the new humanities, in contrast to the “reactionary idealistic” old ones, were emphatically and even aggressively materialistic. Sociologists of the beginning of the last century proposed not to bother one’s head with higher abstractions such as “soul”, “ideals”, “truth”, “culture”, “value system”, but to approach the study of society and personality, roughly speaking, with a counting ruler and other tools of natural scientists . Society and the individual were proposed to be surveyed, measured and calculated, coldly and objectively, without asking crafty questions “why?”, but answering only the extremely specific question “how?” based on the results of the experiment.

Of course, this approach to social phenomena had its obvious bias. Obvious to us today - but in the first half of the 20th century, it was Pitirim Sorokin who was one of the first to understand the internal defectiveness of the mechanistic approach to man. However, he firmly realized something else: without reliable methods of the exact sciences, a sociologist also cannot get far. Therefore, I began to look for a compromise - to create a kind of alternative sociology - not positivist, but “culturological”, “value-based”, “historiographical”.

In the early 1920s, former Socialist Revolutionary and now newly minted Soviet professor Pitirim Sorokin quite legally headed first the interfaculty department, and then the corresponding department of Petrograd University. By this time, he had finally withdrawn from active political activity, broke with the Social Revolutionaries, but continued to polemicize with the Bolsheviks from time to time - mainly on philosophical issues. That he then no longer had illusions about where the new government was leading Russia (not to mention who heads this government), is proven by a small article by Pitirim Sorokin, published in exile - not at all philosophical, but rather journalistic: political obituary on the death of the leader of the world proletariat.

Meanwhile, back in 1921, a conference dedicated to Dostoevsky’s social philosophy was held at the Petrograd House of Writers. The whole flower of the then Russian humanities spoke - Berdyaev, Karsavin and... Sorokin. The latter, of course, spoke about sociology in Dostoevsky’s novels, but constantly cited quotes from “The Brothers Karamazov” (the legend of the Grand Inquisitor) and “Demons”, which sounded unusually relevant against the backdrop of what was happening in the country: “Where they are trying to find salvation in naked violence, where there is no love and freedom, religion and morality, nothing but blood, murder and crime can result... Without love, without moral improvement, people will not be saved by a change in the social system, a change in laws and institutions.”

As for the aforementioned obituary for the leader, in Soviet Russia publishing such a thing, even just writing it, simply meant signing one’s death warrant. It definitely wouldn’t have been canceled the second time! But by that time, the sociologist Sorokin, along with the same Berdyaev, Karsavin and other domestic intellectuals, had already been pushed out of Russia - they were all taken to a foreign land of sad memory by the “philosophical steamer”. On board, free thought itself, not bound by dogma and political conjuncture, left Russia for many years (although in reality Sorokin himself left his homeland in a train carriage - but this is so, for historical accuracy).

This was in September 1922. Pitirim Sorokin was then, as they say, the age of Christ. He will spend the next almost half a century mainly at his desk and university chair - as befits a philosopher: he will write, read, think. Although the second one had its own dramas and conflict situations, true science is also not alien to everything human.

1.2 Life and work of P. A. Sorokin in America

For the first year and a half in exile, Sorokin worked in Prague, and then was invited to lecture in America - scientific fame flew ahead of him.

The universities of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were only preparation for the main thing in his scientific career - an invitation to take the post of head of the sociology department specially created “for Sorokin” at the prestigious Harvard. And then the corresponding faculty, which the Russian scientist permanently headed from its founding in 1931 to 1942.

By that time, however, he was already a US citizen, although at heart he never became a true American. Calling himself a “conservative Christian anarchist” and a “lone wolf,” Harvard University professor and president of the American Sociological Association Pitirim Sorokin found it difficult to fit into the world of American humanities, which gravitated precisely toward positivism and was like hell afraid of all sorts of “spiritual values” and “cultural values.” symbols." Namely, it was on them that a scientist from Russia built his edifice of sociology, whose main work of life, published in four volumes in 1937-1941, was called “Social and Cultural Dynamics.” That's right - in an inextricable connection.

To imagine how difficult Sorokin’s relationship with the American sociological establishment was, it is enough to cite the title of his other famous book - “Quirds and Misconceptions of Modern Sociology and Related Sciences” (1956). In it, he takes a very poisonous look at American “scientism” and “empiricism,” in other words, the view of the social sciences as particular applications of the natural sciences.

Sorokin, by the way, considered himself a believer, but did not want to join any of the existing religious denominations; all his life he was looking for some kind of “his” god.

He himself called his own original - and it must be said, very difficult for a non-specialist to understand - theory “an integral system of philosophy, sociology, psychology, ethics and personal values.” Here, it seems that each element in itself is understandable, but their totality...

However, among Sorokin’s scientific achievements there were also many quite applied developments, which were later adopted by both American and world sociology. Now even a non-specialist is familiar with terms such as “social stratification” (stratification of society) and “social mobility” - but one of the first to develop these theories was Pitirim Sorokin.

Nevertheless, his main sociological revelations for the majority of American colleagues, accustomed to “calculating” and not “soaring in abstractions,” seemed to be something too abstract and amorphous. And after, on the initiative of one of the gurus of American sociology, Talcott Parsons (whose area of ​​scientific interests was precisely mathematical, formalized methods in sociology), the Department of Sociology at Harvard was abolished, and in its place the Department of Social Relations was created, Sorokin was no longer invited there.

On December 31, 1959, at the age of 70, he resigned from all positions at Harvard. In the last decade of his life, he continued his active scientific teaching work, giving lectures at various universities, working on books and articles. Pitirim Sorokin died on February 10, 1968 in Winchester, USA.

2. Basic theories of P. A. Sorokin

2.1 "Basic and guiding principles" of sociology

In “The System of Sociology” P. Sorokin explains in detail the scientific principles, the principles of sociology on which this work is based. He believes that (1) sociology as a science should be built along the lines of the natural sciences. There can be no talk of any opposition between the “sciences of nature” and the “sciences of culture”. The objects of study of these and other sciences are different, but the methods of studying these objects are the same; (2) sociology must study the world as it is. Any normativism, i.e. subjective interference in science from the standpoint of moral and other norms must be expelled from sociology. In this sense, Truth must be separated from Good, Justice and similar principles and norms; (3) sociology must be an “objective discipline”, i.e. study real human interactions that can be objectively measured and studied; (4) since sociology wants to be an experimental and precise science, it must stop all “philosophizing” in the sense of creating speculative constructions not proven by science. In this regard, wrote P. Sorokin, a good statistical diagram is worth any socio-philosophical treatise; (5) a break with philosophizing also means a break with the idea of ​​monism, i.e. reduction of any phenomenon to one principle. For, as M.M. Kovalevsky also argued, monism in sociology is an attempt to solve infinitely complex problems of social phenomena using the method of equations with one unknown. Instead of monism, Sorokin proclaimed consistent sociological pluralism.

These are the “basic and guiding principles” of Sorokin’s sociology. Reliance on real experience and scientific data are the starting positions of sociological positivism, substantiated by O. Comte, E. Durkheim and other representatives of this direction. P.A. Sorokin always defended them and developed them in the new historical conditions of the 20th century. at a new level of scientific knowledge.

2.2 Theoretical and practical sociology.

Neopositivist sociology.

P.A. Sorokin divided sociology into theoretical and practical. He, in turn, divided theoretical sociology into three departments: social analytics, social mechanics and social genetics. Social analytics studies the structure (structure) of a social phenomenon and its main forms. The subject of social mechanics (or social physiology) is the processes of interaction between people, in other words, the behavior of people and the forces by which it is caused and determined. Social genetics studies the development of social life, its individual aspects and institutions. “The task of genetic sociology is to give the main historical trends in the development of people’s social life.” It is clear that the development of a social phenomenon is determined by its structure (structure) and interaction with other phenomena, so that social genetics contains social analytics and social mechanics.

Practical sociology is characterized by P. A. Sorokin as an applied discipline. Based on the laws that theoretical sociology formulates, it should help society and individuals manage social forces in accordance with their goals. Practical sociology essentially manifests itself as social policy, guides and justifies it.

“This discipline should be an applied discipline, which, based on the laws formulated by theoretical sociology, would give humanity the opportunity to manage social forces and utilize them in accordance with their goals.” In the doctrine of the structure of society P.A. Sorokin writes: “Before moving on to describing the structure of a population or society in the complex form in which they exist, we must study them in their simplest form.” He shows that the simplest model of a social phenomenon is the interaction of two individuals. In any phenomenon of interaction there are three elements: individuals, their acts, actions, conductors (light, sound, heat, object, chemical, etc.). The main forms of interaction between social groups are:

1) interaction of two, one and many, many and many;

2) interaction between similar and dissimilar persons;

3) interaction one-way and two-way, long-term and instantaneous, organized and unorganized, solidary and antagonistic, conscious and unconscious.

The entire human population breaks up into a number of closer groups, formed from the interaction of one with one, one with many, and one group with another. Whatever social group we take, whether it be a family or a class, or a state, or a religious sect, or a party, all this represents the interaction of two or one with many or many people with many. The entire endless sea of ​​human communication is made up of interaction processes, one-way and two-way, temporary and long-term, organized and unorganized, solidary and antagonistic, conscious and unconscious, sensory-emotional and volitional.”

The objects of study of Sorokin's neo-positivist sociology are, first of all, the social behavior and activities of people, social groups and the structure of society as a whole, as well as the social processes occurring in it. At the same time, all social life and all social processes can be decomposed, according to Sorokin, into phenomena and processes of interaction between two or more individuals. It is these interactions between people that he declares to be the direct subject of study of sociology. We are talking about the “psycho-reflex” interaction of individuals, which manifests itself externally in their behavior and activities.

This is the significant difference between Sorokin’s neo-positivist sociology and Comte’s classical positivism. If Comte's positivist sociology is aimed primarily at studying society as an integral social organism, then the subject of direct study of Sorokin's neo-positivist sociology is the interaction of two or more individuals forming so-called small groups. From these kinds of elementary interactions, as he believed, various kinds of social processes are formed.

The interaction of two individuals is characterized by Sorokin as the simplest social phenomenon. It occurs “when a change in the mental experiences or external acts (actions) of one individual is caused by the experiences and external acts of another.” Such interactions are called by Sorokin “social cells”, from which all other, more or less complex social phenomena are formed.

Essentially the entire first volume of P. Sorokin’s “Systems of Sociology” is devoted to the analysis of the simplest social interactions. Its second volume examines “complex social aggregates,” various kinds of social groups, their structure and interactions.

P. Sorokin proposed his own criteria for classifying social groups - unilateral and multilateral. In accordance with these criteria, social groups are distinguished according to one particular characteristic, for example, language, territory, gender, age, or many characteristics. Classes, nations and other complex, often socially heterogeneous groups are distinguished based on many characteristics.

2.3 Theory of social stratification and social mobility.

The heterogeneity of society, its objective division into different social groups are reflected in the theory of social stratification and social mobility by P.A. Sorokina. According to this theory, the entire society is divided into different layers - strata, which differ among themselves in terms of income levels, types of activities, political views, cultural orientations, etc. Sorokin considered the main forms of social stratification (or stratification of society) to be economic, political and professional. In his opinion, social stratification is a natural and normal state of society. It is objectively determined by the existing social division of labor, property inequality, different political orientations, etc.

By changing his profession or type of activity, his economic status or political views, a person moves from one social stratum to another. This process is called social mobility. Sorokin divides social mobility into horizontal and vertical.

Horizontal mobility means the transition of a person from one social group to another, which is generally at the same level of social stratification, say, when a rural resident becomes urban, but his profession and income level remain the same. Vertical mobility is the transition of people from one social stratum to another in a hierarchical order, for example, from a lower stratum of society to a higher one, or vice versa - from a higher stratum to a lower one.

The objective basis for the existence of vertical mobility is, in particular, the economic inequality of people, “which is expressed in the difference in income, standard of living, in the existence of rich and poor segments of the population.”

Moreover, people who belong to a higher stratum in one respect usually belong to the same stratum in other respects, and vice versa. Representatives of the highest economic strata simultaneously belong to the highest political and professional strata. The poor, as a rule, are deprived of civil rights and are in the lower strata of the professional hierarchy. That's how it is general rule, although there are many exceptions.

As Sorokin believed, social mobility is as natural and inevitable a phenomenon as the social stratification on the basis of which it exists. This applies to both upward and downward social mobility, in which people move up or down the social ladder. He substantiated such a concept as “social space”, the essence of which is revealed through the concepts of “higher and lower classes”, “movement up the social ladder”, “social distance”, etc.

P. A. Sorokin attached great importance to issues of social equality. In 1917, his book “The Problem of Social Equality” was published in Petrograd. He constantly addressed this problem in his subsequent works. Pointing to the complex and multifaceted nature of the problem of social equality, he believed that the main thing in it is providing each person with material and spiritual benefits “according to his merits,” i.e. “according to the degree of his personal socially useful work.” However, this economic content the problem of social equality is not exhausted. It is important, Sorokin wrote, that equality of all before the Law, equality for holding public positions, the right to equal political benefits - voting rights, freedom of speech, press, unions, conscience, etc. - become a reality. Of exceptional importance is the “more or less even distribution of knowledge and education,” without which, in his opinion, egalitarian, i.e., is generally impossible. based on social equality, a system of society.

2.4 Cyclic theory

The peculiarities of Pitirim Sorokin's views on the periodization of society are that he concentrates his attention mainly on the evolution of spiritual life, largely leaving aside the processes of material production. Sorokin was one of the first American sociologists to draw attention to the problem of axiology - the doctrine of values. The concept of “value” appears as one of the most important in his sociology. This concept explains the behavior of individuals and social groups, their interactions according to the most different directions. Great importance is attached to universal human values, on the basis of which cooperation between peoples is possible. Moreover, his concept of values ​​is closely connected with the idea of ​​the three highest types of civilizations (“supercultures”): ideational, sensitive and idealistic. These are not “local civilizations”, as in Spengler and Toynbee, but rather a certain type of worldview, not inherent in any individual person, class or social group, but dominant at a given period in the consciousness of huge masses of people, society as a whole. A worldview is nothing more than a certain system of values.

What types of worldview does Sorokin identify?

1. Religious worldview associated with an ideational supersystem. It, according to Sorokin, characterizes this type of development of human history when religion occupies a dominant position among all other forms of ideology. Judging by the empirical material involved, Sorokin analyzes this type of superculture primarily on the basis of the Middle Ages. In this period Catholic Church truly had a monopoly on ideology. The influence of this ideology on all other forms of social consciousness and spiritual life - science, philosophy, art, morality - cannot be compared in any way with the influence that it itself experienced from them. It should be noted that Sorokin does not try to find out the reasons underlying this state of affairs (without touching on the issues of either feudal property or church land ownership), and the factors leading to its change. He simply states the facts and comes to the conclusion that the power of the church in the Middle Ages was determined by the dominance of religious consciousness.

2. Sensitive superculture, on the contrary, is associated with the dominant materialistic worldview. Therefore, in many ways it is the direct opposite of the ideational superculture. This era comes when the religious worldview is completely losing ground, giving way to a materialistic worldview. This state of affairs, Sorokin believes, inevitably leads to a change in the entire structure of social life. The differences between the ideational and sensitive supercultures are, first of all, differences in ideals. People of an idealistic superculture focus all their interest on eternal, enduring values ​​(and, above all, on religion). Representatives of a sensitive superculture direct all their attention to values ​​that are temporary, transitory in nature; their material interest always prevails over the ideal, religious. Sensitive superculture, Sorokin argues, prevailed in ancient civilization from the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC. e. But in modern Western society it began only in the 16th century and is currently approaching its final (or next?) decline.

3. Another phase in the development of society is the idealistic supersystem. Its dominance is not associated with some new type of worldview (of which there can only be two - either religious or materialistic). It represents a transition from one to another. This is a mixed culture, and the direction of its development depends on the direction of the transition - from a sensitive superculture to an ideational one or vice versa. At present, Sorokin argues, humanity is again on the threshold of the emergence of a new ideational superculture, because the dominance of the sensitive supersystem is coming to an end.

Pitirim Sorokin identifies the following properties of “cultural supersystems”:

Reality;

Individuality;

General and special dependence of their main parts on each other and the general, as well as the general on the parts;

Individuality or "self" even when parts change;

Variability of structure;

Internal, self-governing change and self-determination of destiny;

Selectivity;

Limited variability.

Each supersystem, despite its broad nature, is a finite phenomenon and as such has limits to its ability to change. As soon as these boundaries are overcome, it loses its individuality and disintegrates.

Each ideological supersystem corresponds to a certain type of culture. There are, according to Sorokin, two main and two intermediate types. In culture, there is an alternation of main types focused on a person’s worldview: ideational and sensual; and intermediate: idealistic and eclectic. In an ideational culture, the worldview is aimed at a supersensible and superintelligent comprehension of the Absolute, based on dominant ideas. Analyzing this type of culture using the example of the European Middle Ages, Pitirim Sorokin wrote: “The architecture and sculpture of the Middle Ages were the “Bible in stone.” Literature is also thoroughly permeated with religion and the Christian faith. The painting expressed the same biblical themes and lines in color. Music was almost exclusively religious in nature...Philosophy was virtually identical to religion and theology and centered around the same core value or principle, which was God. Science was just a handmaiden of the Christian religion. Political organization in its spiritual and secular spheres was predominantly theocratic and based on God and religion. The family, as a sacred religious union, expressed the same fundamental value. Even the organization of the economy was controlled by religion... The dominant morals and customs, way of life, thinking emphasized their unity with God as the only and highest goal, as well as their negative or indifferent attitude towards the sensory world, its riches, joys and values.”

The sensual type of culture is characterized by sensory: attention is transferred to sensually tangible objects, empirical experience, secularity and correspondence to the earthly world. It is the recognition that objective reality and its meaning are sensory “that is proclaimed by our modern culture in all its main components: in art and science, philosophy and pseudo-religion, ethics and law; in social, economic and political organizations, in the way of life and the state of mind of people.” The idealistic type of culture is characterized by the fact that the meaning of ideas and tangible objects becomes equal, and a harmonious fusion of two types of worldviews into a single whole occurs (an example in European culture is the era of antiquity and the Renaissance).

And finally, the eclectic type of culture involves a confrontation between sensual and ideational elements of the worldview. In an ideational culture, art tends to be conventional, symbolic, created in accordance with certain canons and, most often, impersonal. In a sensual culture, the style of art becomes naturalistic. The harmonious combination of two types of worldview underlies the achievements of the art of Greek classics and the Renaissance, when the methods of embodying artistic images were partly symbolic, partly realistic.

In an ideational culture, perception and knowledge of the world is mainly carried out through revelation, intuition, and mystical experience. Rational knowledge is rejected, a person does not trust his mind, thinks more about the end of the world than about the natural order of things and the possibility of transforming reality. People of an ideational type culture do not strive for natural scientific knowledge; on the contrary, their attention is focused on mystical experience, which reveals the secret of the existence of another world. A striking example of such a worldview and type of culture is the European Middle Ages of the 9th-12th centuries, where religion occupied a dominant place in consciousness. Sensory (sensory) culture is characterized by the perception of the world as given in sensory experience, through hearing, sight, touch and smell. The ideal of a person in a sensory culture is personal happiness. This cultural type was realized by Europe in the modern era, when science emerged, cognizing the world experimentally. Moreover, experience is the only criterion of truth, rational knowledge is absolutized. From this time on, technical and natural science knowledge began to develop rapidly, and inductive philosophy emerged. Between the two described main cultural types, according to Sorokin, either an idealistic or an eclectic type of culture can be realized. In them, both main types of worldview are presented either in a harmonious unity (idealistic type), or in a fragmented, eclectic accumulation and opposition to each other.

In general, the idea of ​​such cyclical development is quite in the spirit of P. A. Sorokin’s general views on the direction of social development as a kind of nonlinear progress. Of all the curves illustrating development processes, he prefers the sinusoid. A pendulum could also serve as a model for such a movement: the two extreme phases of its oscillation reflect the society’s being in an ideational and sensitive state, while the lowest point is in an idealistic state.

Conclusion

Pitirim Sorokin (1889 – 1968), this is the name of the most outstanding scientist that Russia has given to world sociology. In terms of the universality of his coverage of sociological problems, the significance of his theoretical and methodological contribution to world sociology, Sorokin can only be compared with Weber. It was this thinker, born in Russia and died in the USA, who glorified our sociology.

After emigrating from Russia in 1922, Sorokin achieved a prominent position in Western sociology. Having settled in the USA, he made a brilliant scientific and teaching career there: a teacher of sociology, president of the American Sociological Association, professor and dean of the sociology department at Harvard University. Sorokin's theoretical activity is distinguished by extraordinary productivity - he created hundreds of works devoted to various problems.

The main feature of Sorokin’s work is globalism, an attempt to comprehend the sociological aspects of the culture he broadly understands. His book “Social and Cultural Dynamics” (1937) is an unprecedented scientific work, surpassing Marx’s “Capital” in volume. Another book, Social Mobility, is recognized as a world classic. Sorokin stated the crisis state of modern culture and analyzed its various causes and forms. As a way out of the crisis, the scientist proposed a moral and religious revival of humanity based on “altruistic love” as the main and absolute value.

Sorokin is the creator of the most thorough and detailed theory of stratification. A brief summary of this theory is contained in the collection of his works “Man, Civilization, Society,” translated into Russian. Sorokin considers the world as a social universe, i.e. a certain space filled not with stars and planets, but with social connections and relationships of people. They form a multidimensional coordinate system, which determines the social position of any person. In multidimensional space, two main coordinate axes are distinguished: the X axis – for measuring horizontal mobility; Y axis – to measure vertical mobility. In other words, the result is something similar to classical Euclidean space.

Sorokin considers stratification as a way of changing the status of a particular social group in various spheres of society. He proposes to make stratification changes in three social spaces - economic, political and professional. Social stratification generally describes the stratification of people into classes and hierarchical ranks. Its basis is the uneven distribution of rights and privileges, responsibilities and duties, power and influence.

Economic stratification, i.e. economic stratification means the difference in economic status, in other words, the presence of economic inequality, which is expressed in the difference in income, living standards, in the existence of rich and poor. For economic stratification, two phenomena are indicative, which Sorokin calls fluctuations: first, the enrichment and impoverishment of a particular social group or society as a whole; secondly, the decrease and increase in the height of the economic pyramid. Operating with huge statistical material, he proves that there is no family, village, city, region or country that gets richer or poorer from year to year. There is no consistent trend of this kind in history. In the development of any society, periods of enrichment are replaced by periods of impoverishment. This was the case in Ancient Egypt, and so it is in contemporary American society. Aimless oscillations (fluctuations) occur cyclically. The fluctuation theory refutes the idea of ​​human progress.

P. A. Sorokin was deeply convinced that all problems arising in society should be solved on the basis of reasonable management, conscious resolution of social contradictions and providing every person with opportunities for creative self-expression. He was opposed to all social upheavals, including revolutions, and advocated a normal, as he wrote, evolutionary path of development. In his work “The Sociology of Revolution,” he argued that the more or less successful development of society after the revolution that destroys it occurs thanks to its “return to its values, vulgar instincts and traditions, creative work, cooperation, mutual assistance and unity of all its members and social groups.” .

By the beginning of the 60s, P. Sorokin had been an American sociologist for about forty years, firmly occupying one of the top ten leading sociologists in the world. Many prominent American sociologists were his students, and he made an enormous contribution to theoretical sociology. Sorokin developed the doctrine of “integral” sociology, covering all sociological aspects of culture. He viewed social reality as a super-individual sociocultural reality, not reducible to material reality and endowed with a system of values ​​- norms - symbols. Culture as a system of symbols, motivators, and patterns of action gives individuals an extremely general orientation, freeing them from internal contradictions. Systems of sociocultural phenomena at many levels differ. The most high systems of them (supersystems) are based on the most fundamental premises of reality - worldviews. Of the supersystems, Sorokin distinguished the “sensory supersystem” (reality is perceived by the senses), “speculative” (reality is cognized through intuition), and “idealistic” (a combination of the first two). IN different periods history, these supersystems are at different phases of development. At the same time, in any period of history, along with super systems of culture, 5 main cultural systems of a lower level coexist in society: language, ethics, religion, art, science.

Literature

1. Afanasyev V.V. Historical sociology of Danilevsky, Spengler and Sorokin. // SOCIS. – 2005. – No. 5. - With. 129 – 137.

2. Volkov Yu. G., Mostovaya I. V. Sociology: a textbook for universities / Edited by prof. V. I. Dobrenkova - M.: Gardarika, 1999 - 432 p.

3. Gakov V. Pitirim Sorokin: one of the founders of sociology. // KnowledgePower – 2004. – No. 9. – p. 110 – 114.

4. Dobrenkov V.I., Kravchenko A.I. Sociology. Textbook - M.: Infra, 2003 - 624 p.

5. Kravchenko A. I Sociology. Textbook – M.: T.K. Welby, Prospekt Publishing House, 2004. – 536 p.

6. Olsevich Yu. Sociology of P. Sorokin and economic transformation // Questions of Economics - 1999. - No. 11. - p. 63 – 71.

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Pitirim Sorokin is the name of the most outstanding scientist whom Russia has given to world sociology.

Sorokin was born in the village of Turya, Yarensky district, Vologda region, on January 21, 1889. His father was a craftsman, and his mother was a peasant woman from Zyryan. At the age of 11, the boy was completely orphaned. He arrived in the capital of the empire at the age of 15 with an “incomplete lower” education. Sorokin graduated from evening school, already at the age of 20 passed the exams for the gymnasium course, and in 1909 he entered the Psychoneurological Institute, Faculty of Sociology. Without studying for even a year, he transferred to the law faculty of the university in order to get out of the army. Sorokin defended his master's thesis only in 1922. And during this time he managed to take part in two revolutions. After the February victory, he worked as a secretary for the Chairman of the Provisional Government A.F. Kerensky, and was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “The Will of the People.” In the early 1920s, Pitirim Sorokin first headed the interfaculty department, and then the corresponding department of Petrograd University.

In September 1922, Sorokin was expelled from the country. For the first year and a half in exile, Sorokin worked in Prague, and then was invited to lecture in America. Having settled in the USA, he made a brilliant scientific and teaching career there: a teacher of sociology, president of the American Sociological Association, professor and dean of the sociology department at Harvard University. On December 31, 1959, at the age of 70, he resigned from all positions at Harvard. In the last decade of his life, he continued to give lectures and worked on books and articles. Pitirim Sorokin died on February 10, 1968 in Winchester, USA.

According to Sorokin, sociology should be an “objective discipline”, i.e. study real human interactions that can be objectively measured and studied. P.A. Sorokin divided sociology into theoretical and practical. He, in turn, divided theoretical sociology into three departments: social analytics, social mechanics and social genetics. Social analytics studies the structure of a social phenomenon and its main forms. The subject of social mechanics is the processes of human interaction. Social genetics studies the development of social life, its individual aspects and institutions. Practical sociology is characterized by P. A. Sorokin as an applied discipline. Based on the laws that theoretical sociology formulates, it should help society and individuals manage social forces in accordance with their goals.

Sorokin is the developer of the theory of social stratification and social mobility. According to which the whole society is divided into different layers - strata. The main forms of social stratification include economic, political and professional. Sorokin divides social mobility into horizontal and vertical. Horizontal mobility means the transition of a person from one social group to another at the same level. Vertical mobility is the transition from one social layer to another in a hierarchical order.

The historical process, according to Sorokin, is a cyclical fluctuation (purposeless fluctuations) of cultural types (supersystems). Sorokin identifies three main types of culture: sensual - it is dominated by direct sensory perception of reality; ideational, in which rational thinking predominates; idealistic - the intuitive type of knowledge dominates here. At the same time, 5 main cultural systems of a lower level coexist: language, ethics, religion, art, science.

P. Sorokin was “a sociologist who firmly occupied one of the top ten leading sociologists in the world. Many prominent American sociologists were his students, and he made an enormous contribution to theoretical sociology.

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