Sorokin Pitirim: Društvena i kulturna dinamika

Pitirim Sorokin: Social and cultural dynamics

Study of changes in the large systems of art, truth, ethics, law and social relations

Influential study of changes in the large systems of art, truth, ethics, law and social relations, which presents a general view of the development of human societies and cultures, the author's most important contribution to sociological science is assessed as "an impressive attempt to apply quantitative methods to historical material, and to create assumptions about Greco-Roman and western civilization that have both predicative and explanatory validity". The author states three basic principles on the basis of which the nature of the world can be understood - sensory, ideational and idealistic. He believes that sociocultural phenomena are based on an integrated view of the world that he calls mentalities, and that history can be seen as a series of changes from one cultural system to another, because each system is exhausted by its internal logic, reaching limits beyond which it cannot cross.

The idea of ​​complementarity is central to the understanding of Social and Cultural Dynamics, in which Sorokin distinguishes sociocultural systems from biological ones. Unlike biological organisms, civilizations are not perfectly integrated, so they do not decay or die, as Oswald Spengler would have us believe. They prefer to go through phase changes. The most profound changes spring from the value system of culture rather than from institutional factors or as a consequence of the actions of great personalities. The reason for this is that the cultural system is more fundamental and comprehensive than the social system (on this point Sorokin sharply opposes Marx) or the personality system.

Sorokin, Pitirim Aleksandrovich, American sociologist of Russian origin (Turja near Siktivkar, Russia, January 21, 1889 – Winchester, Massachusetts, February 10, 1968). Year In 1917, he was a member of A. Kerensky's government. After emigrating to the USA, he was a professor at the University of Minnesota (1924–30), and in 1930–55. Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He developed a typology of sociocultural systems with regard to the cultural norms that prevail in a particular system. Sorokin thus distinguishes: the sensory (sensate) basic system (supersystem), in which sensory truth predominates, the ideational (ideational), in which truth is a function of faith, and the idealistic, in which truth is known through reason. Sensory cultures are characterized, for example, by materialism, ethics of happiness, empiricism, etc. According to Sorokin, these three types of culture alternate cyclically, and it was in the 20th century that "sensory" culture reached its peak. Works: Social Mobility (Social Mobility, 1927), Social and Cultural Dynamics, I–IV, 1937–41, Society, Culture and Personality (1947), Sociological Theories of Today, 1966, etc. (enciklopedija.hr)