Pitirim A. Sorokin

Social Time: A Methodological and Functional Analysis

The category of astronomical time is only one of several concepts of time. Such concepts differ in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and economics. An operational definition of expressions of time in common usage shows that social phenomena are frequently adopted as a frame of reference so that units of time are often fixed by the rhythm of collective life. The need for social collaboration is at the root of social systems of time. Social time is qualitatively differentiated according to the beliefs and customs common to the group. Social time is not continuous but is interrupted by critical dates. All calendrical systems arise from and are perpetuated by social requirements. They arise from social differentiation and a widening area of social interaction. It is possible that the introduction of social time as a methodological category would enhance the discovery of social periodicities.

The ways and power of love : types, factors, and techniques of moral transformation

WAYS AND POWER OF LOVE was originally published in 1954 when Pitirim Sorokin was in the twilight of his career and leading the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism. His elaborate scientific analysis of love with regard to its higher and lower forms, its causes and effects, its human and cosmic significance, and its core features constitutes the first study on this topic in world literature to date. Sorokin concluded that with the birth of the atomic age humanity needed more than ever a quantum leap both in the scientific understanding of altruistic love and its implementation. By the late 1940s, his attention was focused entirely on love and its manifestations in compassion, altruism, and generosity. He was especially interested in discovering more about how love for others is related to felt participation in a Presence that is higher than our own and that serves as a source of unlimited love across all the divisions of tribal, religious, political, and ethnic loyalties. Sorokin was the one absolutely essential twentieth-century pioneer in the study of love at the interface of science and religion. Bringing WAYS AND POWER OF LOVE back into print, allows a new generation of readers to appreciate Sorokins genius and to move forward with his endeavour at a time when civilisation itself continues to be threatened by a marked inability to live up to the ideal of love for all humankind. It is certainly right to hope, with Sorokin, that progress in knowledge about love can move humanity forward to a better future. Turning the sciences toward the study of love is no easy task, but it can and must be done.

Sociological theories of today

Secondly, this volume marks an evolution in Sorokins own approach to sociological theory. His earlier work dealt with theory in terms of a school of thought, and for this purpose he used a scheme of classification which was sometimes arbitrary and often misleading. In this volume he employs a new scheme which places the theory in a context more descriptive of its real character. In another very important respect there is a significant difference between the two works. In 1928 Sorokin had not yet formulated his own theories, so that his treatment of theory was a straightforward piece of work, a model of logical exposition and criticism. In this work, while the same qualities are still in evidence in all their pristine vigour, Sorokins criticisms are made from the point of view of his own highly developed formulations. So he enters the fray armed with weapons forged with his own hands and wielded with comparable aplomb and dexterity. This gives an added dimension to the work, making it infinitely more exciting and more controversial. Readers unfa-

Social and cultural dynamics : a study of change in major systems of art,truth, ethics, law and social relationships

This classic work is a revised and abridged version, in a single volume, of the work which more than any other catapulted Pitirim Sorokin into being one of the most famed figures of twentieth-century sociology. Its original publication occurred before World War II. This revised version, written some twenty years later, reflects a postwar environment. Earlier than most, Sorokin took the consequences of the breakdown of colonialism into account in discussing the renaissance of the great cultures of African and Asian civilization. Other than perhaps F.S.C. Northrop, no individual better incorporated the new role of the Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic peoples in this postwar world. Sorokin came to view social and cultural dynamics in terms of three major processes: a major shift of mankinds creative center from Europe to the Pacific; a progressive disintegration of the sensate culture; and finally the first blush of the emergence and growth of a new idealistic sociocultural order. This volume is perhaps most famous for revealing Sorokins remarkable efforts to understand the relationship of war and peace to the process of social and political change. Contrary to received wisdom, he shows that the magnitude and depth of war grows in periods of social, cultural, and territorial expansion by the nation. In short, war is just as often a function of development as it is of social decay. This long-unavailable volume remains one of the major touchstones by which we can judge efforts to create an international social science. There are few areas of social or cultural life that are not covered--from painting, art, and music, to the ethos of universalism and particularism. These are terms which Sorokin introduced into the literature long before the rise of functional doctrines. For all those interested in cultural and historical processes, this volume provides the essence of Sorokins remarkably prescient effort to achieve sociological transcendence, by taking seriously the place of spiritual beliefs in the structure of societies.

Mutual Convergence of the United States and the U.S.S.R. to the Mixed Sociocultural type

,1-%PRESIDENT Eisenhower and other leaders of the West assure us that the future belongs to the Capitalist (&dquo;free-enterprise&dquo;) type of society and culture. In contrast, Premier Khrushchev and other leaders of the Communist nations confidently expect the victory of the Communist type in the coming decades. In difference from both of these predictions I am inclined to think that if mankind avoids new world wars and can overcome today’s grave emergencies, the dominant type of the emerging society and culture is likely

Amitology as an Applied Science of Amity and Unselfish Love

Almost all sane persons prefer life to death, love to hate, friendship to enmity, cooperation to conflict, creativity to destruction, peace to war. These preferences are especially strong now when mankind painfully suffers from the bloodiest massmurders, hate, and destruction threatening its very existence. Now more than before we all want peace, love, and constructive creativeness.

The Essential Characteristics of the Russian Nation in the Twentieth Century

The Russian nation emerged as a distinct socio cultural system with the establishment of the Kievan or Va rangian state in the middle of the ninth century. This nation from that time to the present has remained the main group whose activities have largely determined the nature of the sub sequent character of the Russian state, culture, and historical destiny. Among the essential characteristics of the Russian nation are: its comparatively long life, enormous vitality, re markable pertinacity, outstanding willingness to sacrifice for its survival on the part of its members, and extraordinary ter ritorial, populational, political, social, and cultural growth. To these essential features, a number of additional peculiarities may be noted: racial and ethnic diversity, unity in diversity, placement of non-Russian persons at highest political and so cial positions, comparative peaceful expansion and growth, the fighting of primarily defensive wars, comparative orderliness, and high dedication of members. Like other Western nations, Russia has experienced the rise and decline of Christian phi losophy and its replacement by agnostic, materialistic, and atheistic philosophy. Since the end of the 1920s, Russia has begun to display other traits: the supplanting of rude force by the rule of law, the modification of totalitarianism in favor of economic and social democracy, the establishment of non-Rus sian nationalities as autonomous groups, the restoration of the monogamic family, gains in material well-being, cultural growth, and the moral renaissance of the Soviet people.

Impoverishment and the Expansion of Governmental Control

In a society where there exists a differentiation into poor and rich, an impoverishment or an increase of the economic contrast between the wealthy and the poor facilitates an expansion of government interference in economic relations. This factor, together with that of militarism, has been, and is, responsible for an increase of governmental control of economic relations in the past and in the present.

Philosophy and Historiography: ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE. A Study of History, Vol. XII: Reconsiderations. Pp. x, 740. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

World War II. Mr. Grattan both generalizes masterfully and advances some individually perceptive theories. He understands the paradoxes and struggles of the Australian and New Zealand minds as they ceased to be colonial-their wing-flapping about the traditional British nest. And in the second half of his book he analyzes well the emotional predicament of communities fallen out of the nest, as it were, into the post-1939 world. For it is in that world, a world of war, grand strategy, logistics, dubious prophecies, that they have had to work out foreign policy. In that world has the United States had

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