Harriet Martineau - Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change

Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...93

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY,
VALUES, AND
SOCIOCULTURAL CHANGE

Pitirim A. Sorokin

Originally published in 1963 by The Free Press of Glencoe.

Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

New material this edition copyright 2013 by Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2012033966

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sociological theory, values, and sociocultural change : essays in honor of Pitirim A. Sorokin / Edward A. Tiryakian, editor.
p. cm.
Originally published in 1963 by The Free Press of Glencoe.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4128-5150-3
1. Sorokin, Pitirim Aleksandrovich, 1889-1968. 2. Sociology. I. Sorokin, Pitirim Aleksandrovich, 1889-1968. II. Tiryakian, Edward A.
HM479.S67S63 2013
301-de 23

2012033966

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-5150-3 (pbk)

Contents

Edward A. Tiryakian

N EARLY half a century has passed since the original publication of this volume of essays intended as a festschrift in honor of one of the most important figures of twentieth-century sociology. This reissue will provide todays readers a benchmark on salient theorizing in the post-World War II era prepared as a tribute to its recipient, Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968), who had undergone benign neglect by the profession. In addition, I will provide an update on Sorokins resurrected stature in the profession since 1963. In doing so, the core argument is that Sorokins contributions to sociology have as much to offer today as that of any figure in the sociological pantheon.

The title of the volume reflects three interrelated areas of concern to Sorokin in his voluminous productivity, areas which are diffused throughout sociology then and now. Responding to the temerity of a then young assistant professor, senior sociologists readily accepted to prepare an original contribution for the festschrift. Those broad areas are the starting point for several essays, by Marion J. Levy, Jr. (Some Problems for a Unified Theory of Human Nature), Charles Loomis (Social Change and Social Systems), and Florence Kluck-hohn (Some Reflections on the Nature of Cultural Integration). Additionally, the contributors include two who, before the volumes publication, had already served as president of the American Sociological Association (Talcott Parsons in 1949 and Robert Merton, 1957), while two would succeed Sorokin in that capacity (Wilbert Moore in 1966 and Charles Loomis in 1967).

This is not the occasion to summarize the contents, which was already done in the original, nor to provide biographical data either about the contributors or about Sorokin himself, especially since regarding the latter there is available his autobiographies, his wife Elenas account, and Barry Johnstons definitive biography. However, for a greater appreciation of the changing professions regard for Sorokin, it might be well to consider an evolving context of Sorokins situation since the early 1960s. As one who gave a major place to the dynamics of change in his theorizing, his own situationduring and after his deathis replete with cyclical change in terms of his relevance and appreciation.

I Pitirim Sorokin had left Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik takeover in 1919, arrived in the United States in 1923, and had a meteoric rise in American sociology, culminating in setting up and becoming chairman of the first Department of Sociology at Harvard University in 1931, with Robert Merton as the first graduate student. His four-volume Social and Cultural Dynamics was hailed in public and academic circles (Johnson 1995: 114), and he was known internationally, becoming president of the International Institute of Sociology in 1936. Yet, after World War II, even as Sociology at Harvard morphed into the Department of Social Relations, bringing together sociology, social anthropology, social psychology and clinical psychologyfields that Sorokin had viewed as being integrally related in the triumvirate of society, culture, and personalitySorokin underwent a painful period of benign neglect from mainstream sociology. How or why did this happen?

A lot were the doings of his own personality, as an administrator, as a professional sociologist in the United States, and to another extent, as a teacher of graduate students. He brought to America much of the baggage of a Russian intellectual in exile, and though he never returned to his native homeland, he did not take easily to the Ameri can cultural soil. He never became an organization man, adapting to the politics of American academic life, not even when given the authority of being a departmental chair. The conflicts and worries of academics, including those of chairman, are part of the quotidian setting so well discussed in this volume by Logan Wilson (Disjunctive Processes in an Academic Milieu). But Sorokin did not have the patience for compromise, nor the attention for details necessary, as he had admitted himself:

I seem to belong to the lone-wolf variety of scholars who, if need be, can do their work alone without a staff of research assistants or funds.

This trait is singled out in Lewis Cosers concluding evaluation of a balanced and sympathetic rendition of Sorokin:

Being a perpetual loner, an outsider who wished to show the insiders the error of their ways, provided the motivation and emotional energies that enabled him to do the prodigious amount of scholarly work that he accomplished. Yet this loners stance also alienated him in the end from much of his potential audience (Coser: 1977: 508).

If Sorokin did not feel at home with the petty transgressions of everyday academic routine, this does not mean he shied away from engaging in controversies, even polemics, vis--vis colleagues, the profession, or even American foreign policy (especially regarding in the 1960s the Vietnam War). Without detailing the similarity, Sorokin, the brilliant Russian exile at Harvard, bears comparison with Georges Gurvitch, also a brilliant Russian exile who, while often irascible, became a leading sociological theorist at the Sorbonne in the postwar years. His contribution in this volume, Social Structure and the Multiplicity of Times, has affinity with Sorokins methodology regarding temporality.

The notion of a loner is not exhaustive. Prophets are par excellence loners and a good deal of the public display of Sorokin at professional meetings and other audiences was that of a prophet, voicing a jeremiad in many of his mid period works (I place this between 1935-1955). It was all about the cataclysms and holocausts facing a decaying sensate supercultural system, coming to the end of a long cycle. That might have been ignored in mainstream sociology, but attacks on the professions evaluation of what is scientific as being not much more than a concoction of Fads and Foibles,

Next page

1234567...93

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change»

Look at similar books to Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Charles Turner

Investigating Sociological Theory

Steven Loyal

Contemporary Sociological Theory

Deborah Anna Logan (editor)

Harriet Martineau and the Irish Question: Condition of Post-famine Ireland

Kenneth Menzies

Sociological Theory in Use (RLE Social Theory)

Keith Dixon

Sociological Theory (RLE Social Theory)

Derek Layder

Sociological Practice: Linking Theory and Social Research

Florence Fenwick Miller

The Lessons of a Life, Harriet Martineau: A Lecture Delivered 11th Mar. 1877

Deborah Logan

Harriet Martineaus Writing on British History and Military Reform, vol 3

Deborah Logan

The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau Vol 2

Steven Loyal

Classical Sociological Theory

Gregor Fitzi

The Challenge of Modernity: Simmel’s Sociological Theory

Parsons

Essays in Sociological Theory

Discussion, reviews of the book Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.