Pitrim Sorokin developed an integral theory based on the concept that combining empirical, rational and spiritual knowledge into a single structure yields greater truth than that revealed by any of these elements on their own.

1. Pitrim A. Sorokin
Tabea Hirzel
March, 2010

2. Pitrim Aleksandrovich
Sorokin
• His work
• Social Revolution & Quantum
Politics
• Bibliography
Hirzel - Sorokin, 2010 2

3. Work
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4. Process of Human InteractionThree Factors
• Human actors
o As subjects of interaction
• Meanings, values and norms
• Material phenomena
o As conductor for meaning
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5. Sorokin and Weber
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6. Quantum Politics
"Stripped of their meaningful aspects, all
the phenomena of human interaction
become merely biophysical phenomena
and, as such, properly form the subject of
the bio- physical sciences.''
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7. Social Interactions
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8. Motivation of social interaction
1) Space-time relation
2) External factors
3) Causual-functiona relation
4) Internal factors (logical-sensual relation)
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9. Social organization
social interaction, Sorokin distinguishes between
• Unorganized
• Organized
• disorganized forms
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10. Social processes
• Solidary
• Antagonistic
• mixed systems
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11. Social bonds
• Familistic
• Compulsory
• mixed (contractual)
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12. Social controls
• Legal
• Moral
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13. Social degree of intensity
Degree of social interaction and closeneth of bonding
• Unibonded
o based on one main value, (religious, occupational, or kinship groups)
• multiple bonds (nation or a social class)
Openess or closeness of entrance barriers and cost of abundance:
• Open
• Closed
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14. Contribution to
sociology
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15. 1. Systematic theory of social mobility
2. Logical and empirical consistent system of sociology as science
3. Logical and empirical system of social and cultural dynamics, or of philosophy of history
4. Theory of social class, particularly of agricultural class and rural Sociology
5. Discovery, formulation, and confirmation of the law of polarization
6. Discovery, formulation, and confirmation of the law of fluctuation, governmental
regimentation, and control
7. Exhaustive study of the fields of calamities and catastrophes.
8. A systematic theory of revolution and wars
9. A thorough-going criticism of the fallacies in the existing sociological, psychological and
other theories.
10. First attempt at a scientific study of the phenomena of creative love
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16. Philosophy of Sorokin
"Life, even the hardest life, is the most beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous
treasure in the world. Dante was banished for life and then sentenced to be
burned at the stake if he returned to Florence. Before that he had been a prose
writer on political reform and government. (We do not even know where he
lived while banished.) His outstanding writing after banishment (in this new
language for writing—Italian) was the Divine Comedy. (Why it is called either
"divine" or a "comedy" is completely unclear because it is, par excellence, a
political polemic of a profound social change nature.)"
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17. General background of social philosophers
• A man in constant movement: originating outside of the
cultures about which he writes
• early engagement in political agitation
• unorthodox educations
• passage out of life, and then return (re-incarnation)
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18. "immanency of change is the unexceptional, ever-present,
permanent, universal and necessary reason ('cause') of their
(sociocultural systems) change"; and (b) that "an enormous
number of sociocultural systems and processes have a limited
range of possibilities in their variation, in the creation of new
fundamental forms" (Dynamics, Vol. IV, p. 667 and p. 710).
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19. • "Identically recurrent sociocultural processes are impossible."
"Eternally linear sociocultural processes are also impossible."
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