Social and Cultural Dynamics

* Book: Social and Cultural Dynamics, 4 vols. By Pitirim Sorokin

URL = https://archive.org/details/socialculturaldy0001soro

Contents

1. v. 1. Fluctuation of forms of art.--
2. v. 2. Fluctuation of systems of truth, ethics, and law.--
3. v. 3. FLuctuation of social relationships, war, and revolution.--
4. v. 4. Basic problems, principles, and methods

Summary

Richard Simpson:

"At Harvard he set to work on a monumental inquiry into the history and nature of world civilization up to the present. He spent several years on this enterprise, and in 1937 he published the first three volumes of Social and Cultural Dynamics. A fourth volume appeared in 1941. The Dynamics is the most ambitious sociological attempt in recent years, being comparable in scope to the works of Toynbee and Spengler.

Sorokin was fully aware of the magnitude of his task:

Starting with an investigation of a sociocultural system and its properties, we have studied systematically the structure and composition of the total culture; the main "how's" of its change, of its space and time uniformities, of the rhythms, periodicities, tempi, and other basic aspects of sociocultural Becoming. Having clarified the main "how's" we passed to a study of the "why's" involved. Why the change? Why the rhythms, periodicities, and tempi? Why the fluctuations, trends, and cycles? And finally why the super-rhythm of Ideational, Idealistic, and Sensate phases? These problems answered, our study nears its close'.

...

The history of all societies has been a fluctuation of these three great supersystems of integration. On the basis of an exhaustive study of art forms, systems of truth, ethics, and law, social relationships, war, and revolution during the past 2,500 years in the Western world, and of less thorough excursions into Oriental civilizations, Sorokin finds that all elements of a culture except a few minor ones (congeries) are usually integrated under whichever supersystem is in sway at a given time.

The culture of the early Middle Ages was Ideational; that of the thirteenth century was Idealistic; our own is Sensate. Elaborate charts and graphs trace the rise and fall of cultural supersystems and their components during the recorded history of the West.

Why do culture mentalities change? Sorokin does not believe that change can be interpreted adequately by reference to "this or that external factor." Instead he finds "immanent self-regulation and direction." No one part of a cultural system can be held to cause the others to change, any more than one could maintain that a boy's growth in stature during puberty makes his whiskers grow.

Besides explaining the movement of history and the nature of society, Sorokin provides us with a new system of truth, superior to all others because it encompasses all others. Sensory observation, while essential, has been overemphasized in recent years. Reason, he feels, has accounted for a greater portion of the world's enlightenment than most modern thinkers give it credit for. Finally, Sorokin makes a case for intuition and faith, which have been neglected for some time, as valid sources of knowledge. None of these, he says, can lay claim to being the sole way to knowledge; each has its proper and necessary sphere. The senses tell us about mundane sensory phenomena; intuition gives us fruitful hunches and is our only source of deep communion with the absolute; reason orders and evaluates data gathered by sense and intuition. The combination of these three gives us the "integralist" system of truth. Sorokin himself uses integralism in his investigations."

(https://www.suz.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:00000000-36d7-41d4-0000-000064b51e55/simpson_sorokin.pdf)

Typology

Sensate, Idealistic and Ideational Cultural-Historical Typology of Pitirim Sorokin

Richard Simpson:

"Sorokin's principal tool in analyzing cultures and explaining their changes is his classification of cultures and all their manifestations into three main types: Sensate, Idealistic, and Ideational coupled with his concept of "logico-meaningful" integration of cultural elements.

Events, relationships, and objects which are logico-meaningfully integrated are those which stem from the same value premises or criteria of truth, which seem somehow to fit together into a common Weltanschauung or cluster of attitudes. Thus a Gothic cathedral, a treatise in scholastic philosophy, and the allocation of greater prestige to clergymen than to tradesmen are logico-meaningfully integrated because they all stem from the religiously oriented culture mentality which prevailed in medieval Europe. Similarly integrated are the picture of a sparsely clad woman on the jacket of a novel, a pragmatic philosophical work, and an emphasis on material wealth as a prime goal, because these reflect a mentality oriented toward earthly and sensual pleasures. Cultural items which are not consistent with any pattern-which do not seem to "belong" with other items-are called "congeries."

The three principal types of culture integrations -Ideational, Idealistic, and Sensate-never exist in pure form; they are ideal types. In recognition of this Sorokin adds a Mixed category. Actually there are only two polar types of culture mentalities, the Ideational and the Sensate. The Idealistic is a mixed type combining the virtues of the polar types without their vices.

The extreme Sensate mentality views reality as that which is perceivable by the sense organs, and no more. It is atheistic or agnostic. It does not concern itself with the absolute or immutable, believing that all things are in flux. Its underlying goal is the mastery of the observable world for the sake of physical gratification. Its epistemology is empirical.

To the Ideational mentality, reality is immaterial, everlasting Being. Its objectives are spiritual and its ways of achieving them involve man's adjustment to the existing world rather than his manipulation of the world to bring it into line with his wishes. Faith and revelation are its roads to truth.

The Idealistic mentality is a synthesis of Ideational and Sensate elements with Ideational predominating. It combines the best of the other two mentalities with the addition of reason as a way to knowledge. In the Idealistic view, reason is a sort of apex in an epistemological triangle with faith and sensory observation at the lower points. Sorokin's own outlook is Idealistic."

(https://www.suz.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:00000000-36d7-41d4-0000-000064b51e55/simpson_sorokin.pdf)

More information

Abridged Version

• Social and Cultural Dynamics: A Study of Change in Major Systems of Art, Truth, Ethics, Law, and Social Relationships. By Pitirim Sorokin and Michel P. Richard.

September 2017

"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 mankind's 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 Sorokin's 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 Sorokin's remarkably prescient effort to achieve sociological transcendence."

(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333378727_Social_and_Cultural_Dynamics_A_Study_of_Change_in_Major_Systems_of_Art_Truth_Ethics_Law_and_Social_Relationships)

Other Books by P. Sorokin

* Book: The Sociology of Revolution. Pitirim Sorokin.

URL =

Summary:

"The Sociology of Revolution (1925) is strongly colored by Sorokin's revolutionary experiences.

He explains revolution, not in terms of historical or socio-economic movements as commonly conceived by writers on revolution, but as a destruction of the precarious balance between reason and disorganized antisocial instincts, with uncontrolled impulses coming to the fore. Since revolution results from the victory of man's upset biological drives over civilized reason, violent revolution is a disaster.

Sorokin does not attempt to explain why unreason overcomes reason at certain times but not at others; his analysis is essentially psychological rather than sociological or historical. This book bears the imprint of Freud, Pavlov, Pareto, and others who stress the nonrational aspects of behavior. A behavioristic influence is manifested continually; Sorokin speaks of reflexes of property, the stimulus to obedience, the reactions to authority. His main purpose is to chart the course of internal events in typical revolutions. Every revolution, he says, follows a cycle of license, reaction, repression, and new equilibrium. The belief seems implicit that no revolution really alters the state of affairs materially; the French Revolution, for example, is treated not as a triumph of democracy or of the bourgeoisie but simply as a temporary outburst of animalism like every other revolution."

(https://www.suz.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:00000000-36d7-41d4-0000-000064b51e55/simpson_sorokin.pdf)