Pitirim Sorokin

Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (born on January 21, 1889, in a village of Turya, in northern Russia - died Fabruary 11, 1968) was an important figure in the 20th century American sociology, and a founder of the department of sociology at Harvard University.

Life

A son of an icon maker, Pitirim Sorokin grew up in a rather poor family of the pre-communist Russia. After a death of his wife, Sorokin’s father became an alcoholic, often turning to rage and violence against his own children. Such experience probably bared mark on Sorokin, who later became famous for his fierceness in the academic field. Sorokin received formal education in criminal law and sociology. During his young adulthood he became an activist against Tsarist government, and was subsequently jailed several times. After the Bolshevik revolution and the raise of communism, Sorokin started to teach and write, publishing his first book in criminology. He soon after established the first Department of Sociology at Petrograd University in 1919-20. However, he soon came under the attack by the Soviet police, after fiercely criticizing the government of ineffectiveness and corruption. Sorokin and his wife, Elena, whom he married in 1917, left Russia in September 1923 and moved to Prague. However, Sorokin soon after escaped and settled in America where he continued to teach and do research.

Sorokin soon became famous and rather respected scholar. In 1924 he was invited by the head of the sociology department to teach at the University of Minnesota, where he stayed for six years and wrote six books. Sorokin soon became one of the founders of the Department of Sociology at Harvard, where he continued to teach from 1930 to 1955. He became a 55th president of the American Sociological Association in 1965. In his later life Sorokin, however, became somewhat isolated and neglected by his contemporaries. That didn’t bother him though. He continued to work on his own projects, directing his Research Center in Creative Altruism until his retirement at the end of 1959 at the age of seventy. He died on February 11, 1968 surrounded by his wife and two sons, all of whom were successful scientists.

References

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• Cuzzort, R. P. and King, E. W. (1995). Twentieth-Century social thought (5th ed.). New York, NY: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
• Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. New York, NY: The Oxford University Press
• Sorokin, P. A. (1970). Social and Cultural Dynamics. Boston, MA: Porter Sargent Publishers.
• Sorokin, P. A. (1992). The crisis of our age. Chatam, NY: Oneworld Publications, Ltd
• Sorokin, P. A. and Lunden, W. A. (1959). Power and morality: who shall guard the guardians? Boston, MA: Porter Sargent Publishers.

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