Sorokin, Pitirim

Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin was born in Russia in 1889. During the Russian revolution, he was a member of the Social Revolutionary Party. He was active in opposing both the Czarist government and the Communists, being arrested and imprisoned by both regimes. Sorokin served in the cabinet of the post-Czarist Kerensky government in 1917. After his second arrest by the Communists, his death sentence was revoked, and he was allowed to return to graduate work at the University of St. Petersburg, where he was awarded his doctorate in 1922. Later that year, he was exiled from Russia by the Communists. After coming to the United States, he taught at the University of Minnesota. In 1930, he became the first chairperson of the Sociology Department at Harvard University. Sorokin later founded the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism. He was elected president of the American Sociological Association in 1965. Sorokin died in 1968.

Sorokin is the most published and translated writer in the history of sociology. During his career, he wrote 37 books and more than 400 articles. His contributions to sociology are original, fundamental, and comprehensive. Sorokin's most important writings are in the areas of cultural structure and change, social differentiation, social stratification, social conflict, and the causes and effects of altruistic love. He also made major contributions in the classification and critical analysis of theories, epistemology, methodology, the analysis of social space and time, the sociology of revolution, and the sociology of crisis.

His work taken as a whole constitutes a comprehensive general system of sociology that integrates the scientific, reformist, and practical traditions of the discipline. Following this cosmopolitan character of his system of thought, Sorokin's writings range from complex and insightful scientific formulations to writings intended to inform the general public on problematic conditions and provide suggestions for their resolution.

Sorokin was the first theorist to explicitly identify culture, society, and personality as the basic frame of reference of sociology. This perspective on the subject matter of sociology pervades his work.