Pitirim Sorokin and the American sociological association: The politics of a professional society

Pitirim Sorokin is known as both a pioneer and outcast in the history of American sociology. A Russian emigré with a bruising and combative intellectual style, he was increasingly treated as a pariah by the sociological community. Yet in 1963 he won the presidency of the American Sociological Association by a landslide. Otis Dudley Duncan and the Committee of Eight implemented on his behalf the first successful write-in campaign in the history of the Association. This event put Sorokin in the presidency and significantly changed the electoral processes and politics of the Association. How this came to be so constitutes the focus of this paper.