Commentary on some of the Russian writings of Pitirim A. Sorokin

The roots of Sorokin's sociology are found in his Russian works. Barriers of language and politics however, have prohibited their study by many social scientists and historians. This article is the most systematic effort to compile, translate, and annotate the catalogue of Sorokin's scholarly writings from 1910 to 1922. The recent changes that made this bibliography possible have stimulated a resurgence of Russian respect and interest in Sorokin, and opened new opportunities for research and collaboration. These are explored in the closing section of the article.     

Merton as Harvard sociologist: Engagement,thematic continuities,and institutional linkages

In this paper I explore the significance of the initial decade of Robert K. Merton's graduate and professional career, from 1931, when he entered the new doctoral program in sociology at Harvard, until 1939, when he joined the Department of Sociology at Tulane University as an associate professor and acting chairperson. Drawing on archival sources, as well as the professional literature, I examine how Merton engaged the exceptionally rich, interdisciplinary context of Harvard in the 1930s, including both interpersonal networks and diverse intellectual perspectives. In particular, I identify connections between Merton's early writing, “oral publications” and teaching, and three locally developed and dominant paradigms of sociology. Following an assessment of the influence of Merton's works published from 1934 to 1939, I trace continuities between Merton's achievements at Harvard and his subsequent teaching and research at Tulane and Columbia. I conclude that a fuller appreciation of Merton's “less noticed” decade in Cambridge is indispensable for understanding his overall career, and that it clarifies linkages across sociological work at three universities in the mid‐twentieth century. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Science,politics, and moral activism: Sorokin's integralism reconsidered

This paper uses previously untranslated excerpts from P. A. Sorokin's revolutionary journalism to reexamine the relationship between his scientific and nonscientific activities. Columns written in 1917 for the political daily Volya Naroda (The People's Will) provide insight into Sorokin's early Russian period and also prefigure the later synthesis that he called Integralism. This article explains Sorokin's competing commitments to science and reformism in terms of the Russian intelligentsia's social role and concludes that Sorokin in America remained a more Russian figure than has been generally recognized. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Love—A Higher Form of Human Energy in the Work of Teilhard de Chardin and Sorokin

Contemporary debates concerning a universal theory about the praxis of love in human society and culture can benefit greatly from the works of two twentieth‐century thinkers, the French paleontologist and religious writer Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Russian‐American sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin. Although from very different personal and disciplinary backgrounds, they share amazingly similar views on the power of love as transformative energy for transcending the individual self and for creating radically new, collaborative, and cooperative ways of acting that will transform whole societies, indeed the planet. Traditionally, ideas of love have been associated with religion, but these two thinkers advocate systematic scientific research on the production and application of “love‐energy” for the change of culture, social institutions, and human beings. The article is organized in five parts: (1) altruism, science and love: what is love energy? (2) Teilhard's understanding of the phenomenon of love; (3) Sorokin's approach to creative, altruistic love; (4) comparison of Teilhard's and Sorokin's ideas; and (5) performing works of love. As far as I am aware, this is the first article comparing the remarkable parallels as well as distinctive differences between Sorokin's and Teilhard's ideas on love as the highest form of human energy.     

Paul Tillich and Pitirim A. Sorokin on Love

An analysis of Paul Tillich's three‐volume Systematic Theology and Pitirim A. Sorokin's The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation reveals how a metaphysical dialogue on God and love contributes to scientific and theological scholarship on altruism. This article focuses on similarities and differences in Tillich and Sorokin. Similarities include a belief in the importance of the ontological/love connection and the conclusion that a special state, ecstasy, is integral to the experience of genuine love. Differences serve to complement rather than negate. For example, Tillich's recognition that ecstatic connections with the divine within finitude are fragmentary balances Sorokin's view that these ecstatic peaks are reached only by the few. The similarities give resonance and point to the overall creation, while the differences often serve as counterpoint to balance the ideas of the scientist and the theologian.     

The problem of tradition in the work of Anthony Giddens

This paper seeks to problematise the notion of ‘tradition’ presented in the recent sociology of Anthony Giddens on reflexivity and late modernity. Three broad areas of critique are highlighted and discussed: the view of tradition as simultaneously static and reflexive; the view that within the ‘post‐traditional’ world tradition survives and flourishes; and the view that tradition and reflexivity are historically mutually exclusive phenomena. In the final section, Mellor's (1993) conception of ‘reflexive traditions’ is introduced and developed as a possible hermeneutic tool for the study of contemporary traditions with reference to the author's recent ethnographic fieldwork with the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, a millenarian new religious movement of Indian origin.     

Common Law Approaches to the Relationship Between Law and Morality

How are general relations of law and morality typically conceived in an environment of Anglo-saxon common law? This paper considers some classical common law methods and traditions as these have confronted and been overlaid with modern ideas of legal positivism. While classical common law treated a community and its morality as the cultural foundation of law, legal positivism's analytical separation of law and morals, allied with liberal approaches to legal regulation, have made the relationship of legal and moral principles more complex and contested. Using ideas from Durkheim's and Weber's sociology, I argue that the traditional common law emphasis on an inductive, empirical treatment of moral practices has continuing merit, but in contemporary conditions the vague idea of community embedded in classical common law thought must be replaced with a much more precise conceptualisation of coexisting communities, whose moral bonds are diverse and require a corresponding diversity of forms of legal recognition or protection.     

IAN BARBOUR ON RELIGION AND THE METHODS OF SCIENCE: AN ASSESSMENT

Abstract. Two aspects of Ian Barbour's position on the relation between religion and science are considered. First is his preference for comparing religions as a whole to scientific paradigms. It is suggested that the concept of a tradition as defined by Alasdair MacIntyre is more useful than Thomas Kuhn's paradigm. Thus, the Christian tradition could be compared to the Aristotelian or Newtonian scientific traditions. Within traditions, both religious and scientific, we find schools with enough agreement on fundamentals to be designated research programs, as defined by Imre Lakatos; here fruitful comparisons between theology and science are possible. Barbour's critical realism is intended as a compromise between highly rationalistic and sociological accounts of science. However, rationalism and sociology of science are answers to two different sets of questions rather than extremes on a spectrum of answers to the same question. Thus, there is no middle position between them, and no compromise need be found.     

William Foote Whyte,Street Corner Society and Social Organization

Social scientists have mostly taken it for granted that William Foote Whyte's sociological classic Street Corner Society (SCS, 1943) belongs to the Chicago school of sociology's research tradition or that it is a relatively independent study which cannot be placed in any specific research tradition. Social science research has usually overlooked the fact that William Foote Whyte was educated in social anthropology at Harvard University, and was mainly influenced by Conrad M. Arensberg and W. Lloyd Warner. What I want to show, based on archival research, is that SCS cannot easily be said either to belong to the Chicago school's urban sociology or to be an independent study in departmental and idea‐historical terms. Instead, the work should be seen as part of A. R. Radcliffe‐Brown's and W. Lloyd Warner's comparative research projects in social anthropology.     

A REPLY TO ANNE KULL,EDUARDO CRUZ,AND MICHAEL DeLASHMUTT

In my reply to the essays by Anne Kull, Eduardo Cruz, and Michael DeLashmutt, I turn first to Cruz's charge that my use of “the sacred” is at odds with a growing religious studies mainstream that understands religion in secular terms. I suggest that this latter approach has its own problems, deriving partly from its neglect of the political, constructed nature of the category of “religion.” Second, in relation to Cruz's suggestion that my lack of attention to explanation compromises my claim to be social scientific, I defend a broader understanding of the human sciences and explore the relationships between understanding, critique, and history, and between sociology and theology. Third, reflecting on DeLashmutt's suggestion that I neglect the way that technical invention provides a glimpse of divine creativity, and the myth making that goes on around technology in vehicles such as science fiction, I argue that such issues have to be approached in a radically historical way. I conclude by identifying three challenges: to explore more deeply how technological objects form part of human being‐in‐the‐world, to show how my approach might offer practical resources for assessing technological and environmental developments, and to expand my analysis to include non‐Western religious traditions.     

Step into liquid: Rites,transcendence and transgression in the modern construction of the social sacred

This essay looks at the construction and transformation of the notion of sacred space in the twentieth century. The notions of transgression and lived moments (or everyday rites), as put forth by numerous writers and architects, are examined as an alternative vision of the sacred and spatial ontology that relies upon material conditions and relations as its source. In particular, it focuses on the emergence of this social spatial category through the work of the Collège de Sociologie a group of ethnologists, philosophers, writers and artists (Georges Bataille was a founder) who convened bi-weekly at a Paris café between 1937 and 1939 in the hope of constructing a sacred sociology. This group's activity provides the groundwork for understanding how the social sacred emerges as a category of spatial practice in the late twentieth century, and how the categories of events and rites are explored by the youthful avant-garde in architecture that emerge from the 1960s. In particular, the architect Bernard Tschumi's writings on transgression and event provide a direct link to the sacred sociology of the Collège as he is a close reader of Bataille's, and the work of the European radical avant-garde in architecture from the late 1960s and early 1970s helps to elucidate how the Collegians call for a sacred sociology is manifest in what I call the sacred social. I proposes this new category of the ‘social sacred’ to explain a spatial category which emerges in the twentieth century, and which we can use to understand how space, architecture, and urbanism help to define and engender this new sacred category.     

If only jung had had a rabbi

An analytical and feeling response regarding the question of Jung's anti-Semitism is presented. The author calls for a compassionate and understanding approach to Jung's lifelong development, based on an appreciation of Jung's religious attitude, which evolved toward a deep acceptance of Judaism and its traditions. Characteristic of analysts as healers is the maxim that individuals grow and change; such was certainly the case with Jung as can be seen clearly in his later sunset years. After all, will we remember Frederick de Klerk as a proponent of apartheid or as the Afrikaaner who shared the Nobel Prize for Peace with Nelson Mandela?     

Interrogation,Interpretation and Integration of Spirituality: Insights from Sri Aurobindo for “Care for Creation”

This paper brings together three strands of enquiry – interrogation of spirituality, interpretation of spirituality and Sri Aurobindo's integrative spirituality – which form the three natural parts of the paper. In the first part I interrogate the idea and category “spirituality” and argue that this term came to be understood in opposition to the “material” only in medieval times, and thus the common notion of spirituality as opposed to materiality is misplaced. In the second part, in light of George Lindbeck's work, I will explore the question – is it possible for different traditions that interpret spirituality differently to hold a common unifying position? I will argue that if we are to arrive at an understanding of spirituality that will be acceptable to different traditions, then the very conception of spirituality must be informed by all. In the final part, I will argue that Sri Aurobindo's integrative spirituality offers a sufficient rationale for creation‐care by proposing a view of spirituality which, on the one hand, overcomes the spiritual‐material dichotomy, while on the other, contains an implicit guard against imposing its view of spirituality on other traditions. Finally, by bringing Sri Aurobindo into the dialogue I demonstrate how insights from another tradition can be drawn to enrich our understanding of spirituality.     

Alasdair MacIntyre's Analysis of Tradition

I argue that, in analysing the structure and development of moral traditions, MacIntyre relies primarily on Kuhn's model of scientific tradition, rather than (as is held by at least two influential commentators) on Lakatos' model. I unpack three foci of Kuhn's conception of the sciences, namely: the ‘crisis’ conception of scientific development, what I call the ‘systematic conception’ of scientific paradigms, and the view that successive paradigms are incommensurable. I then show that these three foci are integrated into MacIntyre's account of the development of moral traditions with a surprising degree of faithfulness to Kuhn. And crucially, I argue against the overall cogency of his account, given the disparities I pinpoint between scientific and moral traditions. My overall critique is, however, fundamentally friendly, since nothing I have to say invalidates the very notion of a moral tradition, and all I am calling for are less problematic construals of that notion.     

Technology transfer at Harvard University

This memorandum was prepared by Daniel Steiner, General Counsel to Harvard University on behalf of the President's Office and distributed to the faculty in October, 1980. It reviews recent Harvard policy with regard to patents and technology transfer. Spurred by recombinant DNA research, at Harvard and elsewhere, benefits and pitfalls of the University's participation as a minor shareholder in a company engaged in research and development are identified. The author notes that “The memorandum has benefited from numerous discussions with members of the faculty and administration and in particular from the comments of President (Derek) Bok and Dean (Henry) Rosovsky.”     

Young Marx and Alienation in western debate

The publication of Marx's early writings has given us a perspective on the early development of socialistic thought that provides a clearer view of its connection with current discussion in philosophy and sociology. The link is the phenomenon of alienation, with which the early Marx was much concerned. In this article the author marks the distinctiveness of the two main current approaches to the alienation phenomenon, the ontological and the sociological, and suggests that the tension between Hegelian ontology and empirical sociology in. the early Marx's analysis of the phenomenon reflects the strength rather than the weakness of this analysis as a contribution to the understanding of the human position.     

Dynamic Reciprocity and Ontological Affinity in the Pauline Account of Solidarity

This article suggests that the dynamic elements of gift‐giving and reciprocity, which are incisively re‐evaluated in John Barclay's study Paul and the Gift, might fruitfully be combined with the classical incarnational understanding of the union of natures to better our understanding of Paul's soteriology. Setting Paul's account of salvation within the framework of the wider New Testament, the article highlights the presence of key elements that might best be articulated in terms of the dual kinship of Jesus with both God and humanity and that require some discussion of the ontology of the one who saves. When Paul speaks of the solidarity that exists within the Christian community, he does so in a way that links it to the presence of the Spirit, by whom we participate in the oneness of God through the one mediator; his development of this emphasis draws heavily upon the Shema, which Jewish traditions associate with the distinctive ‘being’ of God.     

Chicago sociology and the society for social research: A comment

Lester R. Kurtz's introduction to Robert Park's “Notes on the Origins of the Society for Social Research” (JHBS, October 1982) contains several errors of fact and understates the significance of the society for an understanding of the achievement of Chicago sociology. The role of the society as an institutional mechanism for consolidating and integrating a research group into a “school” is discussed.     

Studying Stereotype Accuracy from an Integrative Social‐Personality Perspective

This article proposes an integrative framework for understanding the accuracy and inaccuracy of stereotypes. Specifically, we highlight research issues and traditions from social and personality psychology that do not often intersect, but which can be mutually informative. Within this framework, the social psychologist's interest in the accuracy of group stereotypes is conceptually much like a personality psychologist's interest in the accuracy with which perceivers can identify types of individuals, for example extraverts. Both fields make use, implicitly or explicitly, of personal attributes and behaviors (cues) in assessing accuracy of beliefs about group or individual traits. By using Brunswik's lens model perspective in combination with concepts from signal detection theory, judgments of stereotypes can be discovered to be accurate or inaccurate depending on how perceivers judge or use the cues. In drawing on research traditions and theoretical frameworks from both social and personality psychology, researchers can go beyond an all‐or‐nothing stance regarding stereotype accuracy to achieve a more nuanced understanding of when, how, and to what extent stereotypes are accurate.     

Temperament and typology

This paper takes a cue from Harvard neuroscientists Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman's (2004) comment that Jung's work on typology has remarkable relevance to their research on neurobiological correlates of temperament and develops the links between the theorists separated by almost a century. The paper begins with a brief review of temperament traits in personality psychology. Kagan and Snidman's 11‐year longitudinal study is then analysed and correlated with Jung's psychological attitude types of introversion and extraversion, demonstrating that Jung's close empirical observations of human nature fit explicitly with objective measurements of neurobiological sensitivity thresholds and their expression in temperament. Emerging research on neurobiologically sensitive adults and children from Aron (1997, 2004, 2011) and differential susceptibility theory (DST) is presented as extrapolating the same links between temperament and physiological sensitivity found in Jung's introversion and Kagan and Snidman's high‐reactive type. The paper concludes with a consideration of the subjective psyche as a necessary aspect to understanding the self and human consciousness as whole.