On the Practice of Sociology

Pitirim Sorokin rose from a peasant childhood in Russia to become a major figure in the history of sociology. However, he was considered both a pioneer and an outcast. This text includes essays by this controversial thinker which range from his early Russian years to his final work in the 1960s. His early American works are considered to have opened new vistas in rural sociology, social stratification, and theory, and won him the chairmanship of sociology at Harvard University. A constant innovator, Pitirim next explored the vast expanse of human affairs, and outlined the surfacing crisis of modernity. At the Harvard Research Center for Creative Altruism he developed a blueprint for social reconstruction. In the early 1960s, his work was again recognized, and he became president of the American Sociological Association.