How Sorokin's Theory of Social Change Will Transform Society

• In Event: 315 - Open Refereed Roundtables Session. B. Table 01 Shared and Contested Spaces
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 12. Societal Transformation

Abstract

In his theory of social change Sorokin describes how in 2,500 years of Graeco-Roman and Western history there were three different dominant ways of knowing reality whether through the senses, reason, or faith. Sorokin portrays social change as a constant movement of recurrent rhythms characterized by the dominance of one of three ways of knowing reality expressed as a cultural mentality. Change in a cultural mentality is not due to external causes but due to the internal properties of the culture mentality which Sorokin referred to as immanent change. Each cultural mentality will reach its limits because it provides a one-sided perspective on reality that in time will exhaust its ability to satisfy the needs of its members of society. It will then be replaced by a new cultural mentality. The truth of the senses is the dominant cultural mentality of contemporary society which is in decline. It is responsible for removing from
from values anything divine and sacred. To rectify the neglect of the spiritual Sorokin turned to the method of supraconscioius intuition which should be the focus of research and theory. Sorokin believed that unselfish and creative love is the supreme moral value of the supraconscious. Supraconscious intuitions would enable the social sciences to reach universal moral truths that would guide human interaction and the moral transformation of society.

Author

• Robert Colbert Rhodes, University of Texas of the Permian Basin