Sorokin and Civilization

A Centennial Assessment

Joseph B. Ford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138514874
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351292627
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sorokin and Civilization is a festschrift to Pitirim Sorokin, one of the most famed figures of twentieth-century sociology and first president of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC). He was a giant of the twentieth-century stage in the larger world as well. He debated with Trotsky, exchanged ideas with Pavlov, and received a personal invitation to meet with President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia. His principled dissent from sociological orthodoxy frequently anticipated that of Charles Wright Mills, Alfred McClung Lee, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He was, to paraphrase Joseph Ford, a scholar among statesmen and a statesman among scholars.

The volume is divided into four parts: "A Life Remembered"; "Sorokin as Gadfly"; "Sorokin's Methodology"; and, "Applying Sorokin's Theories." Contributors and chapters to this volume include: "Sorokin's Life and Work" by Barry V. Johnston; "The Sorokin-Merton Correspondence on Puritanism, Pietism, and Science" by Robert K. Merton; "Sorokin and American Sociology: The Dynamics of a Moral Career in Science" by Lawrence T. Nichols; "Sorokin as Dialectician" by Robert C. Hanson; "Applying Sorokin's Typology" by Michel P. Richard; and "Transitions, Revolutions, and Wars" by William Eckhardt. Sorokin and Civilization will appeal to all those with an interest in cultural and historical processes and the life and theories of Sorokin.

Part IV
Applying Sorokin’s Theories

11

Sorokin versus Toynbee on Civilization

David Wilkinson

Can colliding, conflicting cultural congeries constitute civilizations? This question is intended to recall a fundamental debate between Pitirim A. Sorokin and Arnold J. Toynbee that is useful today in clarifying the issues that divide civilizational approaches. Some conceive of civilizations as societies; others view them as cultures. Some regard civilizations as polycultures, while others portray them monoculturally. Some define them by criteria of interaction, where others see them bound by similarities.

Although Sorokin criticized Toynbee fundamentally, considering Toynbee’s units of analysis to have been misconceived, he nonetheless firmly endorsed many of Toynbee’s propositions. Both Sorokin’s critique of Toynbee and his many concurrences concern issues of great import for the comparative study of civilizations. In resurrecting their dialogue, I have not only attempted to document both the critique and the concurrence, but have also appended substantive comments to both.

Sorokin’s Critique of Toynbee

Sorokin consistently rejected the explicit roster and implicit definition of civilizations, which constituted Toynbee’s basic units of analysis. In Social Philosophies in an Age of Crisis, Sorokin summarized the first six volumes of Toynbee’s A Study of History plus his Civilization on Trial. Here Sorokin (1950b, 206) contended that Toynbee meant each civilization to be viewed as a “unified system whose parts are connected to each other by causal and meaningful ties,” on the assumption that “the total culture of each of [his] ‘civilizations’ is completely integrated and represents one meaningfully consistent and causally unified whole” (1950b, 209). But Sorokin denied that this assumption could ever be correct: even the smallest culture-area might contain “a dominant system...that coexists with many minor systems and a multitude of congeries.” Hence, Toynbee could not indicate “any major premise or ultimate principle articulated by all cultural phenomena” of any civilization, and indeed hardly tried. Consequently, for Sorokin, Toynbee’s civilizations were not genuinely “meaningful systems.”

Nor did Sorokin believe Toynbee’s civilizations were causal systems of connected variables, such that, when any is given, the others are also given, and when one changes, all change. Since Toynbee himself asserted that his civilizations’ religions could change while their arts or politics did not, Sorokin rejects the idea that Toynbee’s civilizations were or could be causal systems.¹ He therefore concluded (1950b, 213) that a Toynbeean civilization “is neither a causal, nor a meaningful, nor a causal-meaningful system, but rather a cultural field where a multitude of vast and small cultural systems and congeries—partly mutually harmonious, partly neutral, partly contradictory—co-exist.”²

How could such an impossible monstrosity ever have been conceived? Sorokin proposed the explanation that, lacking a systematic taxonomy of social groups, Toynbee miscombined into “civilizations” essentially different types of social groups. Some were languagebonded groups (Arabic), others state groups or state-language groups (Iranic, Mexic, Babylonic). Some (Hindu, Hittite) were religious groups, others “religious plus territorial, or plus language, or plus state groups.” Worst was Toynbee’s “Hellenic” civilization: a potpourri “made up of several wholes, halves, and quarters of diverse language, state, religious, economic, territorial groups, and unorganized populations”—not only a cultural but also a social congeries (Sorokin 1950b, 217).

In Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology, Sorokin (1956b, 163-64) again argued that Toynbee provided “the wrong classification of cultural phenomena into false unities,” which proved to be “not a unified system but a vast conglomeration of diverse systems, subsystems and congeries... a vast cultural dump.”³ And in Toynbee and History, Sorokin again challenged Toynbee’s belief that his civilizations were real systems, and contended that they were mere congeries or conglomerations of cultural phenomena and objects, united only by being adjacent in space and time (Montagu 1956, 180).

Despite increasing interaction between Sorokin and Toynbee, and despite Toynbee’s intellectual evolution (documented in his Reconsiderations), Sorokin continued to criticize Toynbee’s units of analysis as taxonomic error. In Pitirim A. Sorokin in Review, he restated his original attack, connecting it more tightly and broadening it. Each Toynbeean “civilization” contained some major organized social group, but the organizing principle differed from case to case (language, ethnicity, etc.). Each “civilization” also contained “alien groups” who happened to live in, but were not an organic part of it. Thus the local culture of each included, along with some central cultural system, “a multitude of partly different, partly neutral, partly contradictory, cultural systems and congeries” (Sorokin 1963b, 413-14). Ultimately, Sorokin (1963b, 418-19) generalized the taxonomic problem in Toynbee’s work to the whole study of civilizations, saying: there is no “clear, objective foundation” for identifying, numbering and classifying civilizations; “civilizations,” except for their central social groups, are not meaningful causal unities; and the central groups are of different kinds in different “civilizations.”

In the last words he pronounced on the issue, Sorokin (1966, 121-22) reasserted his judgment on Toynbee’s civilizations in the same pungent terms: they were “dumps of cultural phenomena mistaken for vast sociocultural systems... vast pseudosystems of ‘civilizations.’” Toynbee carved these pseudosystems “out of an enormous mass of other cultural complexes without any uniform fundamentum divisionis, on the basis of different and somewhat indefinite criteria”—a procedure both illogical and unscientific (1966, 217). Sorokin did make one gesture of good will, in granting that Toynbee’s (1961, 548-49) revised list of civilizations reflected a genuine admission that Toynbee had made a correctable subjective error in his original list. It seems fair to say that so far as Toynbee abandoned his original views, Sorokin endorsed the abandonment.

However, Sorokin did not reappraise the new Toynbeean list on its merits. Had he done so, he must have condemned it. Toynbee (1961, 548-51) continued to defend his original classification as partly objective, and openly avowed that there remained an inescapably arbitrary element even in his revised classification. Furthermore, rather than expunging his original list, Toynbee used it as the source of his revision, by reevaluating the claims of each entity on his original list to a continuous and separate existence. Ultimately, Toynbee modified the original list mainly by combining some of its members, enlarging others, and reducing still others to satellite status (1961, 546-61). It is improbable that a mere recombining of unacceptable entities, along with a reassertion of unacceptable principles, could have convinced Sorokin that Toynbee’s revised list met his criticism. I conclude that Sorokin’s critique of Toynbee’s original list applies also to the revised roster, perhaps even more strongly, since the revision was done in full awareness of Sorokin’s views.

I shall at this point intrude into the debate, for I too have had a roster of civilizations to propose, based on what seems to me a less arbitrary and more uniform fundamentum divisionis for the concept “civilization” than Toynbee’s (Wilkinson 1987). The roster of civilizations discerned on that principle is a recension of the rosters of Toynbee (and Carroll Quigley). Like Toynbee’s revision, it was produced mainly by combining members of prior rosters. Nevertheless, I contend that my roster and its underlying principle respond to, and escape, Sorokin’s critique, in a way that Toynbee’s revised roster does not.

1. Sorokin charged that Toynbee looked at social groups and thought he saw cultural groups. Whether or not Toynbee fell into it, confounding societies with cultures is a trap for civilizationists. I have tried to avoid the trap by choosing to define and bound “civilizations” by social bonds of interaction, and not by cultural bonds of similarity. My set of civilizations are consequently social groups that are not identified with cultural groups, even though all the civilizations are societies that reached the same cultural “level.”

My criterion leads me to a civilizations list different from Toynbee’s⁴ and Quigley’s,⁵ still more from Spengler’s⁶ or Danilevsky’s.⁷ Sorokin might treat this fact as one more proof of the unsystematic character of the concept of “civilization”—five writers, five rosters. I see it rather as evidence of disagreement about the most useful systematic redefinition of a nontechnical term into a technical one. My differences with the four lists cited reflect my application of a social criterion, while Danilevsky and Spengler employed cultural criteria and Toynbee and Quigley used mixed sociocultural criteria. Nor should the similarities be astonishing: where, for example, Spengler or Danilevsky found cultural coherence (in Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc.), I found a period of geosocial isolation and historical autonomy.

Table 11.1 A Roster of Fourteen Civilizations (in approximate order of incorporation into Central Civilization)

2. My roster’s chief difference lies in a direction of which Sorokin could hardly approve, since I have combined from four to fourteen civilizational entities into a single entity, “Central civilization.” What could this be to Sorokin but a cultural macrodump indeed! Sorokin’s especially harsh critique of Toynbee’s Hellenic civilization is a fortiori applicable to my Central civilization, which contains Toynbee’s Hellenic plus others. Central civilization, like “Hellenic,” is neither a language group, nor a religious group, nor a state group; worse than “Hellenic,” from a Sorokinian viewpoint, it contains no central social group, and is thus not held together by any of the bonds Sorokin found in Toynbee’s civilizations. Yet it is bonded, by bonds Sorokin did not recognize, bonded oppositionally: for continuing warfare is a social bond, and continuing hostility is a cultural bond. “Central civilization” is a strongly bonded entity, even though it be a cultural potpourri. Sorokin might well describe “Central civilization” as an ultra-congeries or conglomeration of various cultural phenomena and objects, adjacent in space and time but devoid of causal or meaningful ties. I insist that “Central civilization” is a conglomeration of sociocultural phenomena, adjacent in space and time, that is integrated by causal ties—including collision, warfare, and coevolution—and by quasi-meaningful ties of mutual consciousness, awareness of differences, and hostility.⁸

3. What I assert of “Central civilization” I also assert of civilizations as a class: that these social entities are causal systems, and not congeries at all. (For some of their patterns, see Wilkinson 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1991.) “Civilizations” have their component parts connected to each other by causal ties, in Toynbee’s looser sense,⁹ but not necessarily by meaningful ties, in the strong sense asserted by Sorokin (and not disclaimed by Toynbee).

4. In consequence the civilizations on my roster may without inconsistency be, what in fact they usually were: polycultures, “cultural fields”—to quote Sorokin—“where a multitude of vast and small cultural systems and congeries—partly mutually harmonious, partly neutral, partly contradictory—co-exist.” Sorokin’s charge, though well grounded, poses no taxonomic difficulty for civilizations whose boundaries are socially, transactionally defined.

5. Since we need not assume that the cultural field at any civilization is completely unified, nor that it is meaningfully consistent, nor even that it is causally unified, the question of whether, when, and how cultural unity, consistency, or interaction exist becomes hypothetical, to be explored empirically rather than by definition or axiom.

6. In such exploration, I would begin with the guess that over many generations the culture of any civilization will tend toward greater second-order integration—mutual agreement on what its areas of discord are—with continuing first-order inconsistency (continued discord). Its causal unification will likely be dialectical, organized as a continuing struggle of changing oppositions (though without any final synthesis).

7. To put the matter in Spenglerian terms: since my civilizations are not assumed to be “meaningful” unities, they need not possess any major premise, prime symbol, ultimate principle, or fundamental value. But they might in fact do so.

8. Do they in fact do so? I would guess that they do not, but, rather, that each will be found to articulate a different evolution of a different dialectic, that is, a different struggle among a different set of conflicting premises, symbols, and the like.

9. I would not want to assume that civilizations necessarily contain a dominant cultural system, but would regard it as an empirical fact that most civilizations, most of the time, contain dominant cultural cores. These have geographic locations and are frequently “dominant” in more ways than one: for example, militarily, technologically, economically, and demographically, as well as culturally.

As must be obvious, I have found Sorokin’s critique of Toynbee useful as a stimulant to clarification of my own rather different views. I have been driven to assert that civilizations need to be defined as societies, not cultures, and understood not as monocultures, but as polycultures; that they have causal connections, but not mathematically determinate structures; that their “cultures”—rather, their polycultures—are fields of contradiction and of conflict; and that they are bonded by war as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• I A Life Remembered
• II Sorokin as Gadfly
• III Sorokin’s Methodology
• IV Applying Sorokin’s Theories
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index