Vision and Mission of Sociology: Learning from the Russian Historical Experience

‘Global sociology’ in different disciplinary practices: Current conditions, problems and perspectives

“…The problem may not be the insufficient quality of these potential contributions from 'peripheral' sociologies, but rather the lack of institutional mechanisms stimulating their integration into international academy. Several papers demonstrate that bringing nonwestern sociological ideas and experience to the current international mainstream may be helpful for improving the certain difficulties faced by academic sociology (see e.g., Maia, 2014;Sorokin, 2015aSorokin, , 2015b.…”

“…'Policy sociology' also experiences negative tendencies in the global context. Several studies, for example from Iran (Bayatrizi, 2010) and Russia (Radaev, 2013;Sorokin, 2015b), demonstrate that the national state remains the key client of sociological applied research, making it ideologically biased, insufficiently qualified and closed to international cooperation. The strongest complaints of sociologists from 'peripheral' countries relate to, first, the ideological distrust of governmental structures towards sociologists and their expertise (Bayatrizi, 2010: 826;Zdravomyslova, 2008: 407), and, second, the weak connection between the results of applied research and the concrete policy actions undertaken by the officials (Carden, 2004: 136;Wiles, 2004: 31; see also Grundmann and Stehr, 2010).…”

Making Global Sociology in the Context of Neoliberal Domination: Challenges, Ideology and Possible Strategies

“…Burawoy (2005) effectively utilises the image of powerful disciplinary 'enemies' of sociology (implying alliance between economics and politics) in his call to consolidate the protest potential of sociological communities worldwide against neoliberal decision-makers. As has been demonstrated in the literature, such calls prove quite appealing (see Nichols, 2009;Sorokin, 2017).…”

“…There are multiple ways to strengthen the sociological impact on various public groups and parts of civil society-not limited to the paths of 'partisan research'. Moreover, the experience of Burawoy's 'public sociology' shows that this strategy, though highly resonant, leads to increasing marginalisation of sociological communities and harms the so-called 'professional' and 'policy' domains of sociology (see Sorokin, 2015Sorokin, , 2016bSorokin, , 2017. For example, Pitirim Sorokin's conception of 'integral sociology' can be regarded as an interesting attempt to think about an alternative global solidarity-oriented discipline (see Nichols, 2009Nichols, , 2012Sorokin, 2016aSorokin, , 2016b.…”

“…A possible example of a solidarity-oriented strategy for cooperation with powerful extra-academic actors and agencies is Pitirim Sorokin, especially his activities as a director of the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism in the early 1950s (see Sorokin, 2015; 2016a; 2017).…”