Calamità e sociologia della crisi. Una prospettiva sorokininana sull’emergenza pandemica

In his works, Pitirim A. Sorokin paid particular attention on the fluctua-tions of sociocultural systems. Fluctuations can be either long lasting and gradual or sudden and unexpected. Calamities are crucial factors able to change radically the bedrocks of a sociocultural system in rela-tively short time. Against this backdrop, this article aims at providing some interpretative remarks on the pandemic emergency in the light of Sorokin’s insights. To reach the aim we will follow a twofold way: first-ly, we will adopt Sorokin’s sociology of crisis as framework; secondly, we will use the analytical approach of his sociology of disasters to pre-sent the consequences of calamities in microsocial and macrosocial terms. Against this backdrop, we will finally try to analyze the ongoing pandemic in a sorokininan perspective, with a special emphasis on the relation between science and society.