Georges Gurvitch (russian: Гео́ргий Дави́дович Гу́рвич; October 20, 1894, Novorossiysk – December 12, 1965,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) was a Russian-born French sociologist and jurist. One of the leading sociologists of his times, he was a specialist of the

sociology of knowledge The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and the effects that prevailing ideas have on societies. It is not a specialized area of sociology. Instead, it deal ...

. In 1944 he founded the journal ''Cahiers internationaux de Sociologie''. He held a chair in sociology at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

in Paris. An outspoken advocate of Algerian decolonization, Gurvitch and his wife were the victim of terrorist attack by the far-right nationalist group, L'O.A.S on June 22, 1962.2007. ''Georges Gurvitch: Social Change.'' Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Edited by George Ritzer.
Source 1
, Accessed March 11, 2012. Their apartment was destroyed by a bomb, and they took refuge for a time at the house of painter Marc Chagall. Gurvitch is an important figure in the development of

sociology of law The sociology of law (legal sociology, or law and society) is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, ...

. Like other legal sociologists, he insisted that law is not merely the rules or decisions produced, interpreted and enforced by agencies of the state, such as legislatures, courts and police. Groups and communities of various kinds, whether formally structured or informally organised, produce regulation for themselves and others, which can properly be considered law from a sociological standpoint. Gurvitch's legal pluralism is, however, far more rigorous and radical than that of most legal sociologists and locates an immense variety of types of law in the various kinds of sociality—or social interaction—that he distinguished in his writings. He saw the need to stress the reality and significance of social law and social rights, in opposition to what he termed individual law. His Bill of Social Rights, drafted at the end of World War II was an attempt to state a blueprint of a legal framework of social law for a postwar world in which the idea of human rights had become newly powerful. The sociologist and ideologue of the 1979 Iranian revolution

Ali Shariati Ali Shariati Mazinani ( fa, علی شریعتی مزینانی, 23 November 1933 – 18 June 1977) was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intell ...

studied under Gurvitch in the 1960s during his studies in France at the University of Sorbonne.

Works

* ''Essai de Sociologie'', (1939) * ''Sociology of law'', (1942) * ''The Bill of Social Rights'', (1945) * ''La vocation actuelle de la sociologie'', (1950) * ''Le concept des classes sociales de Marx à nos jours'', (1954) * ''The Spectrum of Social Time'', (1958) * ''Dialectique et sociologie'', (1962) * ''The Social Frameworks of Knowledge'', (1972)

Studies of Gurvitch's works

* Banakar, Reza, “Integrating Reciprocal Perspectives: On Georges Gurvitch’s Theory of Immediate Jural Experience” in 16 /1 Canadian Journal of Law and Society. 2001. Reprinted in Roger Cotterrell, ed., Law in Social Theory. Aldershot, Ashgate. 2006. Available at SSRN https://ssrn.com/abstract=1777167 * Banakar, Reza, “Georges Gurvitch” in Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. 2006. * Belley, Jean-Guy, "Georges Gurvitch et les professionnels de la pensée juridique" in 4 Droit et Société 353-70 (1986) * Bosserman, Phillip, Dialectical Sociology: An Analysis of the Sociology of Georges Gurvitch. Boston: Porter Sargent (1968) * Carbonnier, Jean, "Gurvitch et les juristes" in 4 Droit et Société 347-51 (1986). * Choi, Chaanshik, Freedom and Determinism: The Promethean Sociology of Georges Gurvitch (Ph.D. Dissertation at New School for Social Research, New York, N.Y. 1978) * Hunt, Alan, "The Sociology of Law of Gurvitch and Timasheff: A Critique of Theories of Normative Integration" in Research in Law and Sociology, Vol. 2, pp. 169–204 (1979), * McDonald, Pauline, "The Legal Sociology of Georges Gurvitch" in 6 British Journal of Law and Society 24-52 (1979). * Noreau, Pierre and Andre-Jean Arnaud, "The Sociology of Law in France: Trends and Paradigms" in 25 Journal of Law and Society 258-83 (1998). * Swedberg, Richard. Sociology as Disenchantment: The Evolution of the Work of Georges Gurvitch. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1982.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gurvitch, Georges 1894 births 1965 deaths People from Novorossiysk People from Kuban Oblast Russian Jews Mensheviks White Russian emigrants to Germany White Russian emigrants to Czechoslovakia White Russian emigrants to France French people of Russian-Jewish descent French sociologists Russian sociologists Jewish sociologists French male writers Saint Petersburg State University alumni University of Paris faculty Foreign members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts