L’Amore Altruistico in tempi di guerra e pandemia

Pitirim A. Sorokin, a Russian sociologist naturalised in the United States and a leading figure in 20th century sociology, stated that historical and techno-cultural changes have not always produced positive results within societies, but at times even negative (or more precisely, ‘de- structive’) ones: individualism, antagonism, an excess of technology and rationality, and in particular the fall of the bonds of solidarity towards the different and the loss of the feeling of belonging (Mangone 2015; Cimagalli 2010; Marletti 2018; Perrotta 2016). Altruism can also be one of the indispensable ingredients of social life, useful for preventing crises and conflicts. Considering the current pandemic and war scenarios, the aim of the paper is to illustrate the main theoretical lines of Sorokin’s scientific thought, which made sociology a “science at the service of humanity” useful also for the study of disasters, i.e. all those events involving con- junctions of physical conditions and definitions of human damage and social disorders (e.g. natural disasters, wars and cyber attacks).