Georges Gurvitch 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

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 of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies...

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

Gurvitch is an important figure in the development of sociology of law

Sociology of law

The sociology of law is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies...

. Like other legal sociologists, he insisted that law is not merely the rules or decisions produced, interpreted and enforced by asgencies 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.

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 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=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).
• 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).

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Sociology of Law

Sociology of law

The sociology of law is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies...