General Sociological Theory Research Articles

On the issue of rethinking the conceptual foundations of management as a social phenomenon

Social and digital technologies are exposing the impact of governance on society. It acts as a factor that simultaneously solves problems and poses threats to all of humanity as a result of mistakes, personal interests, and unforeseen consequences. With the growing influence of management on social processes, questions arise not only about how management is structured, but also what place it occupies in society. There is a need to rethink the phenomenon of management. Despite the prevalence of the term “management,” its understanding is far from ambiguous. An additional complexity is associated with the absence in foreign scientific literature of a term identical to the Russian word “management”. The article proposes that management is understood as a social phenomenon manifested in the activities of individual and group subjects, which is aimed at interfering in the natural course of events to bring them into line with subjective ideas. In this interpretation, management serves as the basis for the emergence of an artificial component. To understand the place given to management in sociology, the article analyzes the main sociological paradigms based on the typologies of K.Dubar, R.Collins, J.Ritzer. In the usual dualism, objectivism-subjectivism, structure-agent, society-personality, macrosociology-microsociology and the desire to overcome them, management is given a secondary, auxiliary role, and disciplines studying management (sociology of management, sociology of organizations) are given the place of industrial sciences. Each of the sociological paradigms is a response to the challenges of its time. The modern world is characterized by the growth of man-made artificial reality with a simultaneous increase in uncertainty. This actualizes new challenges, the answers to which the author proposes to look for in the problem field of management, expanding it to a general sociological theory. For this purpose, the social space is described as the intersection of the “natural-artificial” and “determined-uncertain” axes. The author sees an important difference between the sociology of management and other disciplines in the study of not only what one should “know in order to foresee, and foresee in order to be able,” but also how this “can” can be realized. The study of management covers the theory and practice of social and, rising to abstract levels, it does not lose pragmatism (it takes into account how knowledge is applied by social individuals in practice to solve real social problems).

Concepts of culture of digital society in contemporary sociology

This article makes an attempt to streamline existing sociological approaches to studying culture of digital society. First of all, the phenomenon of digital society is characterised and defined. Its specificity is revealed. Then the transition is made directly to the phenomenon of culture of digital society. The main objective of this article is to show connection between the concept of culture of digital society and sociological theories of culture. To achieve it, the article provides a review of sociological theories of culture. In particular, the theories of P.A. Sorokin, T. Parsons and M.S. Archer are considered. The article demonstrates the specifics of the culture of digital society. The historical stages of development of this phenomenon are highlighted. A trend towards digitalisation of public life is identified. Next, the concept of culture of digital society is discussed directly. The final part of the article emphasises the connections between the culture of digital society and general sociological theories of culture. Finally, new research questions regarding further study and conceptualisation of the culture of digital society are posed. In conclusion, the author accentuates the necessity to conduct empirical research on specific and general cases related to the studied concept.

What Is Sociological Theory?

There are several types of sociological theories one has to discriminate from each other. Certain sociological theories earmark only single phenomena and do not differ from explanations used in everyday life. Then there are general sociological theories, mainly general theories of action, e. g. rational choice or interpretative sociologies. Finally, one has to feature macro-sociological theories that point out historical or societal developments pertaining to structures such whole societies, family patterns, or processes such as industrialization or globalization. The article mainly deals with the difference between rational choice and psychological approaches.1

Tourist mobility: sociological theory and implementation practices

The article analyzes the connection between the sociology of tourism and the general sociological theory of mobility, which leads to an understanding of modern tourist mobility not as a process of revealing the will of individuals to learn about different cultures, but as a system of social constructions that exist in the form of tourism practices and are focused on maximizing profits for global tour operators. The methodology. The method of the propositional analysis is aimed at identifying logically based semantic units with the aim of selecting and synthesizing reliable knowledge expressed in texts written on issues of sociology of tourism and the general sociological theory of mobility. Scientific novelty is in clarifying the concept of tourist mobility and tourist practices; in revealing that they are largely the result of commercially oriented social construction carried out in the interests of global tour operators; in demonstrating that commercial and non-commercial tourist mobility entail incompatible social consequences. Conclusions. The article is devoted to current problems of modern sociology of tourism in its connection with the general theory of mobility (one of the founders of which was the British sociologist John Urry) that complemented the “old” theory of social mobility by the doctrine of the movement of people, goods, capital, information, etc. in geographical space. Now society has come to be understood as a mobile structure consisting of many mobile practices (including tourism) that can be aimed at either developing essential strength of people or control over their consciousness and behavior.

PROBLEMS OF DOCTRINIAL ASSESSMENT OF OBJECTIVE SIGNS OF DISCLOSURE OF THE SECRET OF ADOPTION

The purpose of this study is a systematic criminal law study at the doctrinal level of objective signs of disclosure of the secrets of adoption.
 
 Materials and methods. The basis of the study was the dialectical method. The study itself is based on the conceptual provisions of the doctrine of the general theory of law, criminal law, sociology, pedagogy and psychology.
 
 In the course of the study, the logical method was used to study the content of the norm providing for responsibility for disclosing the secrets of adoption. The historical and legal method is presented when considering the development of domestic legislation on responsibility for disclosing the secrecy of adoption.
 
 The statistical method was used in summarizing the materials of investigative and judicial practice in the process of analyzing the rule on disclosure of the secrecy of adoption.
 
 The traditional analysis of documents contributed to obtaining from the materials published in the media about the facts of the disclosure of the secrets of adoption, which were not given a criminal legal assessment.
 
 Results. In the course of the study, it was established that the object of the crime is public relations protected by criminal law, to which a socially dangerous act is directed and to which harm is inflicted or a real threat of harm is created. In the crime under study, the immediate object is determined by the place occupied by Art. 155 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in the criminal law system. The objective side of the crime in question includes signs strictly defined by the criminal law, which are sufficient to determine the act as a crime and are necessary to distinguish it from related offenses.
 
 Conclusions. The main direct object of disclosing the secret of adoption includes public relations that ensure the interests of the family, an additional direct object is understood as public relations that directly jeopardize the interests of the adoptee himself. To divulge the secret of adoption against the will means that it was made without the will of the adoptive parent. If both spouses are adoptive parents, the will of both adoptive parents must be given. The absence of the consent of one of them indicates the inadmissibility of disclosing the secret of adoption. In this case, the disclosure of the secret of adoption does not exclude criminal liability.

Methodological antinomies of Pitirim Sorokin’s Sociology of Revolution: Toward the publication of selected German reviews of the book (1925–1929)

Four reviews published in Russian for the first time are by H.Mauter (Cologne, 1889–1964), E.Jenny (Berlin, 1872–1939), N.N.Bubnoff (Heidelberg, 1880–1962), A.Meuisel (Aachen, 1896–1960) on the book “The Sociology of Revolution” (1925, German edition, 1928) by the Russian-American sociologist P.A. Sorokin (1889–1968) provide a theoretical context that allows us to trace some significant changes in the methodology of Sorokin’s sociology from moderate behaviorism towards the formation of an integral logico-meaningful method of analyzing the dynamics of social and cultural systems and creating the conceptual foundations of social systems theory. They differ from the American reactions to the book by discussing fundamental methodological problems of social theory: stability and dynamics of social systems, ensuring their stability and equilibrium. The reviews contrast the behaviorist content of the concepts of revolution and reaction in Sorokin’s work with the significance of these concepts in political theory and the sociology of politics. The question of the objectivity of Sorokin’s study of revolution, taking into account his moral assessments of the behavioral phenomena of revolutionary events in Russia, is discussed in the context of the methodological requirement of German sociologist Max Weber to reject political evaluations of social processes and phenomena. The paper substantiates the possibility of developing a general sociological theory of revolution and the significance of Sorokin’s study in relation to this issue, taking into account the difference between sociological and historical approaches to the subject. It is proved that German reviews published in leading professional journals of interwar Germany had some influence on the change in the methodology of Sorokin’s sociology.

Особливості розвитку української соціології в умовах російсько-української війни

The presentation (and hence the article) is based on the wills of O.O. Yakuba regarding the analysis of the development features of sociological knowledge at all three levels: general sociological theory, middle-level theories, and empirical research data. It is necessary not only to understand the structure of sociological knowledge but also the interrelationship of all components and the need for the interrelationship of theory and methods relevant to it. The article shows that the development features of sociological knowledge in Ukrainian sociology at the beginning 21st century were characterized by a violation of this organic link, disproportions in the structure of sociological knowledge. However, the search for new non-Marxist explanations at the highest level is now successfully underway as an introduction to the development of a new general theory. According to G. Ritzer’s terminology, these conditions can be evaluated as Mp, i.e. “metatheorizing-prelude”, from which Ukrainian sociology should move on to Mo conditions, i.e. the creation of an arch metatheory. At this level, modern Ukraine (a local entity) is pushed to the centre of the global, which requires a rethinking of the traditional sociological canon. At level: 2) of middle-level theories, in Russia’s ongoing large-scale aggression conditions, two theories, such as the sociology of war and the sociology of the nation, gain the most importance. The author has characterized the main features of the modern sociology of war in Ukrainian sociology, described the differences in the duel between two different social systems: democratic and authoritarian, and showed the main characteristics of the modern sociology of war, which will inevitably end with the victory of Ukraine. At level: 3) of empirical research, we currently experience the greatest success: from the beginning of the phase of the acute military confrontation till the middle of June 2022, representatives of the six leading sociological centres of the country have already carried out 35 national sociological studies of different nature; now Ukrainian sociologists actively present their results in publications and at international scientific conferences. Thus, the structure of modern sociological knowledge in Ukraine, for which Prof. O.O. Yakuba argued, remains unfinished. Still, it is possible to record significant scientific developments at the current stage at all three levels. All this makes it possible to have an optimistic view on the further development of sociology in Ukraine and on the fact that it will be able to help both in the ongoing war and in peaceful post-war reconstruction.

Institutions: a promising topic insufficiently clarified

The basic question of sociology is what sets of rules and order are used in society and how they are maintained. One possible answer is based on the concept of institutions, which still provokes theoretical discussions due to, among other things, a certain ambiguity, since the term ‘institution’ is, figuratively speaking, shrouded in a kind of fog that prevents it from being captured in any direct, clear way. Today, ambitions of philosophy, political science, anthropology or mathematical game theory, which try to solve this problem outside the sociological framework, contribute to the deepening of the ambiguities surrounding the concept of institutions. Some approaches tend to define institutions as a cyber black box with inputs and outputs, whose working remains largely hidden (especially philosophical and mathematical approaches strive to find some common universal principle or even mathematical formula). From the perspective of general sociological theory, the article considers the topic of institutions. The author identifies this topic as a central issue that needs to be reconsidered in sociology. The starting point of the article is the analysis of concepts related to the topic, their definitions and paradigmatic integration. In the following part, the author considers the theoretical interpretations in the works of Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann, John Searle, and the concepts inspired by game theories and rational behaviour theories. After that, ten basic issues of the current approaches are identified. The author pays particular attention to the fact that methodological individualism tends to dominate, which explains the ignorance of certain issues, especially of a holistic and macro-social nature, thus, leading to some problematic simplifications. The article shows what needs to be changed in the current social-scientific thinking on institutions in order to develop a more appropriate starting point for the further development of sociological theory.

Sociology of religion in the system of scientiSc knowledge

The article examines the sociology of religion as one of the spheres of sociological cognition, as well as those approaches to the definition of religion that predetermined the specifics of the development and self-identification of the sociology of religion in the system of scientific knowledge. The author compares various ideas about religion that exist in everyday consciousness, definitions of religion in the system of theology and its scientific interpretations. At the same time, it is emphasized that recently the efforts of scientists have begun to focus on finding a new, more balanced and universal approach to the definition of religion, although any attempt to give a final definition of religion is doomed to be limited and debatable.The heterogeneity of the tools and approaches used by the sociology of religion has created a serious problem of its place in the structure of sociological knowledge. The sociology of religion is most often identified either with religious sociology or with an autonomous branch in the horizontal structure of sociology. These two scientific identities of the sociology of religion appear both blurred and limited. Without denying the value of generally accepted directions for the sociological analysis of religion, the author reveals a lot of diverse and heterogeneous directions, within which both classics of sociological science who studied religion and modern sociologists worked. As a result, the sociology of religion is simply an arbitrary set of topics, including the analysis of fundamental works of a predominantly socio-philosophical nature, replete with religious terms that are incomprehensible to a reader unfamiliar with at least the basics of religious studies, especially to a student, seriously complicates the understanding of the essence and methodology of the sociological analysis of religion. For this purpose, the article differentiates and structures the subject Jeld of sociological analysis of religion, highlights its most promising fields of research.The author argues that it is appropriate to talk about the sociological analysis of religion, which has developed and continues to develop within the framework of two major, but equivalent directions. The first focuses on the sociological knowledge of religion in line with the general modern sociological theory, in a broad social context, as one of the subsystems of the general, societal system, organically interconnected with its other subsystems — cultural, social, political, etc. A special place within this direction is occupied by the analysis of religion as a social phenomenon and social institution, social functions and dysfunctions of the latter, including the intensive process of politicization of religion. The second is based on an internal analysis of religion and various religious doctrines, primarily from the point of view of those social relations that are formed within their framework. The perspective focus of the second direction is the social functions of various religions, their influence on the moral values and worldview of individuals and social groups, the peculiarities of manifestation in people’s daily lives, the peculiarities of the formation and functioning of new religious movements, including totalitarian religious cults and sects.

Review: Off the Derech: Leaving Orthodox Judaism, edited by Ezra Cappell and Jessica Lang

Review: <i>Off the Derech: Leaving Orthodox Judaism</i>, edited by Ezra Cappell and Jessica Lang

Theoretical Sociology in Modern Russia: Global and National Perspectives

The article provides a brief analysis of theoretical processes in post-Soviet Russian sociology. The current state and prospects for development of theoretical sociology are discussed in the context of global sociology and in the framework of original sociological theories on Russian soil. Within the first framework, a special place is given to the problem of borrowing and imitating foreign theories that take place among Russian sociologists educated and socialized in the West. It is stated that the development of national theories does not reject a possibility of relying on some global achievements and does not mean indigenization of Russian sociology. The article describes views on the general state of theoretical sociology and assessment of individual Russian theories (modernization, eco-risk, sociology of life, etc.), highlights their weaknesses and problems hindering their development. The author's position on the combination of global and national in theoretical sociology, general sociological and special sociological theories, study of national traditions of science is offered. It is concluded that there are no prospects for a new grand theory, while coexistence of many general theories that determine the probabilistic paths of Russia's development is possible. The need for an active position of Russian sociologists in theoretical construction is emphasized.

Patient Agency: Manifestations of Individual Agency Among People With Health Problems

This paper conducts a critical review of qualitative studies of the life experiences of people with health problems and proposes the notion of patient agency. It highlights that discontinuous continuity in life is the key category of life experiences around which individuals reveal agency. In particular, the paper first discovers multiple dimensions of life that individuals with illness engage in. It subsequently identifies four different manners in which discontinuous continuity in life is manifested along the multiple dimensions, such as single-dimensional rescaling, multi-dimensional shift, multi-dimensional embedding, and submission. These achievements and the remaining limitations in the medical sociology of patient agency are on a par with those in general sociological theories of individual agency. The paper proposes a set of future research agendas to expand these limits. This theory of patient agency is expected to renew approaches to how people lead their life in illness. It also suggests that patience should be a valid category of agency for general sociological imagination.

The Sociology of Personal Identification

Systems drawing on databases of personal information increasingly shape life experiences and outcomes across a range of settings, from consumer credit and policing to immigration, health, and employment. How do these systems identify and reidentify individuals as the same unique persons and differentiate them from others? This article advances a general sociological theory of personal identification that extends and improves earlier work by theorists like Goffman, Mauss, Foucault, and Deleuze. Drawing on examples from an original ethnographic study of identity theft and a wide range of social scientific literature, our theory treats personal identification as a historically evolving organizational practice. In doing so, it offers a shared language, a set of concepts for sensitizing researchers’ attention to important aspects of personal identification that often get overlooked while also facilitating comparisons across historical periods, cultural contexts, substantive domains, and technological mediums.

The x and society syndrome

Half a century of behavioral, practice-oriented research in fields as diverse as politics, economy, law, and science has generated insights that improve our understanding of these fields’ workings considerably. Surveying the pertinent literature, however, also leads to a baffling finding: the social that this research sought to vindicate is not there. And this, the article shows, is no coincidence. Rather, it is a direct consequence of the middle range approach of theorizing this research both adopts and reflects; an artefact of a mode of analysis which makes the social into a derivative of an essential other: the topic under investigation. As a result, its meaning changes every time the analysis switches to a new field, to some other ‘x’. A proposal is made to fix this problem by drawing on general sociological theory, with whose help it can be easily avoided.

W.E.B. Du Bois în studiile contemporane: conștiința dublă și modernitatea rasializată

This article outlines W.E.B. Du Bois’s general sociological theory and literary activity in connection to the recent study of Jose Itzigsohn and Karida L. Brown, The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois. Racialized Modernity and the Global Color Line. It describes the role of Double Consciousness and Racialized Modernity within postcolonial and decolonial theory and explains how postcolonial Romanian studies have engaged with postcolonial theory by avoiding these concepts.

¿En qué confiamos al evaluar la calidad de las universidades? Un análisis sociológico de la evolución de los mecanismos de aseguramiento externos de la calidad en Chile desde la teoría de sistemas sociales

Los sistemas contemporáneos de educación superior dependen de la existencia de instituciones responsables de asegurar la calidad de sus actividades. El caso chileno no es una excepción en este sentido. Con la creación del Consejo de Educación Superior en 1990 comienza en este país el desarrollo de un sistema de evaluación experta de las universidades, consolidado con la apertura de la Comisión Nacional de Acreditación en 2006. A pesar de su importancia, no parecen existir estudios acerca de la historia de estos mecanismos de aseguramiento de la calidad, ni de cómo su evolución puede explicarse desde una teoría sociológica general. Para avanzar en este análisis, siguiendo la tesis de Niklas Luhmann, se argumentará que la confianza es socialmente construida y que su forma de configuración depende de cambios en la estructura de la sociedad. Utilizando estas ideas, se examina la evolución de los mecanismos de aseguramiento de la calidad de la educación superior desde el siglo XIX en Chile, sugiriendo que el énfasis en el conocimiento experto es un fenómeno reciente que puede ser explicado como consecuencia del cambio en el modo de estructuración de la sociedad. Este análisis sociológico, desde la teoría de sistemas sociales de Luhmann, finaliza con un resumen, posibles líneas de investigación y recomendaciones de política de educación superior.

Doing Post-Western sociology in Central and Eastern Europe before and after the Great Change: some epistemological questions

Analyzing the sociology in Central and Eastern Europe before and after the Great Change in 1989, the article aims to present the main epistemological questions that Post-Western sociology raises for the discipline of sociology as a whole. The focus is put on a paradoxical feature in the development of sociology in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe: before 1989, under conditions of Marxist monoparadigmality, relative isolation of scientific cognition, and political and ideological pressure, sociological research in these countries was characterized by methodological rigor and conceptual innovativeness, while after 1989, in the context of institutionalized plurality of paradigms (polyparadigmality), and intensive scientific exchange, the dominant tendency is—for social scientists in the countries in question—to borrow methodologies, theories, and concepts from the Western sociological tradition, without analyzing the epistemic relevance of these loans with regard to the societies in which they are applied. This paradox is examined in terms of sociological production in two research fields: the general sociological theory of society and sociology of youth. Comparing studies and analyses carried out in these two fields in Central and Eastern Europe before and after the Great Change, the article demonstrates that Post-Western sociology is a valid research posture for a wide variety of sociological practices regardless of the concrete national, theoretical, or institutional frameworks in which researchers are working. Sensitivity to the context of research is what permits Post-Western sociology to eliminate cognitive hierarchies and inequalities and restores the epistemic autonomy of each cognitive practice, emphasizing the inevitable cultural variations in the interpretation of one and the same phenomenon and the impact of these variations on methodology. In this sense, Post-Western sociology raises important epistemological problems regarding the relationship between maintaining the disciplinary principles of sociological knowledge on the one hand, and the application of those principles in different epistemic contexts on the other hand. The main question could be formulated as follows: how does Post-Western sociology enrich the deontological and epistemological principles of the discipline and in what way does it contribute to developing its scientific project?

Schack och social interaktion

What can a theory of chess learn from sociology? And what can sociology learn from chess? This article examines the contribution of Scandinavian sociologists Dag Østerberg and Johan Asplund on chess and sociology in order to better understand chess and, to some degree, the sociologies of Østerberg and Asplund. Developing the concept of tertius as a necessary third quasi actor mediating between ego and alter, the article also contributes to a general sociological theory of games. The game is analysed as a form of interaction where each player plays (i) with tertius against the opponent, and (ii) with the opponent against tertius. The article ends by arguing that tertius could be a valuable concept for sociological theory.

Pillarization (\u2018Verzuiling\u2019). On Organized \u2018Self-Contained Worlds\u2019 in the Modern World

Movements and groups abound in modern society. Sometimes, a movement or group succeeds in mobilizing a large section of the population and thoroughly knitting it together, by building a pervasive subculture and by setting up a vast interrelated network of organizations, resulting in a seemingly impenetrable and powerful bloc. This happened to different degrees in most Western countries, including the United States and Canada. It is also occurring now in the non-Western world. Belgium and the Netherlands were particularly affected by extensive bloc building. In both countries, Catholic, Socialist, and Liberal pillars – plus a Protestant pillar in the Netherlands – divided society and determined political and social life from the late nineteenth century up to the late twentieth century. As a consequence, the phenomenon has been studied there more thoroughly and under a specific label, ‘verzuiling’ (pillarization). The first section of this article offers a review of pillarization theory in the Netherlands, Belgium and elsewhere. In the second part, to advance the study of organized blocs all over the world, I argue for a broad, international perspective on pillarization against the particularistic tendencies of many pillarization researchers, especially in the Netherlands. In a shorter third part, I address the isolation of pillarization theory from general sociological theory. Self-reinforcing processes of segregation and organization in large population groupings were and still are a common feature in the modern world. They have resulted in more than one case in divided societies.

Victor Turner and The ritual process

Victor Turner’s The ritual process is discussed as articulating a general sociological theory, a practice theory, concerning the dynamics of continuity and change methodologically grounded in the analysis of rites that address moments of sociocultural and personal existential crisis. The significance of Turner’s development from the work of Arnold van Gennep (rather than Durkheim) is considered in relation to the ongoing contemporary importance of Turner’s intervention across disciplines and in relation to the existential crises that humanity faces.