Sociology in the 21st century: between fragmentation and integration
Research Article
Acknowledgments
This work is based on research supported by Russian Science Foundation, grant # 24-18-00261, https://rscf.ru/en/project/24-18-00261/
How to Cite
Ivanov D.V., Asochakov Y.V., Gulkina K.P. Sociology in the 21st century: between fragmentation and integration. Science. Culture. Society. 2024. Vol. 30. No. 3. P. 6-25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.19181/nko.2024.30.3.1 (in Russ.).
Abstract
The article is analyzing current sociology in the context of fragmentation and integration periods in the discipline history. The first integrative wave in the history of sociology was in the 1920s – 1950s. It appeared in grand theories by P. Sorokin, T. Parsons, the Frankfurt school which united heterogeneous ideas from classics in models of society as system. After the paradigm crisis of the 1960s – 1970s and following spread of postmodernist discourse, the second integrative wave arose in form of theories overcoming gaps between concepts of determinist structures and constructivist agency (J. Habermas, A. Giddens, P. Bourdieu) as well as in form of metatheorizing (G. Ritzer, P. Sztompka, J. Alexander). Today’s fragmentation of sociology under conditions of metaparadigm crisis and post-globalization is provoked by the rising postcolonial discourse, by attempts to stigmatize western classics and to create theoretical alternatives to the ‘global North’ domination in knowledge production as well as by spread of conceptions opposing social reality of networks and flows to classical sociality of structures and agency (M. Castells, B. Latour, J. Urry, K. Knorr Cetina). The third integrative wave is expected to come in the 2020s displacing tendencies of disintegration, discrimination, growing gaps and rising barriers. Now theories are relevant as they create a coherent configuration of four types of structures: institutions, interactions, networks, and flows. The new subject matter for theorizing is constituted by their interconnections in forms of fields of structurations, scapes of assemblages, communications, platforms, projects, and events. A metaphor of augmented reality is integrating different concepts of social reality and it is overcoming constitutive distinctions in the last century sociology: between system and lifeworld, locality and globality, the private and public, the material and symbolic, the real and virtual, the physical and digital, etc.
Keywords:
development of sociology, metaparadigm crisis, integrative wave, augmented modernity, post-globalization, institutions, interactions, networks, flows
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2. Dudina V. I. Fictitious crisis of sociology and a new shape of epistemology. Sociological Studies. 2013;(10):13–21. (In Russ.).
3. Vandenberghe F., Fuchs S. On the coming end of sociology. Canadian Review of Sociology. 2019;56(1):138–143. DOI 10.1111/cars.12238.
4. Campbell C. Has sociology progressed? Reflections of an accidental academic. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan; 2019. DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-19978-4.
5. House J. S. Culminating crisis in American sociology and its role in social sciences and public policy: an autobiographical, multimethod, reflexive perspective. Annual Review of Sociology. 2019;45(1):1–26. DOI 10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041052.
6. Baehr P. The arrest of sociology. Sociological Studies. 2020;(9):3–15. (In Russ.). DOI 10.31857/S013216250010090-2.
7. Go J. Race, empire, and epistemic exclusion: or the structures of sociological thought. Sociological Theory. 2020;38(2):79–100. DOI 10.1177/0735275120926213.
8. Delanty G., Mascareno A. Social theory: legacies and future directions — An interview with Gerard Delanty. European Journal of Social Theory. 2023;26(3):408–423. DOI 10.1177/13684310231179145. EDN GAEMMB.
9. Ivanov D. V. Grumbling ‘oldies’, whining ‘youngsters’, and progress of sociology. Sociological Studies. 2022;(2):3–11. (In Russ.). DOI 10.31857/S013216250018033-9.
10. Sorokin P. Contemporary sociological theories. New York: Harper & Brothers; 1928.
11. Sorokin P. Social and cultural dynamics. Vol. 1. New York: American Book Company; 1937.
12. Parsons T. The structure of social action. New York: Free Press; 1937.
13. Parsons T. The social system. Glencoe: Free Press; 1951.
14. Horkheimer M. Traditionelle und kritische Theorie. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. 1937;6(2):245–294. DOI 10.5840/zfs19376265.
15. Adorno T., Horkheimer M. Dialektik der Aufklärung. Amsterdam: Querido Verlag; 1947.
16. Merton R. Social theory and social structure. Glencoe: The Free Press; 1957.
17. Lazarsfeld P., Berelson B., Gaudet H. The people’s choice: how the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York: Columbia University Press; 1944.
18. Levy M. Modernization and the structure of societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1966. ISBN 978-0691093208.
19. Parsons T. Societies: evolutionary and comparative perspectives. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall; 1966.
20. Sorokin P. Russia and the United States. New York: Literary Classics; 1944.
21. Aron R. Trois essais sur l’age industriel. Paris: Plon; 1966.
22. Marcuse H. One-dimensional man. Boston: Beacon; 1964. ISBN 978-0807015759.
23. Kuhn Th. The structure of scientific revolutions. Moscow: ACT; 2003. (In Russ.). ISBN 5-17-008289-4.
24. Homans G. Social behavior: its elementary forms. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc.; 1961.
25. Touraine A. Sociologie de l’action. Paris: Editions du Seuil; 1965.
26. Blumer H. Symbolic interactionism. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall; 1969. ISBN 9780138799243.
27. Berger P., Luckmann T. Social construction of reality. New York: Anchor Books; 1966. ISBN 978-0-385-05898-8.
28. Gofman E. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: The Overlook Press; 1959. ISBN 978-0385094023.
29. Garfinkel H. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall; 1967. ISBN 978-0138583811.
30. Foucault M. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard; 1966. ISBN 9782070224845.
31. Lyotard J.-F. La condition postmoderne. Paris: Minuit; 1979. ISBN 2707302767.
32. Baudrillard J. À l’ombre des majorités silencieuses ou la fin du social. Paris: Les Cahiers d'Utopie; 1978. ISBN 978-2910170431.
33. Habermas J. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Bd. 1, 2. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp; 1981. ISBN 978-3518287750.
34. Giddens A. The constitution of society. Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge; 1984. ISBN 978-0520057289.
35. Bourdieu P. Choses dites. Paris: Minuit; 1987. ISBN 978-2707311221.
36. Gaidenko P. P., Davydov Yu. N. History and rationality: Max Weber's sociology and Weberian renaissance. Moscow: Politizdat; 1991. ISBN 5-250-00757-0.
37. Weinstein D., Weinstein M. Postmodern(ized) Simmel. London: Routledge; 1993. DOI 10.4324/9781315823348.
38. Alexander J. (Ed.) Neo-Functionalism. Newbury Park: Sage Publ.; 1985. ISBN 978-0803924970.
39. Ritzer G. Sociology: A multiple paradigm science. The American Sociologist. 1975;10(3):156–167.
40. Turner J. The structure of sociological theory. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press; 1978. ISBN 978-0256034080.
41. Sztompka P. Sociological dilemmas: toward a dialectic paradigm. New York: Academic Press; 1979.
42. Alexander J. Theoretical logic in sociology. London: Routledge; 1982. ISBN 9780415723770.
43. Ritzer G. Metatheorizing in sociology. Sociological Forum. 1990;5(1):3–15. DOI 10.1007/bf01115134. EDN LZUZYU.
44. Robertson R. Globalization: social theory and global culture. London: SAGE Publications; 1992.
45. Sklair L. Sociology of the global system. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1991.
46. Albrow M., King E. Globalization, knowledge and society. London: Sage; 1990. ISBN 978-0803983236.
47. Giddens A. The Consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press; 1990. ISBN 978-0745607931.
48. Beck U. Was ist Globalisierung? Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp; 1997. ISBN 978-3518458679.
49. Ritzer G. The globalization of nothing. London: Sage; 2004.
50. Wallerstein I. Globalization or the age of transition? A long-term view of the trajectory of the world system. International Sociology. 2000;15(2):249–265. DOI 10.1177/0268580900015002007. EDN JMVUJX.
51. Ivanov D. V. Augmented modernity: Effects of post-globalization and post-virtualization. Sociological Studies. 2020;(5):44–55. (In Russ.). DOI 10.31857/S013216250009397-9.
52. Latour B. On Interobjectivity. Mind, Culture, and Activity. 1996;3(4):228–245. DOI 10.1207/s15327884mca0304_2.
53. Latour B. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0199256051.
54. Urry J. Sociology beyond societies. Mobilities for the twenty-first century. London: Routledge; 2000.
55. Castells M. The rise of the network society. Oxford, UK: Blackwell; 1996. ISBN 978-1557866172.
56. Appadurai A. Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; 1996. ISBN 978-0816627936.
57. Knorr Cetina K. Sociality with objects: social relations in postsocial knowledge societies. Theory, Culture & Society. 1997;14(4):1–30. DOI 10.1177/026327697014004001. EDN JQDKPB.
58. Knorr Cetina K. The synthetic situation: Interactionism for a global world. Symbolic Interaction. 2009;32(1):61–87. DOI 10.1525/si.2009.32.1.61.
59. Knorr Cetina K., Preda A. The temporalization of financial markets: From network to flow. Theory, Culture & Society. 2007;24(7-8):116–138. DOI 10.1177/0263276407084700. EDN JTTRDR.
60. Akiwowo A. Indigenous sociologies: Extending the scope of the argument. International Sociology. 1999;14(2):115–138. DOI 10.1177/0268580999014002001. EDN JMVTWB.
61. Alatas S. Alternative discourses in Asian social science: Responses to eurocentrism. New Dehli: Sage; 2006. ISBN 978-0761934400.
62. Connell R. Southern theory. The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Cambridge: Polity; 2007.
63. McLennan G. Sociology, eurocentrism and postcolonial theory. European Journal of Social Theory. 2003;6(1):69–86. DOI 10.1177/1368431003006001561. EDN JRXJXX.
64. Comaroff J., Comaroff J. Theory from the South, or how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa. Boulder: Paradigm Publ.; 2012. DOI 10.4324/9781315631639.
65. Wallerstein I. Eurocentrism and its avatars: the dilemmas of social science. New Left Review. 1997;226:93–107.
66. Burawoy M. For public sociology. American Sociological Review. 2005;70(1):4–28. DOI 10.1177/000312240507000102.
67. Go J., Lawson G. Global historical sociology. Cambridge University Press; 2017. DOI 10.1017/9781316711248.
68. Patil V. The heterosexual matrix as imperial effect. Sociological Theory. 2018;36(1):1–26. DOI 10.1177/0735275118759382.
69. Eisenstadt S. Patterns of modernity. Vol. 1, 2. New York: Basic Books; 1987.
70. Eisenstadt S. Multiple modernities. Daedalus. 2000;129(1):1–29.
71. Archer M. Culture and agency: The place of culture in social theory. Cambridge University Press; 1988.
72. Ivanov D. V. Virtualization of society. St. Petersburg: Peterburgskoe vostokovedenie; 2000. ISBN 5-85803-154-4.
73. Appadurai A. Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In: Global culture: Nationalism, globalization, and modernity. London: Sage; 1990. P. 295–310.
74. Waters M. Globalization. London: Routledge; 1995. ISBN 9780415105750.
Article
Received: 15.07.2024
Accepted: 30.09.2024
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APA
Ivanov, D. V., Asochakov, Y. V., & Gulkina, K. P. (2024). Sociology in the 21st century: between fragmentation and integration. Science. Culture. Society, 30(3), 6-25. https://doi.org/10.19181/nko.2024.30.3.1
Section
Theory and methods of sociological science
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