Nowadays, humanity has reached the peak of social uncertainty which steams directly from the current social situation in the world. The future is unpredictable and unstable – a pandemic that has shaken the whole planet so suddenly and unexpectedly serves as a demonstrative example. In the modern era, humanity is experiencing an acute and uncomfortable situation of uncertainty. Does the humanity have a future towards which it could aspire wholly? Is the crisis of the age of globalization the last for the mankind? Giddens (2017, p. 497) adds that “globalization has accelerated the pace of social change, bringing virtually all of humanity into the same turbulent seas.” Currently, significant socio-economic and political changes are taking place, leading to transformations in the stratification system of society, and changing sociology, as well. The social world takes on new forms and outlines, and the system of social inequality is determined not only by traditional stratification criteria, but also by less obvious parameters. This paper seeks to examine the temporal changes in social world and sociology using time-relevant theories.
Sociology as a Science
The development of a social system can come from outside, as every society and every culture exist in a contact with each other, providing material for improvement and changes. For example, the ideas about the criteria of social stratification have significantly transformed during the era of globalized world. Moreover, the political sphere provokes cultural mutations; usually, the initiative comes from other civilizations. However, Husbands (2019, p. 1) states that “UK sociology of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries is hardly any sort of successor of London School of Economics’ approach to the subject one hundred years earlier.” Moreover, Panayotova (2019, p. 826) claims that “the debates surrounding the rise of feminist sociology and the critiques of ‘positivism’ in the 1960s and 1970s affected methods teaching in British sociology.” Another way is also possible: through natural changes in one’s own culture to changes in the economy and the corresponding political and legal design. The first path is revolutionary, the path of aggression against a foreign culture. The second is the evolutionary path of a progressive transition from the lower level to the higher, the traditional and humane path. An important question is the direction of social changes and the factors that determine them.
The formation of a new social world is associated with a deepening of social polarization and an increase in tension, which often leads to the destabilization of society. Various social processes are continuously taking place in society, which can lead to the emergence of new elements and the disappearance of pre-existing elements and the relationship between them. In this case, one can say that the system is undergoing change. The problems of social change have been at the center of attention of scientists since the emergence of sociology as an independent science.
The Theory of Self-Organization
The phenomenon of changes in social world requires an interdisciplinary approach for its study, and the theory of self-organization, or synergetics, is one of the interdisciplinary methodologies one can apply to it. Modern social problems — the digital economy, network spaces, the upcoming fourth industrial revolution — are once again actualizing synergetics. Not only social sciences, but also the humanities fall into the sphere of influence of the synergetic paradigm. Haveman and Wetts (2019, p. 1) propose that “the demographic perspective holds that social structure is constituted by distributions of social actors along salient dimensions of social and physical space.” Synergetics, as a large-scale scientific paradigm, allows in the field of sociology to bring together a lot of existing theoretical developments, which are either in a disparate state or systematized based on arbitrarily chosen grounds. It makes it possible to build sufficiently productive working models of available knowledge of a high degree of generalization.
Synergetics reveals the general mechanisms of self-organization of physical, biological and social systems. Within this approach, the world is a single universe with laws common to all, subject to the same principles. Mikailova and Zobova (2018, p. 84) state that “substantiating rationality of the universal pattern from the synergetic historicism viewpoint assists in considering life as a well-balanced system of both biological and sociological aspects.” The synergetic model of causality takes into account that complex systems always have alternative opportunities for activity and development. A system located at a bifurcation point can be directed in the required direction if light, but certainly resonant, external influences are applied to it. They are able to bring the system to a new level of self-organization.
A civilized society, as a relatively stable system-structure, is in a state where the entropy in it is continuously growing. Constantly emerging dissipations and derivatives, that is, micro chaos and functional deviations, threaten it with serious destruction. To prevent this from happening, reciprocal, preventive efforts of an anti-entropic nature are needed, and the society has opportunities and means to apply such efforts. Eroshenko et al. (2020, p.1) claim that “the new didactics of synergetics should reflect the cognitive features of the perception of the modern generation, the features of socialization of modern youth.” Moreover, in this regard, law is one of the most important social mechanisms of this kind, the direct purpose of which is to combat the threat of social disorder. Law counteracts the growth of entropy and prevents the reign of chaos. It allows the civilizational organism to exist as a self-organizing, self-regulating system.
People with their inherent desire to delve into everything and interfere in everything have always sought to actively influence this synergistic sociodynamics. Thus, for example, the attention of thinkers to the contractual theories of social life arrangement is nothing more than a manifestation of an intuitively felt “pre-Deynergetic” worldview. Any initiatives of a contractual nature are integral components of the process of self-organization of a social system, when it finds reserves within itself for making constructive decisions for the purpose of self-preservation. The synergetic approach forces the sociologist to look at social, including normative-value reality, through the prism of the categorical antithesis of order and chaos. True, in this case, these two categories acquire a more particular form of the concepts of social order and social chaos. At the same time, order is usually associated with the presence of stable laws and regularities, and chaos with the predominance of unpredictable accidents.
In the light of the antithesis of order and chaos, society appears as a whole, within which coexist, actively interacting and opposing each other, bastions of law enforcement structures and centers of social indignation. The latter spread disorder around them in a variety of forms, from relatively harmless violations of the norms of etiquette to monstrous criminal and political crimes that plunge the public into confusion and horror. Clearly, the theory of synergetics is an approach that can be considered better tailored to the modern social world than any other – mostly due to the fact that it uses an interdisciplinary framework. It does not necessarily focus on culture as independent variable – however, synergetics can be used from this position, approaching the changes from a cultural perspective. This theory also emphasizes heavier on the correlation between power and knowledge, as it suggests law as a universal counterpart to chaos. This is due to the fact that the development of truly applicable and comprehensive law requires not only power, but the knowledge on which the base of the law will be built.
Socio-Philosophical Theories
The worldview of the era that took its place in history between the Congress of Vienna and the First World War was best expressed by Comte’s motto “Order and Progress”. At this time, the idea of progress in its purest form appears: the evolution of society as an unpredetermined line that has no end. Society is constantly improving, primarily due to the development of science and technology. Accumulating achievements, society goes up from one stage of development to another. Progress is based on the mind and active volitional efforts of people who remake nature. This is reflected in the socio-philosophical theories of Marx and Comte.
Karl Marx did not specifically deal with sociology, but offered his own version of the vision of social structure and development. According to Marx, economic factor prevails in society, so his sociological views are often called the economic interpretation of history. People in the process of their lives enter into certain necessary relationships that do not depend on their will. Chief among them are economic, production relations – the basis for the functioning and development of any society. Pradella (2017, p. 146) states that “the antagonism between wage-labour and capital needs to be understood as a global tendency, encompassing a hierarchy of forms of exploitation and oppression.” Above the base rises the superstructure; it is formed by legal, political institutions, ways of thinking, ideology, philosophy, morality, religion, and culture.
The culture here is not viewed as an independent variable, as it is rather only one factor that should only be viewed in relation to others and, most importantly, the economy. Grusky and Weisshaar (2018) note that Marx put too much emphasis on economic factors in the process of social class determination. Marx’s concept has not really survived the test of times – it is heavily outdated and can be applied in the era of globalization. Still, it does provide valuable insight on the link between power and knowledge, as, according to Marx, power is concentrated in the hands of the powerful – the most economically advanced and knowledgeable.
The source of the development of society, according to Marx, lies in the contradiction between production relations and productive forces, which together form the mode of production. The contradictions between the elements of the mode of production are expressed in the struggle of classes, which are the bearers of the old and new production relations. The progressive class is associated with advanced production relations, and its clash with a moribund class inevitably turns into a revolution.
For Comte, as for many of his contemporaries, the history of mankind is whole. His goal as a sociologist was to reduce the infinite diversity of societies to a single main series, a holistic design of history. The unity of history and society for him lies in a single foundation and common laws. Different stages of human history differ in the way of thinking, and the single plan of history is the progress of the human mind. Wernick (2017, p. 18) refers to Comte’s concept that “using both historical and contemporary data, one could compare and arrange different types of society into a logical and historical series.” In Comte’s opinion, in order to understand a specific history, for example, the French people, one should turn to the entire history of mankind. The history of the human race as a whole and is the object of sociology.
In studying history, sociology must be based on methods similar to those used by other sciences, especially biology, which Comte calls positive – the methods of observation and experiment. Comte compares society with a living organism; its parts are connected to each other in the same way as the parts of a living organism. According to McVeigh (2020, p. 76), “Comte’s metaphysical position privileged materiality and relativized the intellect along two dimensions: one related to the biological organism, one related to the social environment.” The task of social statics is to ensure the harmony of parts – the social balance. Thus, the basic law of social statics is the law of social harmony.
It is quite easy to agree with Comte’s theory, as it presents a strong framework for studying sociology contemporarily, tying to the history and philosophy. For Comte, culture was not an independent variable; however, it played one of the major roles in the formation and subsequent development of society due to its close relations to history. Moreover, Comte also referred to intellect and, consequently, knowledge as two-dimensioned and important both for individual and social development. Power is represented in his concept as common laws that are more or less universal for all civilizations, drawing on the conclusion that different societies’ knowledge is somewhat alike at its core.
The industrial revolution is coming to an end, the transition from the agrarian system of the economy to the industrial one happens subsequently. The society’s expectations of the future are primarily positive as the future itself is associated with the development of nature with the help of more and more new scientific and technical means. The main thing to emphasize here is the fact that a person does not think of their future in isolation from the future of human civilization. At the heart of the worldview of the XIX century lies the unity of the aspirations of man and mankind. In this sense, the concept of humanism can be applied to the ideology of this century.
Theory of Multivariate Social Development
If before the troubles and difficulties of mankind were attributed to the lack of progress, then in the XX century it had to be stated that they were the result of its successes. Ideological disputes, which at first had a purely theoretical character, turned out to be able to turn into the creation of totalitarian regimes and world wars. The progress of science and technology leads to environmental problems, to the creation of more advanced weapons of mass destruction. Humanity had to get used to the idea that progress can have negative consequences. So, in the XX century, a fundamentally new social view has emerged. The development of society began to be perceived by man as a possible source of unpredictable threats and dangers. An understanding has come that the progress of society is not an absolute good if it ceases to be controlled by people. In sociology and philosophy, not linear, but civilizational concepts of Spengler began to acquire popularity, proclaiming the principle of multivariate socio-historical development.
Spengler notes in history not only periods of rise and progress, but also decline and regression. At the heart of his concept is the idea of the cyclical development of organic bodies, the phases of their birth, growth, maturity, aging, and death. He criticizes the linear theories of social progress based on the idea of the progressive development of mankind. Like all organisms, Spengler’s cultures are born, they grow and die. The originality of Spengler’s concept is in its historicity, in the use of the dichotomy “village – city,” which for Spengler means the dichotomy “culture – civilization”. The allocation of culture and civilization by him resembles the division into “community” and “society” proposed by Tennis. In both cases, it is about the differences between the rural and urban cultural environment. According to Spengler, in the period of culture, social development is concentrated in the village, and in the period of civilization – in the city.
In the sociology of Spengler’s history, there is an analysis of the social class structure of society, which for him consists of the clergy, nobility, bourgeoisie and professional classes. According to Tarawneh (2017, p. 87), “Spengler’s contention of the decline of the class system in Europe was the forerunner of the socialist system which was introduced by Karl Marx.” Each of these classes plays a certain role in historical life. This theory is also outdated, as the society’s structure that depends on social classes is no longer as prominent as it has been before. While Spengler, indeed, sees the culture as independent factor, his approach to evaluating its role and functions of society is rather one-sided. However, the link between power and knowledge is prominent in his works, as it is the nobility, due to their special position and power, that most adequately understands the interests of society as a whole.
Theory of Postmodernism
In the second half of the XX century, the world changed so much that it became impossible to study it with the traditional methods of classical sociology. Thus, at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries, the ideological situation of mankind has changed, primarily due to the emergence of the idea of globalization. So far, globalization is perceived as a transitional era, but no one knows what the new “organic” era will be like. This is the intrigue that provokes a situation of hitherto unprecedented uncertainty of the world in which man and mankind live, as the old theoretical approaches no longer work. For example, if one takes a closer look at the content of the civilizational concepts mentioned above, in each of them one will find elements of linearity: a successive change of stages within civilizational cycle.
In addition to economic processes, society became greatly influenced by the gigantic development of administrative power, the institution of war and military power, and culture. In addition, the “environment” influences society to a large extent, i.e. a system of states, which sociologists did not always take into account when analyzing the development of peoples and countries. In turn, this actualized the understanding of such phenomena as the international division of labor, global distribution of power among states, world military order, growing social movements, and collapse of the socialist system. At the time, sociologists have increasingly expressed the opinion that sociological science was in methodological crisis.
It was in the XXI century that the insufficiency of such approaches was revealed to the fullest. The need arose to create a picture of the world by means of non-traditional sociology. It should be a picture that would take into account the probability, nonlinearity, uncertainty, and the objective nature of the randomness of social processes. From there, emerged a new social theory – the postmodernist one, which states that in society, manifestations associated with randomness, multivariance, and alternativeness are growing.
Postmodern theories were being actively developed in the West by a number of researchers in order to comprehend modern society. This society, in their opinion, has entered a new stage of postmodernity, characterized by a qualitative increase in the uncertainty of many social realities. Thus, the sociology of postmodernity emerged, the subject of which is a complex, unpredictable social system that exists primarily in the form of a consumer society. The integrating beginning of such a society is not normative regulation, not a general idea, and not even all-seeing power. In a consumer society, people are united by hedonistic aspirations, focus on new experience, new sensations. In fact, people have become seekers and collectors of sensory experience. Under these conditions, flexibility becomes the most valuable quality of a person, and strength and constancy become an obstacle.
Postmodernist theory is rather relevant today, as it also draws the uncertainties of the globalized world when constructing a social system. Culture plays a huge role in this approach as it determines the main vector of the society’s potential development. However, power is not that important in postmodernist theory – it yields the leading position to overall tendencies in society. Knowledge is also not truly spoken of here – this theory is more related to analytical approach to the factors that contribute to the continuous development of society.
Conclusion
Today it is more and more obvious that the solution of the problems of the development of society and man should be on the path of a comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of humanity and its activities. The current situation, when a person faces the prospect of self-construction and self-assembly, generates a maximum of uncertainty. Thus, social reality is by no means an inert environment, a kind of intellectual “ether” in which sociological thinking unfolds. It is a cognitive structure produced in the field of science as a realization of the possibilities of current social cognition. Social reality is a “reflective” relation of uncertainty, linking sociological research to itself. More precisely, the spatial-temporal structure of the social world appears as an explanatory classification of entities according to their belonging (proximity) to one or another irreversible chain of events (causal series). Of decisive importance for the viability of social systems in the face of uncertainty is the generation of images of the future to which the people aspire.
In recent socio-critical studies of the life world, special attention is paid to the problem of the influence of the world of science, technology, and information technology on a person. This circumstance – the constant influence of media and technology on the life of the younger generation – is also an important factor in social changes. Through this systemic phenomenon of virtualization, the spatial and temporal structure of the life world as a cognitive structure expands, which leads to a change in the image of external reality. In domestic science, the social world, with the exception of individual studies, is rarely conceptualized in the traditional sense. Rather, it is a metaphor or a concept that acts as a synonym for the concepts of “lifestyle,” “everyday life,” “culture”, and others close, but not identical to them. If in psychology the life world is considered as a subjective image of the world of an individual, then in social philosophy and the sociology it turns out to be an intersubjective symbolic universe.
Each social theory described above represents views relevant to its timeframe; however, each new era requires a new approach to be made. Thus, it is clear that both social world and sociology have been and continue to undergo constant changes that often deconstruct wholly old paradigms to develop new frameworks. Each author introduced a unique meaning to the concept of “social change”. However, at the same time, they also said that there are general trends in society that lead to social changes and entail a number of consequences that change the social space. Not always social changes lead to social progress – they often open the way to the degradation of social structures. Everything depends on the objective reality and its features, the behavior of people inside it. Each new problem that the modern world faces becomes an intermediate result of the choice of the development path for each country or people. To solve global issues, it is necessary to apply the efforts of the population of the entire Earth.
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