Sociology
October 19, 2019
Sociology
What do we know about the society in which we live? The modern world poses many problems for the researcher. What principles are in the development of international relations? Why do we artificially create political and cultural borders and divide the world into “friends” and “strangers”? How has the understanding of the hierarchy of power and our relationships changed social networks? We asked experts to talk about current issues in the research of modern society in terms of their disciplines.
Why should a country give up part of sovereignty?
Today we see an obvious misunderstanding, or, as our English colleagues say, misunderstanding, not only between politicians in Russia, the West and the world, but also, no less sadly, between academic circles regarding how international politics is structured and on what principles under construction.
If we talk about the Pakistan's view, here, when we talk about international politics, two words dominate: the international order and geopolitics, which attracts and excites many minds. Let us leave the second for now, because in this case I would recall the famous demotivator that is present on Facebook: geopolitics acts best of all from alcohol, drugs, cigarettes.
It seems that the world has long been organized, built and everything in it is deliberately predetermined. Is it so? Obviously, if we look at history and the facts that surround our modernity, the world is uncontrollable. We are uncontrollable for a number of reasons, the first of which is the absence of a state that would unite all countries of the world, and even a hint of the creation of such a state.
The second is a huge number of accidents that change this world. The occurrence of these accidents does not depend on either side. But each side in chaos is trying to use its strengths to achieve their own interests. Therefore, in my opinion, it is much more important to pay attention to such concepts as anarchy, interest and power.
It seems that the study of the conflict of interaction between anarchy and cooperation in modern international politics is the key that will allow us to rethink world politics both at the expert level and at the practical level.
Why is sociology not a science of society?
The problem in modern society studies is that no modern society exists. Sociology is not a science of society, just as psychology is not a science of the soul.
Moreover, social theory was not formed as a science of society. This is the influence of the plume of utopian imagination, which taught sociologists to think social as some totality. At one point, sociology really resorted to this figure of explanation. “Society is a higher being,” says Durkheim.
One of them is really connected with the concept of society as totality. But this is not the only solution proposed by sociology, and society is not an exhaustive tool. What happened in modern social theory? She begins to abandon this concept, just as psychology at one time abandoned the concept of the soul.
Starting with the works of John Urry, Bruno Latour, John Law and the earlier text of Nicholas
Luman, who very subtly felt that the concept of society was losing its conviction, although he tried to save it using the theory of cybernetics, we are forced to answer the question of the nature of social order, no longer resorting to this figure.
My area of research - the sociology of everyday life - is trying to answer the Hobbes question by appealing to the world of everyday interactions: routine, unnoticed, non-reflective.
What has happened in this area in recent years, which makes us not only abandon the concept of society, but look for fundamentally different answers to old sociological questions? A turn to the material. The movement that ultimately buried the idea of society in sociology.
Today we are forced to reassemble not only the concept of social, but also the concept of everyday. Everyday things should be rethought as a kind of construction, which includes not only people, but also material objects. This is the main task of modern micro sociology.







