Abstract:
The article studies the Ukrainian crisis and the war in Donbas which
are considered as challenges faced by sociology. In the first place, they arose
as problems facing the Ukrainian sociological community. The answer to the
problems was complicated by the fact that empirical studies in our country are
mainly oriented to the execution of some service tasks. Most often, they are
executed for one or another faction of the ruling class. Therefore, the results
of empirical sociological research are used for manipulative power technologies.
Ukrainian problems are a separate manifestation of global problems in
the development of sociology. Due to the transformation of sociology into an
instrument of democracy (election campaign support, referendum, monitoring
of public opinion for government institutions and civil society), a methodological
shift has occurred, which resulted in the loss of the unity of the theoretical and
empirical levels. Statistics has become the general theory of empirical sociology
in quantitative research, which in its turn has a mathematical justification.
This provokes the proliferation of statistical functionalism and methodological
nominalism. Qualitative empirical research based on theoretical preconditions
has ethnography, social and cultural anthropology.
In order for sociology to respond to the challenges of today's society,
there should be a renewed unity of the theoretical and empirical levels with the
domination of the former one. This requires a new theoretical synthesis, the
basis of which should be world-system analysis, environmental sociology and
the theory of the Second Modern.
In this light, the Ukrainian crisis and the war in the Donbas region will
be plunged into the global context and explained by the contradictions of the
modern world capitalist system, and not simply by the psychological inadequacy
of a particular leader or, worse, by the ethnic factors. In this case, attempts to
place responsibility for social disturbances on the inhabitants of the region
will even lose sight of scientific knowledge and can be classified the way they
deserve, namely, as manipulative technology in favor of one of the factions of
the ruling class
Description:
Kononov I. Sociology in times of crisis and war: problem of the methodological efficiency / I. Kononov // Ukrainian Sociology in the 21st Century: Theory, Methods, Research Results
/ edited by Vil Bakirov, Yevhen Golovakha. — Kharkiv : V. N. Karazin Kharkiv
National University, 2018. — P. 241-286.
