Question 6: Object and subject of sociology

Sociology is understood as a science about formation and functioning of social communities which form society and between which some new social relations and interactions are created. Moreover, it studies social human being - the creator of these communities and the main subject of the historical development that gives a chance for determining its object and subject. An object of any science is the one to what the whole process of research is directed. Its specialization consists of parts, relations, connections, components of the object. According to the language of philosophy, object and subject are correlated as the whole and the part of the whole.

The object of sociology is considered to be the whole social reality with its variety of qualitative characteristics. However, some sociologists are taking the view, that this social reality during the recent years has been diminishing in its scale at the expense of broadening of the privacy zone, non-social life of an individual, but the other scholars claim vice verse – they are broadening boarders at the expense of introducing new extremely increasing zone of cultural components (today such object of sociology is more and more often defined as socio-cultural reality). So, the changeability of borders and the content of traditional object of sociology cause mobility of the subject of sociology, its continuance in constant movement, development and formation. The stages of human development are changing, one type of society substitutes the other one, one or the other part of the life of society comes out on the front stage, and what is more, the needs and social inquiries are constantly changing. Accordingly, throughout its existence the concept of the specialization of sociology has been constantly changing, especially the subject of its investigation.

Concept about sociology, as a science, object of which is society in its organic complexity, and also with its characteristics, as social structure, social institutions, social changes etc, was dominating at the beginning of existence of sociology (30s-40s of 19^thc.). At the same time everything what is typical for society in general is being put on display, not the individuals separately, which are part of this whole social “combination’. At the end of 19^th c. and in the early 20^th c., contrary to this conception the new understanding of sociology appeared. Sociology transforms into a science, where the dominating object is a human being as a social being, its everyday life, relations and interactions with other people. Here the most important fact is social behavior of an individual, his motivation for actions and interpersonal attitudes.

The following processes are typical for the modern society in the second half of the 20^th c.:

• progressive schedule of former organic forms of cohabitation, for example family, professional union, village and town communities, etc;

• domination of super-individual creations, for instance social institutions;

• increasing human solitude and loss of the feeling of comfort, safety and stability in the world.

Particularly at that time both theoretical and practical points of view are directed at social communities, which successfully combine individual and social, rational and emotional, as a result later they become object of social studies of new era more and more often. In favour of consideration exactly social community as the core objective branch of modern sociology, sociologists propose number of some arguments to this:

1. Concept of social community contains in itself decisive quality of self-movement, self-development of social unity, sense of stability and permanence of social systems. Furthermore, in this case there is no necessity to look for the origin of social development out of society; it can be defined out of internal problems and interests of social communities and groups of people, who create them.

2. Social communities enclose all possible states and forms of beings of human individuals in their sociality. From the point of view of sociology, an individual is not examined as a complex of his unique abilities and inimitable traits but as a system of social relations, as a representative of some certain society, as a social being. Individual is always inscribed to the complex system of social, class, settlement, family, professional, demographical and other groups, he shares and expresses his interests and orientations and masters his social experience.

3. More and more often social communities appear as collective subjects of social transformations and act the main parts in social life. Nowadays the whole progress of social development depends on actions carried by social subjects and their activity. That is the reason why social communities as living, suffering, active, creative, conscious subjects which successfully combine concerns of the community and every single person, in modern times were regarded as the objective core of sociology.

Nowadays with the increase of tempo and importance of globalization processes, frames of objective fields of modern sociology are broadening to the notions of mankind, as forming world’s megasystem. Some sociologists consider that in some time humanity will gain characteristics and features of global community, where such features as formation of local or super-national communities with informal amiable relations, friendliness, cooperation, intercommunication, spending together of free time and leading some specific way of life will surely take the advantage.

Nowadays very often modern example of such types of formations is regarded the Internet community, with all its numerous surfers, blogs, different communication appliances. Other sociologists define community vice verse: mega community with transnational countries, unified international law for regulation of globalization processes, world trade and world economics, cosmopolitan identities etc., in other words, so-called global creation, where there will be principles of rationalization, formalization of social connections and relations, institutionalization of global forms of social life.

As a result there are a lot of opportunities for professional sociologists to choose object for their research, and sociology as a science possess diversity of its objective field. Even a person himself can be defined as a field for sociology, in other words, person is a social being. It also can be mentioned either local social community or social group, which interacts according to some society or society within its national-country border, or humanity in general. Besides this, social relations and social interactions between all above mentioned components create objective sphere of sociology.

Modern sociology includes different concerns about object of its researches in its traditional (social reality), broad and updated (social-cultural reality) variants.