Traditional and new forms of sociality in the current agenda of sociology

Abstract

The purpose is to consider the characteristic patterns and trends in the studies of different forms of sociality. The first part of the article describes the theoretical concept that considers traditional forms of sociality formed by institutions and interactions, as well as new forms of sociality consisting of networks and flows. The second part of the article presents a bibliometric analysis of the researchers' representation of social reality in terms of various forms of sociality - "institutions", "interactions", "networks" and "flows". Research methods. The analysis includes more than three hundred thousand publications in the electronic library over the past fifty years. This analysis has shown an increase in attention to the studies concerning the new forms of sociality - network and flow structures. Firstly, studying institutional structures and considering society to be a system of institutions has been the dominant metaparadigm and remains it, but its share in the total number of publications, and therefore the activity of research in this area, is declining. Secondly, the problems of interaction as the basis of sociality and the interactional construction of society until the middle of 90s is studied much less often than the problems of the institutional structure of society. However, with the beginning of the new century, the number of publications on interactional sociality is growing significantly, not even 8-10 times, but there are only half as many as publications focused on institutional sociality. Thirdly, publications on the problems of the network society, digitalization and virtualization of social life have become more active in the last 15 years, the total number of such publications has almost equaled the number of publications on the problems of the interactional nature of society. Fourthly, the number of publications thematically focused on the metaparadigm of the flow society, including the study of various forms of mobility, has been rapidly increasing since the early 2000s. The analysis of these thematic trends leads to the conclusion about the prospects of research of new forms of sociality and the relevance of studying the general configuration of traditional and new forms, the interrelations of which form an augmented social reality in the context of digitalization.