Why can some sociological concepts be actually forbidden in public speech and in theory, but at the same time be legitimately used in a different context or in relation to another class of objects? The answer to this question requires a shift in the research setting. From the sociological explanations and standard patterns used in the history of concepts, it is necessary to move to the genre of epistemological research that clarifies the work of the concept in its interaction with other conceptual structures—to the genre of the military history of ideas. The idea of the “community of fate”(Schicksalsgemeinschaft), which this article is devoted to, is a model object for this kind of research. Originating at the dawn of sociology in the works of Max Weber and Georg Simmel, the combination of the category of “community” with the intuition of “fate” gave rise to the conceptualization of “community of fate”. This concept has lived several parallel lives: in sociological theory, irrationalist philosophy, and Nazi propaganda. The purpose of this article is not just to rehabilitate the “community of fate” in the language of sociology, but to show under what circumstances an idea can act as an actant, sometimes contrary to the intention of its creators. Thus, from the military history of ideas, we can chart a path to a new research axiomatics—the axiomatics of an object-oriented epistemology.

The article restores the theoretical logic behind Yuri Levada and his team’s 
research project, “Soviet Man”. Based on the project’s publications, the article reconstructs both the “early” model, which included a set of attitudes 
toward the “antinomies” of the Soviet system, as well as the later model 
which emphasized a set of adaptive characteristics (“adapted”, “two-faced”, 
etc.). The empirical and theoretical foundations that prompted the authors 
of the project to abandon the original hypothesis about the “disappearing type” of the Soviet man are clarified. There is a connection between 
the dynamics of the “Soviet Man” project and the early theoretical works 
of Yuri Levada in the 1970s and 1980s; specifically, there is a shift in his 
interests from structural analysis to action problems. The theoretical prerequisites of the critical texts of the Levada of the post-Soviet period (the 
concepts of “social change”, “degenerate case”) are clarified. The role of 
the general methodological guidelines of the Levada group is emphasized: 
“transposing” the concepts of Western sociology in describing the Soviet / 
Russian case; elucidating the historical context in which the terms arose; 
attempting a comparison with the “generalized West”, the obligatory linking of research tasks to the “big problems” of their society Possibilities of 
updating (“reverse transposing”) the theoretical developments of Levada 
within the framework of the academic community that does not share 
the basic methodological principles of the project are discussed. As possible topics for academic discussion, a comparison of the conceptions of 
modernization in the USSR —introduced by Levada and the late Parsons 
in the System of Modern Societies—is proposed, as well as the possibilities of the Levada’s concept for explaining and predicting social changes 
across generations.

In this article, the author investigates the evolution of the politicophilosophical concept of the “people” (populus), from its appearance in Ancient Roman texts to Early Modern political thought. He traces three fundamental steps in the evolution of this concept: (1) Cicero and Augustine, in their writings, describe the people as a political subject. According to Tully, the people are united by the common rational consensus about the practices of conduct, while Augustine replaces it with the concept of a passionate community. (2) The second phase of the people’s conceptual history is bound up with the works of Thomas Aquinas. He describes the people not as a subject but as an object of political action. According to him, the people are the many men united by a common territory, common laws and common mode of life. Aquinas also changes the meaning of the term “res publica” (Commonwealth), as he uses it to define the political form independent from the people. Later, other authors within the Thomistic tradition up to Francisco de Vitoria refrained from conceptualizing the people, using it as a simple word, not a concept. (3) For authors of social contract theory (Thomas Hobbes, first and foremost), the people were a sovereign person that appeared thanks to the social contract itself. In contrast to the multitude, the people were considered as an active ruler. When the citizens unite with each other to commit some political action, they become the people; when they live as private persons, they remain the multitude.

The main theoretical goal of the paper is to develop a new framework for the study of social functions of secret knowledge by establishing the relationship between types of social structure and the way of establishing asymmetry of information. The paper reconstructs the history of the confrontation between different sociological traditions regarding the understanding of secrecy and the formation of the concept of “mystery” during the course of this confrontation. By summarizing the results of empirical studies of different secret societies, we can now more explicitly trace the relationship between social morphology and the corresponding transfer mechanism of secret knowledge. Using material from anthropological research, I will demonstrate how the Durkheimian tradition of the theoretical understanding of the origin and functions of primitive religious secret societies limited our understanding of secrecy to a necessarily emotional collective experience of the ritual. Georg Simmel’s sociology of secrecy, by employing the distinction between formal and substantive secrets, offers a more fruitful theoretical frame. This theory allows us to understand and empirically investigate secrecy as a special social form, visible in a number of specific practices of the transfer of knowledge, regardless of its hidden content.

This article is an attempt to sequentially explicate and reconceptualize the term «social magic» in the dictionary of Pierre Bourdieu. «Social magic», arising in the Bourdieu system of concepts in the context of an attempt to describe acts of symbolic power and inheriting the conceptualization of Marcel Mauss’ magic, is a multi-valued term; it is hard to say with certainty whether it is a metaphor, another name for this or that concept of reflexive sociology, or an independent distinctive figure. The article substantiates the assumption that social magic is an autonomous and effective concept of reflexive sociology, which allows us to describe phenomena that are beyond the focus of the concepts of «acts of institution» and «symbolic power». Firstly, the author shows which particular set of fragments of Pierre Bourdieu can be used to explicate the concept of social magic. The boundaries in which the question of social magic and its localization in the system of concepts of Pierre Bourdieu can be asked are described and described. Secondly, «social magic» is explicated and reconceptualized on the basis of using Judith Butler’s performative theory and tracing the connections between Marcel Mauss’ conceptualization of magic and Bourdieu’s conceptualization of social magic. Thirdly, an attempt is made to show what place such interpretation of social magic can occupy in the system of concepts of reflective sociology: it is assumed that Mauss’ conceptualization of magic does not only funds conceptualization of «social magic» as a concept, but also indirectly affects the concept of participant objectivation, acting as the theoretical—or metaphorical—unconscious of conceptualization of the role of a sociologist in Bourdieu’s system.

This article aims to revise a common interpretation of V. Turner’s concept of communitas in the context of the dialogical philosophy of М. Buber, whose influence has been mostly overlooked by researchers. Communitas is usually seen from the Durkheimian perspective and his notions of the sacred, solidarity and especially effervescence; it is conventionally defined as a transgressive collective experience when individual identities are supposed to submerge into a collective whole. Turner himself, however, has repeatedly noted that communitas is based on the ideas of the “I-Thou” relationship and the “essential We” developed by Buber. A reconstruction of the notion in question together with a recap of Buber’s dialogical philosophy allow to clarify the key characteristics of communitas which make it distinct from other similar concepts of community. The main feature of communitas lays in its inherent idea of individualized community where individuals preserve their independence and relate to each other as “totalities”. The notion of “totality” traces back to Buber’s concept of “synthesizing apperception” which means the perception of the Other in full wholeness of his/her irreducible personal uniqueness. The “synthesizing apperception” as well as the “I-Thou” relationship require “the primal setting at a distance” which allows an individual not to lose his/her distinctiveness and personal “self”. Other characteristics of communitas, which are making it similar to the “I-Thou” relationship and the “essential We”, include its transience and instability, the dissolution of all inner and outer group boundaries, and its ethical component, which was found to be ideologically rooted in Judaism. Spontaneous communitas and the “I-Thou” relationship (“essential We”) turn out to be almost identical in Turner’s descriptions, who incorporated the dialogical vision of relationships between “I” and the Other into the anthropological theory of group interactions in a community.

The article is devoted to the analysis of happiness as a category of social theory, which—at the beginning of the XXI century—became not only a new subject of sociological research but also the basis of government programs in several countries, including the United Kingdom. “Happiness” became the basis of social order due to a revival of the interest of modern scholars in the works of Jeremy Bentham and other philosophers of the Enlightenment. In these works were considered, among other things, the possibilities of achieving universal happiness. However, the real reason for the actualization of this category is its crisis in economic science caused by the “Easterlin paradox,” that is, the absence of a direct and unequivocal correlation between income growth and the level of happiness of the population. The article provides a detailed analysis of the sources of the concept of happiness as a category of social order, primarily the work of the cameralists and Johann Heinrich Gottlieb Justi, the most famous representative of this school. The analysis demonstrates that the idea of happiness as the basis of social order has already been experienced in the period of cameralism when it was integrated into the work of the enlighteners. However, without further development, this idea eventually left the language of social sciences completely immersed in economic theory. One of the reasons for the decline of this category was the lack of “stable” mechanisms for including the happiness of individuals as a part of the common good, and therefore the impossibility of converting “happiness” from an existential into a social category. We provide an analysis of the reasons why none of the proposed theories of common happiness in the XVIII-XIX centuries was consistent. Even before the Enlightenment, the category survived the crisis in social theory and a return to it requires a serious rethinking in the context of the heritage of philosophers of the XVIII-XIX centuries.