The pandemic has really had a strong impact not only on education but also on the whole society as a whole. Many components of the learning process have changed, and one of the most noticeable changes for students is, of course, the transition to online learning. Online learning is much more convenient than attending lectures in person because “remote learning is more flexible” (Giddens et al., 2021). At the same time, one negative aspect was missed, such as the deterioration in the socialization of students. When people were in classrooms communicating with each other, such a problem did not arise, but during online learning, it became relevant due to the fact that communication becomes much more complicated, which can directly negatively affect the learning process. Thus, many aspects of the topics studied in online lectures can be missed due to the communication shortage.
The concept of social order is one of the most significant trends in social and humanitarian knowledge. Theorists of this concept proceed from the fact that the social order, as a product of human activity, arises and exists when there is a continuous process of development and renewal of society. Auguste Comte had a negative attitude towards everything negative and destructive. The author contrasted the spirit of negation in theory and in reality, brought by the Revolution, with a creative, positive spirit. Therefore, the category of positive becomes the most general and central in his worldview. The ideal type of any social phenomenon means the coincidence of individual action, organizational forms, and institutional norms. So far, this cannot be said about the theory of social order, since many questions remain open, there are still many things in it that need to be finalized.
As for Durkheim, he was the exact opposite of Comte. Durkheim was alien to the so-called unilinear evolutionism of the godfather of Comte’s sociology, which he proclaimed within the framework of his Law of Three Stages. The structure of sociology, according to Durkheim, includes social morphology, social physiology, and general sociology (Lizardo & Abrutyn, 2021, p. 568). Durkheim also challenged the position of Marxism in the sense of the incompetence of economic reductionism, that is, the reduction of the entire social process to an economic foundation. In his opinion, the economic factor is not the most important or not always so, and the conflict between the working class and entrepreneurship is not an essential feature of capitalist society but a fact of poor organization. Durkheim nevertheless expressed the dubious theses “individual existence is assuming autonomy and value, and is freeing itself from the shackles of the community” (D’Orsi & Dei, 2018, p. 122). However, a human being cannot fully exist in isolation from society.
In the 20th century, Marx’s ideas became the basis not only of Soviet ideology but also of numerous scientific concepts, as well as programs of social and political movements. Marx believed that “Marxism unmasks the obscured misconceptions of some societal ideologies and assumptions that keep the population from truly understanding how the economic systems work against them” (Nsama & Sandro, 2022, p.7). In reality, people are always involved in the world, at least in society, in society: they occupy a certain position in it, influence it, and change it. What Marx left behind is a vast and incomplete corpus reflecting a wide range of scientific research – and it turns out to be even more extensive than the work of Engels. What strikes scholars when confronted with such a body of material is that Marx viewed his theoretical concepts as a “guiding thread,” as noted in his preface to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859, and not as a priori postulates waiting to be confirmed. His research was such that he constantly changed preliminary hypotheses in the light of changing data. In this regard, the question arises about the viability of these studies and their usefulness. In addition, the embodiment of his theory in life suffered a crushing collapse, which may indicate its fallacy.
Functionalism is the theory that makes something a certain type of mental state depends not on its internal structure but on how it functions and what role it plays in the system of which it is a part. In addition, while the term functionalism is used to refer to a range of positions in a number of other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics, and architecture, this article focuses on functionalism as a purely philosophical thesis about the nature of mental states.
Rational choice theory is a theory that explains the rational behavior and choice of individuals in the implementation of the opportunities available to them in society. Individuals rank these opportunities according to how they serve their purposes. They follow their life plans, which satisfy more desires and have a greater chance of success. Moreover, it is by no means necessary that one individual must necessarily increase his utility at the expense of others.
Postmodernism is a very interesting and unique phenomenon in modern society. Postmodernism has already created its own specific tradition of social analysis, which draws more and more new areas of scientific research, and more and more new scientific disciplines into its field of influence, acting as a kind of exporter of theoretical discourse. If the world lends itself only to literary, artistic, and poetic comprehension, then it is not capable of giving any other picture of the world except for a metaphorical one. Hence the loss of rationality and the rigor of scientific argumentation, which is so characteristic of postmodern constructions.
References
D’Orsi, L. & Dei, F. (2018). What is a rite? Émile Durkheim, a hundred years later. Open Information Science, 2(1), 115-126.
Giddens, A. Duneier, M. Appelbaum, R. Carr, D. (2021). Introduction to sociology (12th ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.
Lizardo, O. Abrutyn, S. (Eds.). (2021). Handbook of classical sociological theory handbooks of sociology and social research. Springer Nature
Nsama J. S. & Sandro S. (ed) (2022). A conceptual analysis of how science, religion, and culture interact and influence each other in polities. Cogent Social Sciences, 8:1.