CHANGE IN BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIOLOGY AS A SCIENCE (CAUSES, RESULTS, OUTLOOK)

This paper attempts to solve following problems: 1) to reconstruct the substance, grounds and conditions of forming the theoretical model of sociology that preceded its contemporary versions and treated sociology, for almost 40 years, as a full-fledged social science; 2) to find out what differentiated it fundamentally from previous versions, and what predestined its wide currency for quite a long time; 3) to show how drastically the basic characteristics of sociology as a science have changed for last 40 years, and how much consensus we have today on its scientific status and specifics; 4) to show causes of these changes and to demonstrate their connection with wide-scale protest movements in Paris in May 1968; 5) to trace consequences of changes in theoretical model of this science for development of European (and, wider, Western) sociology; 6) to answer the questions: a) how much the processes unfolding in Western sociology for last 30-40 years have affected current condition of Russian sociology; b) is there a necessity to unify basic characteristics of contemporary Russian sociology with the Western ones?