Abstract: The phenomena of globalization point at the profound conceptual crisis of social sciences, which neglected the most acute and large-scale contradictions of postindustrial development. The crisis of social sciences should be considered as testimony to escalation of the transitional processes and imminence of major changes in the structure of postindustrial society, which institutional grounds take roots in the industrial era, but already do not meet the demands and challenges of the present, and even more so, of the future. The systemic complexity of social processes of modernity indicates that the adequate to them social metatheory must not only ascertain the changes and establish the theoretical foundation post factum, but also forecast the social processes under the conditions of global socioeconomic transformations. The study analyzes the forecasting adequacy and bases of the reputed theories that describe the evolution and functioning of society as a whole, as well as social structures ad social institutions in particular. Based on the conducted analysis, the author suggests the principles for creating the new theoretical foundation of social sciences that represents the synthesis of formation theory with a number of specific theories and approaches, namely the theories of social institutions and organizations, social stratification and power structure, functionalist and structuralist approaches.

Abstract: The article is devoted to the relationship between social progress and productive forces development in the formation of global social and economic environment and the development of global resources and demography (systemic) crisis.Till the end of the 20th century, while the growth of available resourceful base of Humanity was ahead of the material production growth, the concept of irreversibility and the immensity of the technological and social progress adequately reflected the characteristics of the historical development of Mankind of the Modern Era and Contemporary HistoryHowever, by the end of the 20th century the progress, usually understood as the process of total universal gradual development, in which production growth significantly outpaced the population growth rate, has exhausted itselfIn the era of globalization world economy reached the limits of quantitative growth. In this situation increasing costs of the further social progress, as the main human potential growth factor, stopped being paid off by the economic growth, and social progress became possible only due to the resources redistribution in favor of transnational corporations and other non-state actors which form the basis of the global economy. But the redistribution of resources in the conditions of crisis growth means the separation of resources from previous social forms. Having exhausted itself in the role of the source and the necessary condition of social progress, scientific and technical progress turned into its opposite, having become a prerequisite for mass desocialization, pulling out a person from the former system of social relations.For the first time since the beginning of the Enlightenment, the economic and social regress has become full, if not a dominant component of the world development, an attribute of the globalization era. The global development vector change from the progress to the redistribution of limited resources in conditions of narrowed reproduction leads necessarily to change of the functions and forms of the modern state.Resource base of global non-state institutions and structures expansion becomes the dismantling of basic social institutions and functions of the state of the industrial era, primarily the spheres of human potential reproduction, that is, education, health, social protection. Accordingly, new forms of post-industrial or "post-national", a (postmodern) state appear, one of the main functions of which is the resources reallocation from the national economic and social institutions to the global ones. It is demonstrative that in the new, "post-industrial" and "post-national" forms state collapse in social institutions associated with the state and the nation as a social community of its citizens, while non-state institutions, first of all, ethnic and religious community, actualize, invading the spheres of social life, which were previously part of the state monopoly.The transformation of the nation-state in the modern type of "post-national" and even "anti-national" state, has gone so far that it is possible to speak of a new historical type of state, with different priorities, goals and values that are destroying the national economy and the structure of social protection and social reproduction of the population, ensure the establishment and development of alternative ways of organizing global social space, often related to economic and social regression, a significant strata of the population.

Abstract: The work is dedicated to the problem of social mechanisms of the socio-political catastrophes and its foretelling signs. The political catastrophe is defined as an irreversible destruction of society and its basic social structures; first and foremost, a destruction of the authoritarian relations, which integrate the society both, socially and territorially. Major distinction between the political catastrophe and political crisis consists in the fact that in the case of political catastrophe takes place the destruction of the social bases of power, caused by exit of the political confrontation outside the boundaries of the elites, as well as the generalization of the intra-elite conflict. The determined regularities are demonstrated on the examples the history of France, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union.  The author defines the principal social markers of the looming political catastrophe, which usually takes place on the pinnacle of territorial, economic, and military power of the country. The latent crisis of growth is referred to as one of the social markers of the looming political catastrophe, which is expressed in the difficulty of vertical mobility, slowdown of economic growth, as well as the crisis in goal setting, justified by the emergence of the alternate ways of further development on the background of the exhaustion of acting growth paradigm and the corresponding national idea.  
 

Abstract: In his article Safonov offers the integral paradigm of sociogenesis that explains social mechanisms of such socio-cultural phenomena of globalization as ethnic fragmentation of nations, actualization of ethnic communities, ethnicity and ethnic identity and systemic crisis of contemporary nations, national identity and national idea. The researcher also touches upon the problem of limits to applicability of primordialism and constructionism as the basic approaches to sociogenesis. Safonov puts forward the problem of defining the essential grounds and attributive features of globalization as a qualitatively new historical epoch that generates, among other phenomena, ethnic fragmentation of nations and actualization of ethnic identity. The researcher criticizes the one sided view on globalization according to which globalization is the process of establishment of the single global social community unifying ethnocultural differences. The methodological basis of the paradigm of sociogenesis offered by the researcher involves the definition of nation and ethnos as a long-existing nonidentical and ontologically different social communities an invidual simultaneously participates in. Globalization is views as a global systemic crisis that unites the world through the universal conflict of social communities and other actors of global changes who have antagonistic interests that objectively generate processes of social divergence, differentiation and social fragmentation including ethnocultural fragmentation. The main conclusions and the scientific novelty of the research include the following. In the era of globalization the phenomenon of ethnic fragmentation of contemporary nations and actualization of ethnicity is explained by  the fact that an individual simultaneously participates in both nation and ethnos. His simultaneous participation in ethnos and nation relates to different and community-specific spheres of social existence, the sphere of political existence for a nation and the sphere of everyday existence for an ethnos. Nation can be defined as a social community which is non-identical to ethnos but co-exists with ethnos. Nation first appeared when the state institution was established. Ontology, genesis and peculiarities of the development of the nation have been determined by the political life of the society which is best described by constructivist approaches. Ethnos can be defined as a social community which genesis and regeneration relate to the sphere of everyday life with its attributive social inheritance. This defines the main features of ethnos which are inertance, evolutionary development and relative independence from the political sphere.  Different historical forms of ethnos exist in all historical epochs including industrial and post-industrial eras and ethnos tends to be actualized in the era of globalization. Genesis and features of ethnic development are better explained by the primordialist approach to sociogenesis. Different stages of the historical development have had a particular balance and forms of the development of ethnic and national communities. Combination and interaction of these ethnic and national communities create a social structure of the society with all its complexity which ca be reduced neither to political processes with their domination of one subject nor ethnocultural processes with their evolutionism and inertance nor economic phenomena. The systematic crisis of contemporary nation as a result of globalization processes actualize commitment of an individual to his ethnos as a more inertial and sustainable community that is less dependent on the crisis of the political sphere or social institutions. Thus, ethnic fragmentation of the society caused by the crisis of nation as a more developed social community and the social progress of the XIXth - XXth centuries objectively generates the phenomena of social regress and archaization of soial relations which, in their turn, is the key factors of the further exacerbation of the crisis of nation, national state and national institutions.