Conceptualization of social security in the context of sociological knowledge

Abstract

The author proposes a systematization of the results of the review of publications on security issues in the social sciences and humanities, which allowed several major areas of research. The paper also deals with construction of a model of social security as an indicator of generalized social homeostasis, created as a result of balancing the functions of basic social institutions. It’s proposed to apply a structural functionalism and neofunctionalism as dominant methodology for interpretation of social security as a social institution homeostasis’ control and social sustainability of the social environment while maintaining constancy intrasystem parameters. There was determined inequivalence of different types of social security in providing social homeostasis by their correlation with the four types of social subsystems (institutions): semantic, reproductive, regulatory and transmission also.

The paper argued that the leading role in ensuring social homeostasis play a meaning- (religious, ideological, cultural) subsystems, corresponding to the value stabilization of society. At the same time, the article emphasizes that meanings and values produced by these institutions’ subjects (actors) initially embedded through socialization and communication (transmission) subsystems and are subject to secondary fixation at the level of social action through regulatory social institutions (politics, law). The final element of social security is to ensure the homeostasis of the lowest level of social order (institutes of economics and the family).

Author justified the position on the understanding of the social security system as independent institution one within the framework of the two models of the social world: systematic and stochastic. It is indicated that the system map of the social world meets modernist paradigm of sociological theorizing, which is characteristic for the consideration of social security as a factor of change that promotes social cohesion, rather than its decay. Whereas stochastic map of the social world corresponds to a postmodern paradigm, main characteristic feature of which is looking at and perception of social security as part of polycentric social reality.