The concept of social solidarity is one of the fundamental notions in classical social theory. The paper presents a study of this concept development in famous sociologists' works (O.Compte, H.Spenser, F.Tönnies, E.Durkheim, and K.Marx) as well as in modern Ukrainian, Russian, European and American social scientists' researches. The authoress develops a theoretical definition of the concept 'social solidarity' by drawing on three approaches to the notion definition. These are (1) attributes distinction, (2) explanation of the functions and (3) description of relationships between this concept and other concepts of social theory. As a conclusion, a general definition of 'social solidarity' is presented as an important conceptual precondition for further development and relevant usage of the concept in empirical studies.
Recent studies on social solidarity have been concentrated either on the theoretical exploration of the phenomenon or on the investigation of solidarity aspects in empirical studies of little social groups. The paper presents a theory of social solidarity and a measurement instrument to study the phenomenon on the general level of Ukrainian society. The authoress provides the description of methodic issues as well as analysis strategy and interpretation framework. Based on the data provided by Institute of Sociology in Kiev, three different indices are computed to describe normative and structural aspects of social solidarity. Using structural equation modeling the relationships between concepts of the theory are specified and explained.
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