The dissertation presents results of historical and theoretical conceptualization of genesis and development of existential sociology as a general scientific paradigm that reflects the newest trends in sociological theorizing. It is demonstrated that the emergence of existential sociology in the early 1960s implied synthesis of philosophy of existence and sociological tradition in the studies of Edward Tiryakian, Californian school (Jack Douglas, John Johnson, Joseph Kotarba, Andrea Fontana) and Marcel Bolle de Bal. The phase of genesis predetermined further development of initial program statements in the context of modern theory by Kurt Wolff (existential concept of «surrender-and-catch»), Michael Weinstein (existentialist theory of society), Gila Hayim (existential sociology of Jean Paul Sartre), Anthony Giddens (existential aspects of late modernity), Piotr Sztompka (sociology of social existence), Heinz Bude and Jörg Dürrschmidt (existential conception of globalization), Dimitri Ginev (trans subjective existentialism).
Definition of the main category of social existence as a concrete coexistence and direct experience of individual or collective subjects is formulated. The constitutive factors of coexistence include chronotopic characteristics of objects in their experiential and everyday embodiment, situations (static, spatial dimension of experience) and events (dynamic, temporal dimension of experience), as well as boundary and mnemonic aspects. Detection of these aspects solves the problem of social discreteness through determination of biophysical «conductors» and assignment to ontological basis (existential reduction).
The study identifies a problem field and corresponding categories of the existential sociology, that include social authenticity, meanings of coexistence (value hierarchies and existential values), negative experience (suffering, deficit states) and the triadic modus of freedom, choice and responsibility. The program principles of existential sociology are revealed: subjectification of reality (personal relations of social phenomena, existential forms of objects, perspectivism); situationality (actual coexistence, everyday contexts, general and limit situations, differentiation of concrete and abstract meanings, situational ethics and method of dilemmas); sensuality (social dimension of senses, emotions and bodily states, intelligibility of experience, perceptual knowledge, emotional careers, sensory and experiential approaches); totality (natural unity of coexistence, ontological integrity, transcendence and background aspects of intersubjective experience); inductivity (idiographic empiricism and upward qualitative methodology); theoretical minimalization (criticism of speculative theorizing, apodicticity, nanosociological analysis, «thick» descriptions and «slow» science). Generalization of these principles related to the processes of ontologization and authentication. Ontologization consists in shifting the research perspectives from essential (epistemological) to existential parameters of social phenomena.
