The explanatory potential of the «chronotope» category in social research

The explanatory possibilities of the «chronotope» concept applied to the social phenomena and processes study are analysed. The concept’s genesis from A. A. Ukhtomsky’s research, dedicated to the space-time aspects of the human body functioning and the environment, to M. M. Bakhtin’s literary criticism, which reveals the space-time organisation of literary works is shown. The specificity of spatio-temporal relations in literature is projected onto the sphere of social. The latent chronotopicity of Spengler’s cultural-historical concept is revealed. According to this concept, the qualitative features of space and time produce fundamentally different pictures of the world and the human existence content. Based on A. Ya. Gurevich’s theoretical propositions and L. Levi-Bruhl’s anthropological studies, the space-time determinism problem of our thinking structure is revealed. The connection between the signs of space-time, the image of the world and a human is explicated. The effectiveness of using the category «chronotope» as an analysing tool of society at the level of structure and action is substantiated; the most promising areas for using the explanatory possibilities of the chronotope in sociology are identified.