Compendium of types of the “typological” in sociology

Abstract

The article presents an attempt to review the collective monograph Typological Analysis in Sociology as a Diagnostic Procedure (G.G. Tatarova, N.S. Babich, G.P. Bessokirnaya, A.V. Kuchenkova; ed. by G.G. Tatarova, A.V. Kuchenkova. Moscow: FCTAS RAS, 2023, 358 p.), which summarizes many years of searches and findings of G.G. Tatarova with her students and colleagues in the subject field of typological analysis as a sociological method, meta-methodology, diagnostic procedure and a special direction in the development of sociological methodology. The book reconstructs the general logic of the evolution of the typological method, once again confirming the interdisciplinary status of the sociological discipline as successfully borrowing and adapting philosophical conceptualizations, psychological approaches and tools of mathematical formalization to its own tasks. The authors provide examples to demonstrate the possibilities of typological analysis as a diagnostic procedure and a tool for working with “big data”, clarifying both the heuristic possibilities of its methodological solutions and inevitable “methodological traps”.

Keywords

• typological method
• typological analysis
• diagnostic procedure
• theoretical and empirical sociology
• concept of type in sociology
• methodological reflection