Informality in Society: Searching for Explorative Methodology

The main purpose of the article is to discuss and propose a solution to the methodological problems arising in the study of fundamental social relations embedded in social institutions and informal practices. The authors present a concept based on the thesis of informal interactions as a relatively ontologically independent phenomenon in society. It is shown that informal practices act as a public and civilizational resource that determines not only the viability of society, but also its competitiveness in the global world. It is the totality of mass informal social communications outside the existing institutional framework that makes it possible to understand what a particular society is. The article analyzes some real situations of contradictory interaction of institutions and informal practices in Russian society. When analyzing the sources of informal practices, the authors distinguish inversive, adaptive and constructive informality as systematically ordered communications that arise outside the institutional space. Such conceptualization expands the possibilities of understanding specific cases in the socio-economic and socio-political life of Russian society and provides grounds for their instrumental empirical research. study.

methodology, social institution, informality, informal practices, social communications, norms, communities