Macedonian Sociology and Social Changes: Transition and Trauma

Social scientists have always tried to understand the world around them and the changes that take place within it. Such efforts to understand, explain, and discover the direction in which they occur as well as to discover the consequences of the great and traumatic changes in economic, political, cultural, and social life in European and other societies from the 18th until the 21st century. Thus, they are frequently discussed nowadays within different ideological patterns. Social change can be considered as an omnipresent phenomenon, i.e., as a normal state of affairs of societies. We can understand modern societies as unstable dynamic systems that constantly, or even more precisely asymptotically, strive to achieve stability. The tendency for stability is reflected through the action of the internal elements of the system, but also in interaction with other, external, similar systems or their aspects. Of course, the basic elements of any social system are people, their actions (individually and in groups), and the social forms that occur as a result of their in certain time and space. The Macedonian society as a part of South-East Europe is a very evident example and a severe reality experience that can be investigated as a socio-cultural reality that must be addressed from the sociological point of view, having in mind how contemporary geopolitics has a (negative) impact on it.