ABSTRACT
The future of sociology depends on its ability to detect profound changes in the social order and in the 'spirit of time'. Rapid changes of increasingly complex social reality constitute the major reason why the uniting core of theoretical advancement in sociology today could not anymore be the issue of societal integration as Parsons believed. The uniting conceptual core in the cumulative development of sociological knowledge concerns the issue of social dynamics. The societal transformations in Eastern Europe enriched the historical experience with patterns of active and creative adaptation by rationally calculating and acting individuals. The contradictions and pathologies of the organizational rationalization of Eastern European economic and political life are indicative for similar processes on the global scale. Individualization accompanied all efforts to rationalize organizations in Eastern Europe. In some cases individualization followed patterns already established in state socialism. The evolutionary universals of a market economy had been suppressed in Eastern Europe for decades.
