The concept of "social structure" as a basis of the meta-theoretic approach to the western social theory of the second half of the XX century

The article makes an attempt of the meta-theoretical analysis of the Western social theory development in the second half of the twentieth century. The author considers the concept of 'social structure' as a key in the social science knowledge. As a result of the theoretical and methodological analysis of the social structure ideas development, the research has identified three paradigms of sociological knowledge: structural, structuralist and dualistic. They describe the logic of development of the Western social theories in the second half of the twentieth century.