An attempt is made in the article to gain an understanding of the nature of social ontologies as a separate segment of social reality and, more specifically, to reveal: their interconnection with different value systems; regularities of their evolution and transformations; the degree to which values and practices prevalent in society are determined, in their dynamic development, by the said ontologies; and, finally, the principles of the formation of a certain combined societal ontology. To solve this task, the author investigates the mechanisms of the reflection, by a social object, of the challenges of reality and, proceeding from the assumption that the process of reflection results in a more or less marked change of the object's identity, concentrates on analyzing the social object's transitive, marginal condition, when it has already ceased to be what it was, but has not yet come to a new, inwardly non-contradictory state.