Vol 18, No 2 (2018)

Theory, Methodology and History of Sociological Research

The development of non-linear knowledge: New risks, vulnerabilities, and hopes

Kravchenko S.A.

Abstract

The article considers the non-linear knowledge as the result of the ‘arrow of time’ effect (I. Prigogine) that determined the new realities in which everything develops increasingly quicker and in a more complex way. The author extends the impact of this effect to the dynamics of knowledge and shows that the modern knowledge acquires the quality of reflexivity and takes on a completely new vector of non-linear development within the so-called ‘turns’ in the history of science. The transition from linear to non-linear knowledge determines more complex manufactured risks including the threat of dehumanization described in the article. The monitoring of these risks implies that the value-oriented non-linear knowledge should be taken into account not only by natural, technical and social sciences but also by the humanities. Among new challenges to the humanity there are vulnerabilities manifested in the increasing structural dysfunctions of complex social and/or techno-natural systems in the form of ‘normal accidents’, ‘collateral damage’, etc. The author believes that key challenges of such vulnerabilities are determined by the dominant pragmatic values of modern knowledge. There is also a new type of development in the form of metamorphosis leading to non-linear transformations, which aggravates the complex character of modern risks and vulnerabilities. The author finds answers to these challenges in the humanistic turn that can ensure the valid knowledge of complex risks and vulnerabilities together with the grounds for better future that people want.
RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):195-207
pages 195-207 views

Jeff Goodwin’s network theory of “peripheral revolutions”

Karasev D.Y.

Abstract

The article considers J. Goodwin’s synthetic theory of revolution that claims to be the ‘fourth-generation’ theory, and the ways of its application in the comparative-historical analisys of peripheral revolutions of the “short twentieth century”. The first part of the article reveals the sources of Goodwin’s theoretical and methodological synthesis: the possibilities and limitations of different structural and state-centred theories and of network analysis. The combination of the state-constructionist approach with the network perspective of structuralist constructionism allows to avoid the structuralist mistake of ignoring the causal contribution of cultural and agecy determinants, and protects from the opposite theoretical failures of essentialism, cultural determinism, voluntarism, etc. The second part of the article describes how Goodwin used his complex theoretical model in the analysis of the waves of peripheral revolutions in Southeast Asia in 1945-1955, in Central America in 1970-1980s and in Eastern Europe in 1989. He shows that bureaucratic, patrimonial and exclusive regimes with weak infrastructural power contributed to the growth of revolutionary movements, but the patrimonial regimes are especially vulnerable to the revolutionary overthrow. Political oppression and indiscriminate violence determine the revolutionaries’ solidarity on the periphery more than social-economic factors such as poverty. The final part of the article presents some Goodwin’s conclusions on the future of revolutions and theories of revolutions. In the 21 century the world will witness fewer revolutions and more movements for global justice; while sociology of revolutions demonstrates fewer attempts to create a general theory of revolution and collective action and tends to the studies of different revolutionary cases and their types on the basis of synthetic structural-cultural methodology.

RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):208-225
pages 208-225 views

Representation of power in the urban space: Göran Therborn’s theory

Vershinina I.A.

Abstract

The article considers the theory of the Swedish sociologist Göran Therborn focusing on the relationship of political changes with transformations of the urban space. The author presents key elements of his theory, identifies and describes its similarities and differences with other models of the urban space development. Göran Therborn’s approach is compared with the main urban theories of the second half of XX - the beginning of the XXI century, which allows to understand the importance of his views for urban studies and main features of his approach. The article focuses on the influence of different political actors (national and global) on contemporary cities, and on typical forms of these actors’ presence in the urban space. Göran Therborn was interested in capital cities as the best examples of political transformations and in the perspectives of urban development under the increasing role of global actors (such as global corporations) and the reducing capacities of nation states. The author seeks to prove the potential of Therborn’s theory for today’s urban sociology for it presents cities as “points of contact” of political, social and physical spaces. According to Therborn, the configuration of today’s urban space is determined primarily by political and not economic actors. Thus, Therborn expands boundaries of urban studies by combining economic and political factors in the explanatory models of modern cities development. Although the city is one of the central themes for Therborn his main works on it, with a few exceptions, have not been translated into Russian, and the article aims to fill this gap by presenting key ideas of Therborn’s theory of urban development.

RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):226-237
pages 226-237 views

Gustaf Steffen as a sociologist and politician

Gritsenko S.A., Chernova N.I.

Abstract

The authors conduct analysis of the scientific and publicist legacy of the Swedish sociologist Gustaf Steffen in the framework of the Swedish and European history at the turn of XIX-XX centuries based on the scientific and political works of G. Steffen, his contemporaries’ responses to these works, mass media reports and a number of official acts of the Riksdag while Steffen was a member of it. In different periods of his life, Steffen’s methodology combined elements of Marxism, Nietzsche’s “elitist ideas”, both M. Weber’s and G. Simmel’s German school tradition, and “intuitive philosophy” of H. Bergson. In general, Steffen’s sociology can be considered a theoretical macro-analysis of the society’s historical development. Although Steffen was the first professor of sociology in the Swedish history (1902), he did not manage to create a scientific school, and after his death in 1929, the development of Swedish sociology was interrupted for almost twenty years. Only after the Second World War T. Segerstedt (Jr) established a school following the American scientific tradition of pragmatic analysis based on quantitative methods. The main reason for the scientific isolation of Steffen was his pro-German position in the First World War: as an ‘activist’ he aimed at drawing Sweden into the war on the German side, but failed and finished his political career in the early 1920s. There are some features the Swedish sociological tradition inherited from Steffen’s theory - “Bergsonism” in the form of analysis of social circumstances of individual life, principal “historicism”, and interdisciplinarity. Thus, Steffen is a true pioneer of the Swedish sociology whose ideas are still relevant.

RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):238-249
pages 238-249 views

Contemporary society: the urgent issues and prospects for development

Interculturalism: Postmulticultural discourse of social integration

Kuropjatnik A.I., Kuropjatnik M.S.

Abstract

In the current postmulticultural debates, interculturalism is a model of integration in the contexts of diversity, a way to conceptualize global social-cultural reality, and an intercultural dialogue or an instrument of ‘positive interaction’. The Council of Europe, European Commission and UNESCO consider interculturalism a main model of social integration in the contexts of diversity. Interculturalism takes into account the multiplicity of identities, differences and modes of coexistence inherent in the era of ‘super-diversity’, and mobility diversification under globalization. In the postmulticultural perspective, interculturalism is a part of the debates on ‘the end of multiculturalism’ that has lost its symbolic capital. Interculturalism develops a new narrative of social integration based on rethinking of ideas and social situations, shifting contexts and symbolic inversions, thus, becoming relevant to the social and cultural reality of the 21st century. However, interculturalism does not replace multiculturalism as the third strategy of integration beyond multiculturalism and assimilation for it implies various integration models such as Quebec interculturalism and European interculturalism with the revived idea of the nation state. Interculturalism focuses on creating ‘a formula for coexistence’ under super-diversity, and is not limited to the immigration context; it emphasizes the multidimensionality of differences (professional, gender, ethnic) in the context of inequality including the nation state. Theoretical heterogeneity and thematic diversity of interculturalism and the ambivalence of its concepts can determine new challenges for the national and international structures that rely on it. Interculturalism considers management of cultural diversity and development of intercultural dialogue as functions of not only government structures, but also of other segments of society such as educational and civil society institutions, private sector and local communities.
RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):250-261
pages 250-261 views

‘Greater Europe’ or ‘Greater Eurasia’? In search of new ideas for the Eurasian integration

Tsvyk A.V.

Abstract

The article considers the genesis of the idea of ‘Greater Eurasia’ which refers to the common humanitarian, economic, political and security space from Lisbon to Shanghai. In the first part of the article, the author focuses on the development of the idea of ‘Greater Europe’ and its historical background. The author notes that the idea of ‘Greater Eurasia’ was preceded by the idea of ‘Greater Europe’ as a project of integration or convergence of the leading European countries and Russia. In the second part of the article, the author considers possible ways and prospects for cooperation of the EU and the EAEU in the framework of the idea of ‘Greater Europe’. The article emphasizes that under the implementation of the project of the Eurasian Economic Union, the idea of ‘Greater Europe’ was associated not only with the interaction of the EU and Russia, but also of the EU and the EAEU. However, from the author’s point of view, today the idea of ‘Greater Europe’ from Lisbon to Vladivostok is losing its relevance due to China’s ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative. The author considers the perceptions of the ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative by the EU and the EAEU and concludes that the idea of ‘Greater Eurasia’ with the participation of the EU, the EAEU and China is a new geo-political phenomenon which will represent a common space between Europe, the EAEU states and Asia and in which Russia and other members of the EAEU can become a centre for integration of Asia and Europe. According to the author, this idea has a number of advantages as well as risks that are presented in the article.
RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):262-270
pages 262-270 views

Some implications of the changes in the world population distribution: How globalized will the world remain?

Zinkina Y.V., Shulgin S.G., Aleshkovski I.A., Andreev A.I.

Abstract

For the first-world citizens, globalization seems to be an all-pervasive phenomenon; however, the global connectivity rates differ dramatically for various countries. What will the situation be in, let say, fifty years? The article aims to show how the future demographic changes can influence absolute numbers and relative proportions of societies with different levels of global connectivity. To estimate the national rates of global connectivity the authors rely on the countries’ participation in global networks, such as trade in goods, trade in services, foreign direct investment (FDI), and international migration. As the scenario of the demographic future, the authors use medium population projections of 2017 calculated by the United Nations Population Division. The authors applied a two-stage method: first, they constructed network models and analyzed the structure of networks to reveal the positions of countries in order to estimate their rates of global connectivity and identify six groups of countries according to their global connectivity rates. Second, the authors combined the results of network analysis with demographic projections to find out how many people are expected to live in the countries with different connectivity rates in the nearest decades (let say, up to 2050) and in the more distant future (2100). The results show that nearly a half of the world population (3.46 billion) lives in highly-connected countries but the situation will dramatically change in the coming decades. The proportion of population in the highly- and highly-medium-connected countries will decline by 2050 and further by 2100, while the proportion of residents of medium- and low-connected (and to some extent of lowest-low-connected) countries will significantly grow.
RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):271-283
pages 271-283 views

Surveys, experiments, case studies

The social well-being of the post-socialist countries’ youth (on the example of Russia, Kazakhstan and Czech Republic): Comparative analysis of fears and hopes (Part 2)

Narbut N.P., Trotsuk I.V.

Abstract

The article is the second part of the publication presenting the empirical results of the three-year study conducted by the Sociology Chair of the RUDN University in cooperation with foreign colleagues to compare the worldview priorities of the today’s student youth. Due to the article size limitations the authors divided the data into two parts: in the first part, they focused on identifying values of three groups of students, which serve as reference points specifying the social action limits and criteria for assessing events and situations. In the second part, the authors continue to characterize values of the younger generations of the post-socialist countries relying on the empirical data collected with another questionnaire focusing on the students’ fears and hopes. In recent decades, the catastrophic/crisis consciousness has been widely studied and social fears were institutionalized as an important subject of sociological analysis. However, value orientations and mass fears are still rarely recognized as interrelated in empirical studies, although real and ‘normal’ fears (total and routinized in the contemporary risk society in U. Beck’s terms) are a key indicator of value orientations even if they are not real but presented as such by the media. Serious modifications of the Russian questionnaire in the Czech and Kazakhstan surveys do not allow for broad comparisons or generalizations; however, the empirical results reveal key life priorities and fears of the students (considering employment, incomes, personal relationship, health, education, etc.), general level of the youth’s anxiety, main strategies to overcome uncomfortable situations, and factors that determine anxiety. The authors conclude that (a) the social well-being of the student youth is very ambiguous in all three countries; (b) in general, fears and hopes of the Russian youth are more similar to their Kazakhstan peers; (c) the Czech students are more certain on a number of issues, which proves their stereotypical western individualism as compared to the Russian ‘traditionalism’.

RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):284-302
pages 284-302 views

The dynamics of victimization of the Russian population: A sociological evaluation

Dolgorukova I.V., Kirillov A.V., Mazaev Y.N., Tanatova D.K., Yudina T.N.

Abstract

Today Russia takes serious measures to reduce victimization though most of them are based on the analysis of official sources, which significantly reduces the effectiveness of the fight against crime. The research aims at identifying victimological trends in Russia for the period of 2009-2015. The empirical basis of the work are the results of the monitoring of personal security and activities of the internal affairs bodies of Russia, which was commissioned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 2014-2015, the monitoring was conducted by the Russian State Social University by the standardized personal interview at the respondents’ places of residence in 85 subjects of the Russian Federation: the adults aged 18 and over were interviewed according to the all-Russian combined three-stage sample of households. 48,800 respondents were interviewed - citizens of Russia permanently residing at the places of registration at the time of the survey and representing the adult population of Russia by sex, age and place of residence (city-village) for each subject and for the Russian Federation as a whole. The article indicates the general level of victimization and the structure of criminal attacks, the rating of crimes and the dynamics of the victims’ recourses to the bodies of internal affairs; the reasons for non-coming to the police; the indicators of citizens’ concerns with criminal attacks on life, health and property; the dynamics of crime fears, and the social portrait of the victim. The results of the study reveal a significant increase in the number of crimes involving computer technologies, which is almost not shown by the official statistics. The main ways to prevent crimes should be improvement of the mechanisms for re-socialization of victims, reduction in the potential victimization, prevention of recidivist victimization, and the restoration of social justice.

RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):303-317
pages 303-317 views

Today’s deviant behavior, and the youths’ attitudes to its manifestations

Ruban L.S.

Abstract

The article considers the attitudes of the school youth to different types of deviant behavior (alcohol, drugs, and smoking) based on the results of the longitudinal study conducted under the guidance of the author from 1998 to the present in twelve Russian regions: Astrakhan and the Astrakhan Region, Grozny, Ivanovo, Krasnodar, Maykop, Makhachkala, Moscow, Nazran, Nalchik, Pskov, and Stavropol. This study has no analogues in Russia or abroad being a part of the international project “Dialogue partnership as a factor of stability and integration” (“Bridge between East and West”) and of the program “Youth in poly-ethnic regions: Views, attitudes, and orientations” (the author is the initiator and head of the project and program) that for thirty years have monitored schools with a multi-ethnic composition of students. The monitoring aims to assess the development of values, attitudes and identity of the youth in different regions of the Russian Federation, the level of legal culture and how law-abiding the schoolchildren are, the protest activity and potential of younger generations, and the ways to develop appropriate and timely programs to prevent the youth’s deviant behavior and illegal actions. The results of the surveys conducted within the program “Youth in poly-ethnic regions: Views, attitudes, and orientations” were compared with other Russian and foreign studies and presented at the international scientific forums: World Congress of Political Science in Berlin (1994), World Congress of Sociology in Montreal (1998), Russian Sociological Congresses (2000, 2008), Humanitarian Forum “Younger Generations - Life without Borders” (2011), UNESCO International Forum “Dialogue as a Path to Understanding” (2013), and at the “Week of Science and Education for Peace and Development” (2017).

RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):318-333
pages 318-333 views

Violence as a key manifestation of social problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Milošević Š.B.

Abstract

The term ‘social problem’ was first introduced as a synonym for ‘illnesses’ under unfavorable social-economic conditions [9]. Social problems are considered by social science when it comes to their negative consequences for satisfying one’s needs and self-realization [15]. According to R. Metron and R. Nisbet, social problems are “the result of mismatch between social values and reality; the effect of social causes that are considered unfavorable; they can be manifest and latent; they have social consequences and determine planned and meaningful social actions” [10. P. 156]. The article focuses on the social problems in a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) - the Republic of Srpska - to prevent and minimize them even in their most sociopathic forms. The empirical study was conducted on the sample of 220 respondents (105 male and 113 female) from October 2016 to January 2017 in seven municipalities of the Republic of Srpska as a part of B&H. The author wanted to estimate the respondents’ awareness of certain notions related to the pathological sexual assaults (paraphilias) and on the level of domestic violence in particular against women. The study combined empirical and theoretical parts to test the authors’ hypotheses. Among them an assumption that many respondents do not know the meaning and are not in any other ways familiar with different types of paraphilias. Another author’s assumption was that women of the Republic of Srpska are more exposed to specific types of violence, which is still not enough discussed in public due to the traditional communicative and social barriers. The third author’s hypothesis was that women are more exposed to psychological and physical violence due to unfavorable social-economic conditions. To prove this the author used statistical data to assess the relationship of different features of the sample and reveal the factors affecting the development and changes in the above mentioned social problems. If the factors considered in the article are not publicly recognized and discussed the current situation will lead to the highly deviant (delinquent) behaviour that will turn into a socially acceptable model and determine serious negative consequences for the society.
RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):334-344
pages 334-344 views

Reviews

pages 345-360 views

Turbulent norms of contemporary society: Theory of “normal anomie”. Review of the book: “Normalnaya anomiya” v Rossii i sovremennom mire [“Normal Anomie” in Russia and Contemporary World]. N.N. Zarubina i dr.; pod obsch. red. S.A. Kravchenko. Moscow: MGIMO-University, 2017. 281 p

Nazarova E.A.

Abstract

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RUDN Journal of Sociology. 2018;18(2):361-367
pages 361-367 views

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