Vol 19, No 1 (2019)

The article considers social factors of professional deformation in socionomic professions. This is an important sociological issue due to the risks of professional deformation for customers and social environment, thus, there is a need for a set of measures for the timely diagnostics and prevention of such deviations. The authors support the interpretation of the profession as an “institutionalized deviation”, and of the professional as a person licensed to deviate from the philistine behavior and thinking; consider professional deformation from the point of view of professionalization (institutional and personal) and combine psychological and sociological approaches. The combination of the neo-Weberian approach, secondary analysis and in-depth interviews allowed the authors to identify the following factors of professional deformation in socionomic professions: discrepancy of the individual concept and model of professional career; unproductive resolution of professional crises during professionalization; formation of the public image of the professional group, its ideology and ethics as opposing the idea of serving its own interests and getting professional privileges; creation of professional organizations (associations) with the features of social-professional disadaptation (for example, the syndrome of professional burnout); social closure of the professional community as a source of considering professionalism an instrument of access to privileges and double standards; increasing distance in the activities of the professional (professional ‘deafness’, sociolect for hiding the reported meanings); bureaucratization (regulation of professional activity contrary to the clients’ interests, best practices, and work schedule); value-role conflicts. These factors are ambivalent: on the one hand, they are signs of the institutionalization of the profession; on the other hand, they are indicators of social deformation.

It is the legitimate authority of states to prepare and implement development plans. In the democratic society, preparation and implementation of development plans necessarily imply consultations and consent of the local communities affected by the development plan. Such plans should not be unilaterally prepared and coercively imposed on local communities. Any imposed development plan is incompatible with fundamental human rights and freedoms. Thus, the article aims at identifying whether or not the so-called ‘Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan’ is a true and elaborate development plan. A real development plan ensures that the intended development project does not result in destruction of the livelihoods and cultural integrity of the local communities living in the project area. The author also considers possible explanations for the Ethiopian Government’s refusal to listen to the continuous protests of the Oromo people against the ‘Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan’. In the particular context of regional development aiming at the hidden ethnic cleansing, the intent to destroy a certain group’s cultural identity cannot be declared openly by the government but it can be seen in the relevant long-term policies, governmental patterns of actions and facts of everyday life. The article examines from the historical perspective the long-term successive Ethiopian governments’ policies and relevant facts to reveal the state’s intent to destroy the Oromo identity in Addis Ababa and its suburbs. If the Oromo are evicted from the ancestral land their economic life, social networks, language, cultural traditions and norms will be destroyed, and the Oromo in the area of the ‘Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan’ will eventually disappear as a cultural group with a distinct ethnic identity.

The attractiveness of the Russian higher education system and the country in general for educational migrants in the perspective of the theory of ‘human capital’ is considered in the article as a migrant’s individual choice based on assessing costs/benefits of one’s further life trajectory as a specialist. The authors focus on the regional aspect of educational migration - to Tomsk and the Tomsk Region, in which the scientific-educational complex is a city-forming one, and the share of students (including foreign ones) is among the highest in the country. The article considers the quality of ‘foreign student - host community’ relations, the regional media presentation of migration as affecting the public opinion, and the possibilities of social media for the social-psychological support for migrants as the most important factors for choosing/rejecting the region and its higher education system. The empirical basis of the article consists of the semi-structured interviews with educational migrants, regional Internet media focusing on migration, and educational migrant communication in the Russian social networks. According to the research data, the interethnic situation in the Tomsk Region is estimated by educational migrants as favorable; however, in the host community there is a hierarchy of attitudes towards different national-geographical segments of educational migration; many region’s residents do not show hostility to foreign students but believe that further educational migration must be stopped, which is probably due to the negative information discourse of regional media on labor migrants. Social networks as a supporting communicative infrastructure partially hinder negativity and indifference of the host community acting as an emotional-compensatory diaspora quasi-institution that turns the social capital of communication into economic preferences and psychological satisfaction.

The author considers adaptation and immersion as parts of the life trajectory of women engaged in prostitution. This trajectory includes five stages: approach, entry, adaptation, immersion, and exit. The research aims at describing adaptation and immersion on the example of women engaged in prostitution in Saint Petersburg and Orenburg. The research had a mixed-method design consisting of a survey of 896 respondents and 10 semi-structured interviews (based on the ‘snowball’ sample). The article presents a descriptive analysis of the survey data and a thematic analysis of interviews. The study allowed to identify two trends in the respondents’ social environment: the loss of friendship and parent-child relationships, distancing and unwillingness to reveal their activities; the partnerships accompanied by the separation of activities in and out of prostitution. Women engaged in prostitution are subject to all forms of violence; therefore, an integral part of their adaptation and immersion is the recognition of clients’ behavior patterns and the development of safe interaction and conflict prevention strategies. The study also revealed the initiation and/or abuse of alcohol and drugs consumption in the course of activities in prostitution, and during immersion the severity of alcohol and drugs use tends to increase. Moreover, many women engaged in prostitution are in the poor psychological condition. Thus, it is necessary to further study prostitutes’ interaction with clients, sex business organizers, and the closest social environment not involved in sex business at all stages of the life trajectory in prostitution.

The article addresses the problem of conceptualizing nomadism by the genus-policy dichotomy under the deconstruction of the classical western paradigm defining social as equal to the state. The author argues that the dichotomy ‘clan-state’ reflects the opposition of nomadism and sedentarism, and focuses on the social-philosophical studies of segmental societies through the dichotomy ‘clan-state’ claiming that segmental society does not allow the concentration of power. The article is based on the studies of the tendencies of neo-tribalism and reorganization of kin relations by O.L. Lushnikova, Ch.M. Lamazhaa, N.T. Nurullo-Khodjaeva and on the works reconsidering eurocentrism and evolutionary one-line historical process that turned modernization policies into violent sedentarization of the nomads. Historiographic studies also prove the need to revise the generally accepted method of studying the genesis of nomadic cultures that J. Scott defines as a ‘periphery’ of the historical process. The social-political perspective allows to consider tribal relations through the institutions of gift-exchange and potlatch (M. Moss) as preventing the system of power based on suppression. The deconstruction of evolutionism and logocentrism changed the emphasis in the dichotomy ‘genus-state’, so the state is no longer considered an absolute good. A. Giddens and P. Bourdieu define nomadism as ‘another sociality’ in which segmentation is the main principle of conjunction. The substantial episteme of sedentarism opposes the processual episteme of nomadism according to the analysis of the social-political concepts of Aristotle and Ibn Haldun. Thus, the opposition of nomadic and sedentary cultures as a dichotomy of genus-polis is based on an aporia of identity and difference, myth and logos, feminine and masculine, which defines the conceptualization of nomadism.

The article considers features and trends of the information society development in Russia through the analysis of various aspects of its digitalization including the strategic task of reducing the digital divide. Since the second half of the 20th century the digital divide develops as a new form of social inequality determined by information-communication technologies. Today there is no single approach to the conceptualization of the digital divide (digital inequality). Usually, as a methodological basis for the analysis of digital inequality, researchers use a three-level model of the digital divide: (1) the difference in access to new information technologies (availability or lack of material resources) such as special devices (smartphones, computers, etc.) and also availability of Internet access and its quality (speed, price, etc.); (2) the difference in skills necessary for the effective use of information technologies (ability to get access to content, to produce it, to be an active participant of interaction)’ (3) life chances and opportunities determined by information technologies, which are most difficult to measure due to digitization of certain spheres of society. Digitalization is a priority for the strategic development of the Russian society which includes the use of digital technologies in main spheres of social life (education, healthcare, etc.) and changes in the ways of interaction between society and the state (“e-government”). Based on the data of statistics and research for 2015-2017, the authors consider perspectives to overcome the digital divide under the development of information society in Russia and identify main risks and negative consequences of attempts to accelerate its digitalization.

The article considers approaches to the measurement of precarious employment for numerous studies suggest various ways to estimate its scale based on empirical data. To systematize various methodological solutions, the author identifies three approaches to the measurement of precarization: at the macro-, meso- and micro-level. Each approach is described and illustrated with examples from Russian and foreign scientific literature. The first approach (at the macro-level) studies the prevalence of specific indicators of precarization in dynamics or different social-demographic groups that can be considered precariat. The second approach (at the meso-level) compares different types of non-standard and standard employment in terms of the quality of jobs and working conditions to identify types of employment that can be considered precarious. The third approach (at the micro-level) focuses on the individual employment instability, its subjective perception, lack of employment security, and develops precarization indices. The comparison of indicators within such indices allows to identify common components of precarization: characteristics of wages, social and legal protection, and feeling of insecurity. The article emphasizes features of each approach for the measurement of precarization: the first takes into account not only the employed population but also other categories; the second compares groups representing different types of employment but does not take into account the internal heterogeneity of these groups and considers them as having a high or low level of precarization; this disadvantage is overcome in the third approach that measures precarization at the individual level and takes into account not only types and conditions of work but also voluntary/forced nature of employment.

About ten years ago, a new theoretical branch appeared in Czech sociology - historical sociology. The first step and prerequisite for its development was publication of the impressive collective monograph Historical Sociology: Theory of Long-Term Development (edited by J. Šubrt) including works of famous Czech social scientists (P. Machonin, M. Petrusek, J. Musil, M. Hroch and others). The concept of historical sociology curriculum appeared in 2007, its form gradually developed in the discussions of J. Šubrt, J.P. Arnason (La Trobe University), M. Havelka (Charles University) and W. Spohn (University of Wroclaw). In 2008, its accreditation documents were prepared under the guidance of J. Šubrt, and it was included in the academic year 2009/2010 schedule. At the same time, at the Faculty of Humanities of the Charles University the Department of Historical Sociology was founded. Until now, there are Master’s and PhD programs in Historical Sociology in Czech in the form of regular daily and combined (distance) studies. In the academic year 2012/2013, a doctoral studies program was also opened, and both programs - Master’s and PhD’s - started in English. The article considers the decade-long development of historical sociology in the Czech Republic focusing on the research and study programs at the Faculty of Humanities of the Charles University. The author explains how historical sociology is defined and developing in the Czech Republic, emphasizing its research traditions and current interests. The article pays particular attention to the topics and representatives of historical sociology mentioning the importance of its publications - both monographs and the journal established in 2009. To conclude, the author summarizes the results of the current stage of the development of Czech historical sociology, its challenges and risks, hopes and perspectives. Ten years is usually a very short period for any science but for Czech historical sociology they became a period of significant results.