Vol 19, No 3 (2019)

In recent decades, the “indigenization of modernity” has become one of the significant trends of the reconfiguration of landscapes of social and cultural diversity. In its contemporary meaning, the concept of indigeneity expresses the desire of indigenous peoples and various social and cultural communities, formerly marginalized within the borders of national states, to independently determine their development. From the global perspective, indigeneity is no longer associated with certain types of societies or cultural scripts of authenticity and traditional lifestyles. Indigenous actors cease to play the role of the Other in contemporary discourses and intellectual life of the West. The transition from the genealogical model of indigeneity based on the ideas of origin, kinship and cultural authenticity to the relational model allows to shift the focus from the features of the indigenous ones to the relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous actors. Indigenous peoples constitute and represent their culture taking into account public opinion, national legislation and international conventions, which leads to the fundamental transformation of the actors themselves. Their characteristics can no longer be represented only in terms of primordiality. Under globalization, the cultural patterns of indigeneity are diverse and conceptualized on the basis of new approaches to the study of the social organization of cultural diversity and models of its management. The concepts “partial relations”, “entanglement” and “intercultural relations” constitute the discourse of indigeneity, which implies recognition of multiple partial relations connecting subject and object, indigenous and non-indigenous worlds and cultural practices. Changes in the discourse of indigeneity both in social-cultural and epistemological aspects are also associated with reconfiguration of the thematic field of social anthropology.

The article considers one of the fundamental challenges in the theory of revolution - classification of revolutions. The author analyzes the four most popular features of revolutions that are used to define their types: “revolution from above”, “revolution from below”, “popular revolution” (the marker of the real revolution “from below”), “passive revolution” and “conservative revolution”. All these concepts have a common methodological basis, are closely interrelated in definitions and have the same problems of being used for classifying revolutions. The author examines the principles of introducing these terms and the possibility of their application for classifying revolution by asking two questions: 1) does the classification (and the definition) cover all known social-political revolutions; 2) does the classification (and the definition) allow to consider as revolutions quite different phenomena just similar to revolutions in a number of external features. The main problem of the contemporary discourse is systematization of revolutions according to the above ‘names’ that are accepted as classifying definitions. Moreover, these “new types of revolutions” are added to the existing classifications, which creates confusion, blurs the boundaries of the “revolution”, and allows other social-political phenomena - radical and mass protests, reforms and coups d'état - to be named “revolutions”. The concepts “revolution from above”, “revolution from below”, “popular revolution”, “passive revolution” and “conservative revolution” are socially significant and can be used in everyday discourse, perhaps also in the social-political space (which, however, causes difficulties), but are not scientific terms and cannot be grounds for the scientific classification of revolutions.

The article considers the features of the spatial distribution of educational and scientific organizations in Russia as an important component of digital society. Based on the extensive sociological and statistical data, the article explains the need to revise the existing approach to the organizational structure of the higher education system taking into account the “5-100” projects and the creation of supporting and federal universities aimed at strengthening the system of higher professional education in the regions. The authors analyze national programs, in particular the national projects “Education” and “Science”, in terms of the new approaches to their territorial organization. The article aims at analyzing the regional accessibility of the main levels of education, and defines as its indicator the educational services of all levels provided in the region. The article is based on the hypothesis that an increase in the spatial accessibility of basic levels of education makes an important contribution to sustainability and accelerates social development. The authors note that all adopted programs and relatively new structural elements of higher education imply an increase in budgetary funding. Given the size of this funding, the gap between regional systems grows and the inclusion of new participants (universities) in the circle of the strongest educational institutions becomes more problematic. Meanwhile, it is the system of higher education and related scientific organizations that is one of the main drivers of the regional development, which determines its human potential and place in the country’s economy.

The article presents the features of the adaptation potential of the urban youth as the most successfully adapting to the crisis group of the Russian population. Based on the results of the secondary analysis of empirical data, the author emphasizes the lack of scientific knowledge about the factors contributing to the successful adaptation of the megapolis youth to the social-economic crisis. The article explains the necessity to use a special methodological approach to the study of adaptation of young people to crisis conditions, which takes into account the complex of resources involved in adaptation and social development. Based on the P.S. Kuznetsov’s complex model of social development resources ensuring successful adaptation of the youth, the author conducted empirical interpretation and operationalization of the notion “youth’s adaptation potential” using seven sets of resources: material, self-preservation, regulatory, reproductive, communicative, cognitive and self-realization. Based on the monitoring of the Institute of Sociology of the FCTAS RAS, the author identifies the factors for successful adaptation of the Moscow youth to the economic crisis: high family income; search for additional earnings rather than waiting for help from government and public structures; small cash savings; the indirect impact of the crisis and the high assessment of one’s financial situation; high level of readiness to take material, social and financial risks; stability and security in the workplace, the ability to realize one’s skills; high level of communicative resources; high level of education, a broad outlook and motivation for self-education; value orientations that contribute to an active adaptation strategy; positive attitude to achieving life goals. The article presents some recommendations for decision makers in the field of youth policy aimed at strengthening the adaptive potential of the Moscow youth and successful models of adaptation to crisis conditions in everyday practices.

The article presents the results of the sociological research conducted in the framework of the Federal project “Personnel Potential”, which aimed at assessing the factors and conditions of employment of the graduates of Moscow universities. The relevance of this study is determined by the fact that every year, after graduation from higher educational institutions, the labor market has too much of the supply of highly skilled labor usually without work experience. The study of motivation that determines the search and choice of jobs by contemporary graduates, of their claims to the content and payment of their work, of their readiness for professional mobility can help to take necessary measures to reduce this problem. The article is based on the data of the research focused on girls who study or have recently graduated from Moscow universities. The results of the survey show that the choice of place of work is determined by a set of subjective and objective factors: future wages, career opportunities, prospects for professional and personal growth, and stability of the company. The authors identified three groups of factors that play a major, secondary and minor role in the girls’ choice of place to work. Salary is the leading motive of employment: the claims for high payment are typical for students and young professionals in the fields of natural sciences, information-mathematical and technical sciences, to a lesser extent - for representatives of humanities, culture and art. The empirical data proved the hypothesis that students of all educational profiles are ready to achieve financial well-being through labor migration.

Social deprivation and exclusion of the elderly have become a relevant problem not only for Russia but also for many European countries. The article aims at identifying the risk factors of deprivation of the elderly in the field of social-labor relations based on the theoretical-methodological analysis of the classical sociological theories and works of contemporary Russian and foreign sociologists focusing on the issues of social deprivation. The authors developed a factorial model of deprivation of the elderly in the social-labor sphere, and by combining it with the results of sociological surveys conducted in 2017-2018 in the Penza and Saratov Regions and the Republic of Tatarstan, conducted a comprehensive analysis of the deprivation factors of the elderly in the labor sphere. The article emphasizes that the elderly form a heterogeneous social group: some of them are an object of social policy, protection and welfare system, while others are an active subject of social interactions. The deprivation of the elderly depends on external and personal factors that can be of objective or subjective character. Based on the data of empirical studies, the article reveals the most significant depriving factors for the elderly in the social-labor sphere: age, education, residence, professional status before retirement, self-assessment of health and standards of living, perception of one’s demand in the labor market, and the demand for the elderly in the labor market from the employers’ perspective. The results of the surveys allowed to identify areas of employment with the highest demand for the elderly - health care, trade and production, while the sphere of information technologies is closed for them. In general the choice and implementation of behavior strategies corresponding to the model of active longevity contribute to overcoming the deprivation factors.

The author defines nation as a territorial community of nativity and attributes significance to the biological fact of birth into the historically evolving territorial structure of the cultural community of nation, which allows to consider nation as a form of kinship. Nation differs from other territorial communities such as tribe, city-state or various ‘ethnic groups’ not just by the greater extent of its territory, but also by a relatively uniform culture that provides stability over time [22. P. 7]. According to the historical-linguistic comparative studies, “in terms of the history of mankind it is incontrovertible that some of the earliest and greatest human achievements have been accomplished in civilizations founded and headed by Afro-Asiatic peoples” [28. P. 74]. The Oromo people is one of the oldest nations in the world with its own territory (Oromia) and language ( Afaan Oromoo ). The Oromo possess a common political culture ( Gadaa democracy) and pursue one national-political goal of independence to get rid of the Abyssinian colonialism. Oromo national memories consist of memories of independence and national heroism, memories of the long war against expansionist Abyssinian warlords and the Abyssinian invasion of the Oromo land in the 19th century with the new firearms received from the African co-colonizing Western European powers, and these weapons were used not only to conquer the Oromo land but to cut the Oromo population in half. The Oromo nation consider the colonization of their country, loss of their independence, and existence under the brutal colonial rule of Abyssinia to be the worst humiliation period in their national history. The article consists of two parts. In the first part, the author considers the theoretical background of such concepts as nation, national memory, conquest humiliation, and some colonial pejorative terms still used by colonial-minded writers (like tribe and ethnic groups). In the second part, the author describes the Oromo national political and social memories during their long history as an independent nation from the Middle-Ages to the last quarter of the 19th century; presents ‘the Oromo question’ through the prism of the global history of colonization, occupation of their territory, slavery, and the colonial humiliation of the Oromo nation by the most cruel and oppressive Abyssinian colonial system; presents the two last regimes of the Abyssinian system and the final phase of the Oromo National Movement for sovereignty, dignity, and peace, which contributed greatly to the stability in the Horn of Africa.

The current state of the global social system assumes a compulsory external impact on the national communities of a complex of factors defined in social science as “globalization”. Together with the creation of the general economic, social, cultural space that intensifies the international interaction, globalization increases vulnerability of separate social systems. In recent decades, the strategies of J. Nye have become the most popular paradigms of the international competition: hard, soft, smart and intelligent power. The essence of the theoretical conceptualization of the “intelligent power” is that it is based mainly on internal resources and allows to focus on developing the national worldview platform consolidating basic meanings of social system and goals of its development. The possibilities of sociology as a resource of “intelligent power” are in its expert, scientific-educational, innovative and discursive potential. Unfortunately, despite its extensive and powerful network of the scientific-educational institutions financed from the budgetary funds, sociology still does not work in national interests. Sociology is the only social science with a full set of theoretical and methodological tools to gather and analyze social information, to predict social processes, and to work for the following spheres of “intelligent power”: think tanks with the participation of sociologists can provide authorities with necessary information, consult them on important decisions, stimulate interest in obtaining new data and starting new studies, serve as a platform for the interaction with professional researchers of social life; introducing educational programs competitive at the international level and based on the production of new knowledge and its effective use in the educational process; critical evaluation of foreign ideologies and conceptions with the subsequent development of one’s own ideas and new social paradigms taking into account national interests.

The article considers main approaches to the study of non-standard labor relations. Based on the conceptual model proposed by C. Rakowski, three approaches to the analysis of non-standard labor relations are presented: structuralist, neo-Marxist, and legalist. The author identifies methodological limitations and heuristic potential of these approaches, and using statistical and sociological data claims that non-standard labor relations are widespread in Russia (from 32 to 59 million people). The article presents different estimates of non-standard labor relations: some authors focus on their advantages, others - on disadvantages depending on the ideological positions and the object of analysis. The author insists on the methodological confusion in the study of non-standard labor relations in the legalist approach which combines informal economy with non-standard employment, making it difficult to consider beneficiaries and ‘victims’ of the emerging system. According to the studies, the benefits of non-standard labor relations are typical for entrepreneurs, while disadvantages - for employees. The author proposes to distinguish employees from non-standard labor relations and entrepreneurs in the informal economy, which allows to combine all concepts of non-standard labor relations and to identify winners and losers of such relations. The article also mentions reasons for the growth of non-standard labor relations: globalization, automatization of labor, changes of labor values, and social policy - under the evolution of capitalism as a historical system.

A comparison of liberalism and neoliberalism shows that conceptual contradictions of liberal ideas arise in the liberal hypostatization of various forms of social being. Therefore, the political liberalism will contradict the cultural one, and the legal liberalism will contradict the economic one. However, there are no fundamental differences between liberalism and neoliberalism: both are based on the same values and differ only in the sphere of their application. Liberalism, as a political practice, is intended mainly for the domestic use, while neoliberalism rather for the external use. In other words, neoliberalism, being an integral part of liberalism, presents the foreign-policy dimension of liberal concepts. Foreign policy is inherently aggressive: a number of French revolutionary governments should be recognized as the earliest forerunners of modern neoliberals. For instance, the foreign policy of the Convent clearly outgrew the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment and was aimed at enforcing liberalization on the European scale. The essence of liberalism is manifested in ousting the previous, partly traditional social, political and economic practices and in replacing them with the unified ones that should become the norm for the humankind. Neoliberals prefer to push their influence through the institutional pressure by using international non-governmental organizations, transnational companies, and the associated leaders of a number of countries of different levels of development. These organizations recruit personnel for management all around the world and constantly shuffle them, move from one country to another to create a new management culture intended for the neoliberal model of the global scale. The goal of neoliberals is almost the same as the goals of liberals (one can argue only about the means) and presents their foreign-policy version: neoliberals aim at reformatting the social space on the global scale by the abolition of the old states and introduction of a new social-political system, which is obviously manifested in the European Union, where the former states are gradually replaced by the regions, and the social policy aims at developing a new-European identity.

Books review: Boden M.A. AI: Its Nature and Future . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 156 p.; Collins H. Artifictional Intelligence: Against Humanity’s Surrender to Computers . Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. 232 p.