Vol 20, No 2 (2020)

Today physical, biological and social worlds develop increasingly quicker and in a more complex way that includes the phenomena of metamorphoses. Traditionally, they were considered as determined mainly by external factors, i.e. the forces of nature. Contemporary metamorphoses seem to become of a complex man-made nature. Compared to traditional metamorphoses with ‘rigid’ and predictable results, contemporary metamorphoses of societies can produce both negative and positive consequences, which proves the non-linear dynamic picture of the world. There is also a traumatic tendency - when something is metamorphosed into ‘nothing’. Due to digitalization, ‘nothing’ becomes more complex and ‘pure’ from cultural and humane characteristics, thus, revealing new expressions of the ‘death’ of the social: humans are metamorphosed into ‘digital beings’. Metamorphization of society can produce common goods as a side effect of the bad. The author argues that the formal-rational, pragmatic transformations of society and nature, like the scientific and technological innovations of mercantile type, deform and dehumanize life-worlds. The global traumatization in the form of ‘liquid’ catastrophes permanently changes the living and non-living nature, structure of soil, water and air, desocializes human relations, facilitates transformations of something into nothing, people into ‘non-people’, places into ‘non-places’, things into ‘non-things’. However, people as reflexive actors can turn metamorphoses into ‘things-for-man’. To start this process, it is necessary to change the pragmatic monodisciplinary principles of science by the interdisciplinarity ones to ensure a humanistic turn in science and technologies.

This article aims at filling some theoretical gaps in understanding status liminality as a ‘transition state’ in the processes of social mobility. Based on the ideas of A. van Gennep and V. Turner on the nature of rites de passage, the author reconstructs the types of status liminality - ascending, descending, recursive, permanent liminality and liminoidity. The article identified some features that distinguish liminality from marginality and deviance: transitivity - the altered preliminal position and identity combined with the incomplete metamorphosis; temporality - normative temporal and (possibly) spatial boundaries of the transition period; consequentiality - social significance of the postliminal status transformation for both its bearer and society or social groups involved. The phenomenon of ‘communitas’ discovered by Turner is of particular importance for understanding the state of liminality for it represents a tendency of liminal people to depart from the ‘mundane domain’ into the anti- and non-structural social-psychological state in which social ties are vividly affective and social experience has a profound existential effect. For each type of status liminality, the author provides examples from the traditional and modern societies using research in sociology of death, medical sociology, criminal sociology, sociology of tourism, social psychology, etc. To conclude, the author considers such phenomena as precariat, morphological freedom and edgework in the liminality perspective. Thus, the heuristic potential of the concept ‘liminality’ can make a significant contribution to the study of social changes and understanding mechanisms of reproducing social order at the individual, group and societal levels.

The article aims at presenting theoretical difficulties of sociology of morality and possible ways to overcome them. The importance of this issue is determined by the necessity of the scientific study of moral elements of the contemporary society in order to prevent its dehumanization. Sociology of morality focuses on the empirical study of various moral phenomena (justice, duty, conscience) in the social space. At the first stage of such a study, sociologists conduct observations and collect data, and at the second stage, they generalize moral facts to identify moral patterns. In sociology, morality is considered as an element of society; therefore, it is not analyzed by itself but within a system of social relations. One of the difficulties of such studies is the ambivalent nature of morality, i.e. its existence in both public and individual consciousness: if sociologists ignore the individual mode of morality, they misrepresent the content of moral facts. Another reason for theoretical difficulties in the study of morality is that sociologists use outdated ideas about the nature of moral truths and researcher’s impartiality - moral judgments are considered as not being true or false, and the researcher should ignore his value attitudes when collecting and analyzing data. The elimination of these difficulties can lead to the loss of the sociological research specifics and to the merger of sociology and moral philosophy. Representatives of the ‘new sociology of morality’ have to reform this field but ensure its status of an independent scientific discipline. One of the ways to solve this task is to use ideas of analytic philosophy, in particular, of moral realism that defines moral qualities as qualities of real things, and moral truths as having the same status as scientific truths.

The article considers the document ‘Foundations of the State Youth Policy’ and its implementation in the Russian regions. This analysis allowed the authors to show that the document provides neither a political strategy nor effective management measures. The authors present the results of the analysis of the youth policy implemented by government agencies online - on the websites of regional administrations and in the social network VKontakte. The websites do not provide any current information, while the social network, on the contrary, is quite effective. The article describes the perception of the state youth policy by regions and local communities based on the empirical research conducted in 2018-2019 in 7 regions of the Russian Federation - the Tver, Kursk, Pskov, Astrakhan, Rostov, Moscow Regions and the Republic of Karelia. The main methods of data collection were in-depth interviews and focus groups (43 interviews and 26 focus groups). Respondents represented regional and municipal administrations, including departments of the youth policy, local enterprises - industrial, commercial, hotels, etc., health and education organizations, cultural institutions and youth groups. There were also focus groups with the youth: 3 groups with university students and 3 groups with students of special secondary institutions. The article shows inefficiency of the ‘two poles’ approach - when the state aims at supporting the talented youth and the most vulnerable groups (orphans, children from dysfunctional families, etc.). Such an approach excludes from the policy and public discourse the ‘middle’ youth that needs but lacks rather participation in the life of the country than financial support. Today only the ‘forum campaign’ is implemented, in which the youth are happy to participate, but this campaign cannot strengthen the youth’s social role. Thus, there is still no system youth policy in Russia.

The study of mass consciousness is one of the most pressing sociological issues. Historical memory is a part of mass consciousness, and it is obvious that the historical memory about any event has its specifics in different societies. Today memories about the World War II became an object of manipulation for various political forces that aim at changing public opinion in favor of particular parties, and the youth is especially affected by such influence. The student youth is a reactive social force and can subsequently transfer such influence into actions. Therefore, the study of the international students’ types of historical memory provides a unique opportunity to reveal the global perception of the World War II. The article presents a typology of historical memory based on the classical structure of social attitude as consisting of affective (views on the justice of the war results), cognitive (knowledge of the war milestones) and behavioral components (knowledge and participation in commemorative events, and family stories). There are nine types of historical memory: personal-historical, dispositional, formal-historical, emotional-historical, fragmentary-historical, mythological-historical, subjective-historical, value-historical, ‘lack-of-memory’. The majority of students have an emotional-historical, formal-historical types and ‘lack-of-memory’. Without ‘lacking-memory’ students, the share of which is smaller among Russian students, foreign students have mainly an emotional-historical and formal-historical types of memory, while Russian students rather formal-historical and value-historical types. The article explains the way for identifying types of memory. Thus, it can be useful for methodologists and researchers in sociology of history.

Religious values as the most important component of the worldview can significantly affect various aspects of human life - from everyday practices to political preferences. The analysis of changes in religiosity shows that in the post-Soviet space, there is a clear tendency of the transition from atheistic attitudes to the religious revival. In the contemporary Kazakhstan society, a complex model of religious identity develops - it combines ideals and norms of religious consciousness with ideas of spirituality and national revival, but the confession values can often only be of an external, declarative nature. According to different studies, in Kazakhstan, the share of believers following religious practices increases. The question is whether people really observe religious rites and traditions and follow religious regulations. The article summarizes the results of the study conducted by the Center for the Study of Public Opinion to assess the religiosity of the Almaty urban community. The survey showed that the share of people who identify themselves as a part of some confession is significant; however, this is not a direct indicator of the increase in the number of true believers seeking to actively follow all religious rules and practices. The article presents the data on the activity of respondents in religious practices, their knowledge and understanding of some religious postulates. The study showed that the religious renaissance among the youth can be accompanied by undeveloped religious consciousness and insufficient religious knowledge, which provides grounds for the dissemination of pseudo-religious ideas including the extremist ones.

In the Republic of Belarus, the authorities chose public-private partnership as an alternative to privatization which allows to keep socially important objects in the state property. The results of the survey of entrepreneurs and civil servants show the readiness of the authorities and business for equal partnership under the proclaimed socially oriented market economy. On the example of the metropolitan region, the authors analyzed the institutional-adaptation period in the development of public-private partnership in Belarus. The sociological approach to the study of public-private partnership aims at considering the relationship ‘power-business-society’ as a system of interdependent actions of civil servants, entrepreneurs and population. The analysis of behavioral strategies of participants of this interaction was conducted through their social expectations with the methods of expert surveys of entrepreneurs and civil servants and an opinion poll of the population of Minsk. The authors made the following conclusions: society is only an observer due to the poor knowledge of public-private partnership; the behavioral strategies of entrepreneurs are determined by regulatory-legal factors, of civil servants - by system-legal factors; the key barrier for the public-private partnership projects is the low assessment of one’s qualifications by civil servants and entrepreneurs; entrepreneurs consider civil servants as competitors in conflict situations and define their style of behavior as ‘pressing’; the state prefers contracts as the main form of interaction with business, which emphasizes the independence of partners. Therefore, the state and entrepreneurs take risks and responsibilities in the public-private partnership projects in the agreed shares, and the authorities fully control such projects.

The article considers digital literacy as a fundamental component of the media competence development. The study of the history of the issue and analysis of the existing theories showed that the research focus on the digital literacy of the adult population and do not take into account minors who demonstrate the highest interest in media technologies. The authors develop a theory of the deep mediation of the social space and argue that the indicators of digital literacy of schoolchildren should correlate with the data on teachers, who, according to the contemporary educational strategy, are responsible for increasing the media competence of society - starting from the media-oriented courses in school. In 2019, the authors conducted a survey “Media competence of schoolchildren and teachers” (N=500+500) in 10 cities of the Volga Federal District with the lowest digital literacy index. Based on the results of the comparative analysis, the article identifies a number of challenges in the field of media literacy, in particular digital literacy, and the main one is the digital divide between two generations (schoolchildren and teachers), which indicates a communication barrier that hinders interaction not only in education, but also in the social space. While schoolchildren demonstrate high interest in media technologies, their teachers seem not to be interested in media technologies not only in professional activities but also in everyday life. The authors believe that the inverse correlation of the digital literacy levels of schoolchildren and teachers prevents the harmonious development of the media competence in the Russian society.

The article presents the results of the empirical testing of the authors’ model of the social-intellectual features of facial expressions recognition by the Russian and Asian students, and of the personal emotional, cultural and social intelligence. The importance of the research at the theoretical level is determined by the need for a cross-cultural social-psychological study of holistic constructs related to the personal social, cultural and emotional intelligence and recognition of emotions. At the practical level, the dynamics of Russian-Asian relations, in particular of the student mobility, explains the need for competent social-psychological support of foreign students in the internationally oriented university, which consists mainly of developing the intellectual potential and corresponding flexible skills. The authors empirically confirmed the hypothesis of the common grounds and specific features of the manifestation of structural, functional and substantial, dynamic and procedural components of the proposed model of intellectual personal manifestations in recognition of facial expressions. The hypothesis was empirically tested on the RUDN students (242 respondents) by the factor analysis: the study confirmed the common basis for the manifestation of structural components of the model (social-personal and active), presence of the substantial-regulatory factor in the substantial component, implementation of anticipation, adaptation and regulation in the functional component, reflective-evaluative manifestations in the substantial component, and manifestation of the dynamic and procedural components. Specific features of the model are determined by such differences as the unequal dynamics of each group of components (structural, functional, substantial) due to the cultural-social requirements and norms beyond the psychological domain, which require further research through the cultural-integrative and ethnic-specific conditions (theoretically also represented in the model).

The article compares the Russian and Western strategies of higher education and scientific training and their implementation in the state policy. The author considers the three-level structure of scientific training which includes in the West Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD programs, while in Russia in the previous period - specialty, PhD program - to defend the thesis and get the degree of Candidate of Science - and Postdoc program - to get the degree of Doctor of Science. After Russia signed the Bologna Declaration at the Berlin Conference of ministers of education in September 2003, these differences were eliminated and already in 2010 Russia implemented all basic principles of the Bologna process by having transformed its system of education and scientific training on the basis of the British-American model. The author considers both advantages and losses of this reform. Thus, Russia introduced the same education standards with the West and accepted the single certification system (Bachelor, Master, PhD), which is certainly a positive side of the reform. On the other hand, by removing the specialty level, Russia lost the basis for mass scientific training without the Master’s level: today we have a negative situation in the system of higher education, when thousands of young people with Bachelor’s degree cannot find job or continue studying and scientific career without Master’s degree, but they do not have money to pay for Master’s program due to financial difficulties. As a result, the production and science systems do not get enough qualified specialists and young scientists for whose training the state has already spent a lot of money. The author concludes that it is necessary to use effective foreign experience but without ignoring the Russian education and science achievements and with taking into account national traditions and specifics of the national development.

This article is a review of the book by Zh.T. Toshchenko The Society of Trauma: Between Evolution and Revolution (Theoretical and Empirical Analysis) (Мoscow: “Ves Mir”; 2020). In recent years, a new type of political violence has developed - traumatization of consciousness, which is especially typical for ‘the society of trauma’. The book by Toshchenko examines the challenges that the world and Russia face due to the complex changes in public consciousness, which are mostly of a man-made character. Previously the research focused on the relatively individual questions such as ‘pathological agency’ (P. Sztompka) or construction of the politically biased meanings that traumatized the public consciousness (J. Alexander), while Toshchenko defines the issue much broader - dysfunctional changes of the whole society - and studies its transformations through the realities of ‘the society of trauma’, the features of which can be seen in different countries that entered the path of a long, turbulent, unstable and unsustainable development. In the societies of trauma, there are no clear worldview ideas, which leads to gaps and paradoxes in the public consciousness and to the loss of life guidelines. Political pressure on the public consciousness is exerted through ‘soft power’ based on demagogy about democracy, freedom and human rights. Toshchenko sees the way out of the society of trauma and the way for overcoming the ideological and political anomie in the development of civil activity and the strategic goal and means to achieve it. The book allows to identify further research topics, in particular, the study of new mechanisms for traumatizing the public consciousness, which would help to search for the transition of our society to the humanistic development trend.