Vol 22, No 2 (2022)

The basic question of sociology is what sets of rules and order are used in society and how they are maintained. One possible answer is based on the concept of institutions, which still provokes theoretical discussions due to, among other things, a certain ambiguity, since the term ‘institution’ is, figuratively speaking, shrouded in a kind of fog that prevents it from being captured in any direct, clear way. Today, ambitions of philosophy, political science, anthropology or mathematical game theory, which try to solve this problem outside the sociological framework, contribute to the deepening of the ambiguities surrounding the concept of institutions. Some approaches tend to define institutions as a cyber black box with inputs and outputs, whose working remains largely hidden (especially philosophical and mathematical approaches strive to find some common universal principle or even mathematical formula). From the perspective of general sociological theory, the article considers the topic of institutions. The author identifies this topic as a central issue that needs to be reconsidered in sociology. The starting point of the article is the analysis of concepts related to the topic, their definitions and paradigmatic integration. In the following part, the author considers the theoretical interpretations in the works of Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann, John Searle, and the concepts inspired by game theories and rational behaviour theories. After that, ten basic issues of the current approaches are identified. The author pays particular attention to the fact that methodological individualism tends to dominate, which explains the ignorance of certain issues, especially of a holistic and macro-social nature, thus, leading to some problematic simplifications. The article shows what needs to be changed in the current social-scientific thinking on institutions in order to develop a more appropriate starting point for the further development of sociological theory.

The relevance of studying the social consequences of the covid-19 is determined by the fact that this transforming event affected the most diverse aspects of life in the Russian society. The article presents the results of the survey conducted on the sample of the Moscow residents in mid-2021. The majority of respondents considered the coronavirus as a dangerous disease that should be taken seriously. The phenomenon of coronavirus, due to its complexity, poor knowledge and mass distribution, has acquired not only a biomedical, but also a political, economic and media dimension. The information field about the origin, sources and measures to combat this disease experienced changes over time and was often contradictory. A typological analysis showed that there are several groups with different social ideas about the origin, control measures and social consequences of the covid-19. A significant group - about a half of respondents - shared ideas that were alternative to the official and dominant interpretation of the coronavirus in the information field. The study revealed that the agreement on the dangers of the coronavirus was combined with the priority of personal choice of means to combat it. The majority of respondents (61 %) were against the introduction of mandatory vaccination: among the most popular motives were doubts about its effectiveness and fears of its side effects; the priority of individual choice and the rights of citizens rather than the state. A statistically significant relationship was found between attitudes towards mandatory vaccination and trust in government: a low level of agreement with mandatory vaccination obviously correlates with a low level of trust in leading social-political institutions. The authors show that the Russian media discourse on the need for mass vaccination was accompanied by a wide spread of ideas that rigidly differentiate Russian citizens, which cannot but cause concerns about the tasks of ensuring social stability and unity of the Russian society.

When implementing national projects, there is an issue of the expert group formation due to the need in new management mechanisms that meet the meritocratic demand of the Russian society for an effective state under the transition from the “control and supervision” paradigm to the “smart management” paradigm. National projects should not be left out of the wider public discussion and real participation of different target groups, which is determined by the tasks of the power-administrative vertical - to answer external and internal challenges in the implementation of 12 national projects. The result of the established expert group formation is the structure of decision-making groups. To identify the effect of group formation, the authors introduce the parameter ‘cohesion’-‘disagreement’ in expert groups during the development and implementation of project solutions. The study aims at assessing the state of expert groups (decision-making), which reflect the level of the regional development, including social-cultural modernization. On the basis of the presented theoretical-methodological foundations, the authors developed a methodology for identifying socio-mental groups that are formed in the decision-making groups and work on the implementation of national projects. This methodology consists of the scales of experts’ access to the regional management (index “activity vs passivity”) and the scales of solidarity of experts with the position of power, political and managerial activities of all levels of the power-administrative vertical (index “support vs disagreement”). The structures of the expert groups were correlated with the integral indices of the regional development as presented in the social-economic and political-administrative rankings. Thus, on the basis of statistical procedures and identified expert groups, the authors assessed the ‘disagreement’ and ‘cohesion’ of expert decision-making in achieving national goals.

The article considers the methodology for assessing higher education institutions and prospects for their promotion in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The authors explain the focus of their research by the latest trends in the development of higher education in Russia and in the world; thus, universities positions in international ranking systems become an extremely important parameter for their evaluation. International ranking systems allow to evaluate the whole analytical information according to the criteria in one source, and to assess the competitiveness of the data in comparison with other evaluated organizations in the field. Often a potential student faces difficulty in collecting and evaluating information about the university he is interested in, because it hides its weaknesses, does not provide all information in the open form, or publishes information in various sources that are not easy to find for a person outside the academic community. The article aims at identifying and systematizing the features of the methodology for assessment universities in the ARWU, and at assessing its applicability for the subjects of the Russian higher education. The authors used content analysis and comparative analysis to examine the specifics of the ARWU assessing system according to the criteria provided by experts, and to consider the criticism of this ranking system. The authors identified and analyzed both positive and negative trends in the development of the ARWU methodology; examined the subject rankings of the ARWU system and compared their methodology. The article presents the results of the ARWU for 2021 focusing on the Russian universities, their prospects and difficulties.

Social-demographic characteristics of the individual and social groups are studied by many natural, social sciences and humanities. One of the most important characteristics is age which reflects the degree of physiological, psychological and social maturity; therefore, it is considered by sociological and legal sciences which rely on its statistical estimates in sociological, criminological and forensic research. Age characteristics are important for legislative and law enforcement activities, in the prevention of social deviations. Age characteristics, for example, of persons who broke the law, are used in the social portrait of crime, which reflects the social-group stratification and emphasizes the most significant features of the social group consisting of persons with deviant consciousness and behavior, i.e. allows to classify criminals. The study of juvenile delinquency helps to identify the features, conditions and trends of such crimes, i.e., to assess the reproduction of crime due to its youth part. Such studies have a pronounced victimological orientation and describe not only the personality type of the juvenile criminal, but also the personality type of the victim of a criminal assault, which has not only cognitive, but also practical significance - for developing measures for combating and preventing crimes. The article focuses on the age characteristics of juveniles participating in the criminal process in the status of accused, victims and witnesses. The authors emphasize that the investigation of such crimes faces difficulties due to the age characteristics of this social-demographic group; therefore, the knowledge of the typology of juveniles (their agerelated psycho-physiological and socio-moral characteristics) is the key to establishing contact with them and, accordingly, to choosing the best methods for obtaining the most complete and truthful information. This conclusion is confirmed not only by the publications of other authors, but also by the data of criminal cases and sociological surveys of investigators, experts, judges and juveniles participating in the investigation of crimes.

Abstact. There is a lot of evidence that most people are capable of recognizing emotions by facial expressions. What information does a facial expression usually provide? Can emotions be shown without facial expressions? Can there be facial expressions without a corresponding emotional state? Are there individual facial expressions? The studies of various aspects of non-verbal communication show both similarities and differences in non-verbal behavior. It is argued that similarities are most evident at the individual level, when the focus is on the objective, formal features of behavior, while differences are more likely to be found when the analysis focuses on the relationship between individuals and interpersonal meanings of behavior. Despite the rapid expansion of research on non-verbal communication, most of it describes simple differences in the display of non-verbal signals. Although they differ in almost every other respect, most facial measurement methods focus on what is seen, on what the researcher can identify when seeing some facial movements. Most of the research methods applied are not sufficient for the study of this complex, multidimensional issue. Like all basic studies of communicative processes, proxemics is more about how than why, and more about structure than content. The article focuses on the question whether non-verbal behavior reflects cultural similarities or differences, and whether different levels of analysis allow to observe both cultural homogeneity and diversity inherent in most acts of non-verbal behavior. The authors consider the data of laboratory experiments on the relationship between emotions and adults’ facial expressions: some studies confirm the high consistency between fun and smiling, and from the low to moderate consistency between other positive emotions and smiling. The available evidence on surprise and disgust suggests that these emotions are accompanied by their ‘traditional’ facial expressions or even some components of such expressions only in a minority of cases. The American anthropologist, one of the founders of kinesics, Birdwhistell introduced this term for the complex study of facial expressions, poses, gait, and visible movements of arms and body. Birdwhistell argues that body language is determined by cultural environment rather than universal genetic programs. Birdwhistell defines kinesics as “the study of body-motion as related to the nonverbal aspects of interpersonal communication”. He argues that communication with body motion is systemic, socially learned and communicative unless proven otherwise. The article considers in detail the works and theories of Birdwhistell who often had to admit that some of his ideas were controversial. The authors conclude that Birdwhistell’s works have serious mistakes, and other researchers failed to develop his theory of kinesics. Thus, the authors consider the research in this field focusing on the so-called recognition of the communicative meanings of facial expressions.

The article is a review of the monograph of the professors of the Department of Ontology and Theory of Cognition of the RUDN University V.M. Naidysh and O.V. Naidysh Civilization and Rationality. Essays on the Philosophy of Mythology (Moscow: Rusains, 2020. 286 p.) which explores social-philosophical and epistemological aspects of the civilizational approach. The issues of rationality and civilization are connected by the theory of consciousness presented as a form of reflection of reality by the active subject included in the networks of (direct and indirect) communication systems, as an integrator of cognitive activity, sensory-emotional experience of the world and volitional intentionality of the subject. The review focuses on two civilizational paradigms - civilization as an ethnosociocultural community and civilization as an institutionalized society that developed during the ‘Neolithic revolution’. The monograph analyzes a wide range of issues: theoretical-methodological prerequisites of models of the historical process, origins of the civilizational model of history, concepts of civilization in the 19th - early 21st century, the structure of the foundations of civilization, the role of rationalism and myth-making in the life of civilization, processes of rationalization and derationalization of culture, the genesis of thinking, the nature of the archetypes of culture, the formation of rationalism in the cultures of the Ancient East, concepts of barbarism and neo-barbarism, etc. The monograph also examines the debatable issue of possible prospects of civilization: among the models of post-civilization, transhumanism seems to be the most popular (the program of the artificial transformation of the natural-biological foundations of man). The authors call for a balanced and critical perception of transhumanism, because its most radical, extreme versions are a contemporary form of ‘social alchemy’.

The article is a review of the book Old-Developed Regions in the Sociogeographic Space of Russia: History and Contemporaneity prepared by a team of authors under the scientific editorship of T.G. Nefedova and A.V. Starikov (Moscow: Association of Scientific Publications KMK, 2021. 379 p.). The book is the result of the long-term research project “Development of the old-developed areas under the social-economic polarization and shrinkage of the developed space in European Russia” supported by the Russian Science Foundation in 2019-2021. The authors of the book note that it is time to abandon unrealistic declarations about the further development of all regions of the country, and to start rethinking the significance of the old-developed Russian regions and the possibilities of their re-development on the basis of their accumulated cultural heritage and human capital. The research focuses on two macro-regions of the Russian Federation - Central Russia and the Urals. The study is multiscale and interdisciplinary, it combines a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods of social sciences. Despite the statement that there is a further polarization and shrinkage of the developed Russian spaces, the authors find many confirmations of the possibilities of self-organization and sustainable development in the old-developed regions for the benefit of the whole country.