Vol 23, No 2 (2023)

The author critically analyzes the ‘old’ linear and contemporary theories of socialcultural dynamics focusing on the trends of complexity and non-linearity. The article presents the contours of the concept of the sovereign future of the country based on the analysis of emerging objective and subjective determinants of a complex type, which are mutually influenced. The author argues that the most significant determinants, which determine the basic trends of the movement to the future, are as follows: social dynamics of space and time - reflections of actors; hybridization of society and nature - new opportunities and limitations for action; digitalization - transformation of the dualism of man and technology into their duality; metamorphoses of labor; hybridization of education - reflections of teachers and learners; increasingly complex determinants of health and disease - therapeutic reflections; value-normative dispersion - responses to the humanitarian crisis. The author believes that the formation of the sovereign future for Russia implies the innovative governance of the duality of objective and subjective determinants. The quintessence of this type of governance is a non-linear humanistic system of a synergetic type, which is based on the historical and civilizational conditionality and the national values foundation. Such a system will facilitate the movement to the sovereign future of Russia and will contribute to the formation of a new social type - a harmoniously developed and socially responsible person - as necessary and relevant for this movement.

One of the priorities of Russia’s scientific-educational policy is to increase the attractiveness of a career in science and higher education. The Russian government implements a number of federal programs aimed at involving the youth in research activities. Students’ research work is a traditional integral part of the educational process, an element of the generational continuity, of the formation and renewal of scientific schools, of tutoring and professional training. However, when students are involved in research, there are difficulties determined by the peculiarities of the organization of the higher education and by the students’ personal characteristics. The article considers the features of the participation of the Russian universities’ students in research, their scientific achievements and problems that limit or hinder their involvement in research activities, reduce their motivation and satisfaction with studies in general. The article is based on the survey of the Russian universities’ students, conducted by the Center for Education Development Strategy of the Moscow State University in November - December 2022 (N = 123977). The results of the survey show that, when studying at the university, students differ significantly in the quality and forms of training, realization of individual abilities and inclinations, level of motivation and requests for higher education. Therefore, the educational process should be organized in such a way as to comprehensively realize the students’ individual abilities, provide a flexible approach to educational trajectories and support the involvement of the majority of students in research activities.

One of the most important tasks on the way to the global sustainable development in the 21st century is gender equality. The article considers one aspect of this task - achieving more complete gender equality in the labor market by providing women with additional opportunities to combine professional and family responsibilities. The covid-19 pandemic contributed to gender equality in the labor market and to the growth of birth rate. On the one hand, digitalization and remote forms of employment allow women to better combine family and professional activities. On the other hand, for employers, the gender of the employee is becoming less significant. However, the impact of the pandemic on gender equality depends on the structure of the economy. Thus, in countries with a higher share or a more developed tertiary sector, remote forms of employment develop faster, which contributes to gender equality in the labor market. On the example of the BRICS countries the author shows some dependencies between gender inequality in economy and education, female employment and birth rate. Thus, in the BRICS countries with expanded and narrowed reproduction, a higher level of gender equality in economy corresponds to a higher level of fertility and a higher mean age of women at the birth of the first child. All BRICS countries show the direct relationship between birth rate and female employment: a higher level of female employment corresponds to a higher level of birth rate, and vice versa.

The first half of the 19th century was a period of dissidence and alternative social movements in Europe. The most famous and influential dissidents were A.I. Herzen and K. Marx. Both were supporters of socialism and founded movements that were destined to radically change the social life of the European East and West. They developed those social constructs of the future that are still in demand, since socialist and social-democratic ideas largely determine the contemporary political landscape. At first, both supported liberalism but later declared it unconstructive. Herzen criticized liberals for inventing the people rather than studying them and for demanding that everyone would become homo politicus to solve social problems. Marx became a preacher of dictatorship as the only way to build a just society in Europe, and often practiced authoritarianism which Herzen criticized. Herzen also criticized liberalism for its latent individualism and searched for a path to democratically reorganize the Russian society, which he considered mainly in the collectivist spirit. The author focuses on Herzen’s attempt to prove the possibility of bypassing the bourgeois formation of Marx by a ‘diagonal’ transition from pre-capitalism to socialism. Herzen considered capitalism a social failure, a ‘historical dislocation’ that developed in Western Europe but affected all peoples of the world. Herzen proposed an alternative construct with a certain potential for anticapitalist associations constantly emerging in various regions of the world - they try to create selfgoverning communities free from the shortcomings of bourgeois democracy.

Education is an important aspect in achieving the sustainable development goals as it affects all spheres of human life: economic, political, environmental, social, etc. Since the 19th century, scientists have warned the humanity about the devastating consequences of industrialization and urbanization and have made attempts of the natural-scientific enlightenment. Today we face many risks and challenges that threaten education the most, which made the authoritative international organizations formulate and adopt the so-called “Sustainable Development Goals”. The article outlines the key role of higher education in the transfer of knowledge, skills and values to achieve and promote the Sustainable Development Goal 4 “Quality Education for Sustainable Development” (SDG 4). Since sustainable development aims at creating a society competent in the principles of sustainability, SDG 4 should be achieved at all levels and in all spheres of social life based on the recent trends in rethinking educational policy. Today this policy aims at increasing economic, environmental, political and social knowledge, which should ultimately help people solve the problems of the contemporary society. The article considers the implementation of the SDG 4 and the current state and trends in the educational policy in the global perspective.

The phenomenon defined as self-organization implements its cognitive-analytical function in many disciplines - physics and chemistry, cybernetics and computer science, economics and sociology, psychology and cultural studies. Russian and foreign researchers study forms and practices of self-organization of the rural population and, as a rule, consider them through the factors that affect the pace, forms and quality of social-economic transformations, material appearance and event dynamics of the non-urban living space. The most effective factors that affect the reconstruction of the social space of rural areas and, in general, optimization of the rural world are managerial, social-economic, innovative, demographic and urbanistic, climatic and environmental, and also factors of complementary and intermediate character. The authors systematize the main principles in the study of self-organization practices of the rural population, which are empirically manifested in their regional and subject-activity features (local nature, cultural and ethnographic traditions, changing composition of the local population, their work habits, indicators of professional skills and diligence). All the above historically develops into a kind of genius loci (“spirit of place”, “genius locus”) as densely packed in customs and determining mechanisms for the development of initiatives by subjects of self-organization, who aim at building such institutional mechanisms and practices that cannot but contribute to the transition to a new development trajectory, first of individual segments (households, farmer associations, etc.), and then of all basic elements of rural society, which are embodied in the everyday life of rural ‘localities’.

The article is a review of the book by M.K. Gorshkov, S.N. Komissarov and O.I. Karpukhin At the Turn of the Era: Social Dynamics of Russian Culture (Moscow: FCTAS RAS, 2022. 703 p.). The book is of great theoretical and social-political significance and outlines new horizons for the development of sociological science. The authors emphasize the strategic role of culture as the core of the Russian society and its importance for successful social modernization and economic growth. The book provides new concepts and theoretical-methodological approaches to the analysis of the social-cultural reality in post-reform Russia and defines the field of sociology of culture as the entire human world in its specific spatial-temporal coordinates, taken in dynamics that reveals the intercultural interaction between the past, present and future. Culture is presented in the book as an environment for the preservation and transmission of spiritual heritage, which contributes to the ‘immunity’ from the destabilizing information impact. The authors consider the issues of the social dynamics of the Russian culture in the late 20th - early 21st century on the data of many sociological surveys, conduct a social-cultural analysis of organizational, structural and qualitative changes in the cultural activities of the population and in the artistic-creative process, present a comprehensive picture of the social dynamics of the Russian culture at the turn of the era, including the state of the spiritual-value motivation, the social-cultural nature of transformations and their social-cultural consequences.

The article is a review of the book by A. Etkind, which is based on the data of sociology, history, economics, political science and statistics: the author describes the relationship between raw materials and humankind to suggest a way out of the dramatic collision ( The Nature of Evil. Raw Materials and the State . Moscow: New Literary Review, 2023. 504 p.). The second edition of the book confirms the relevance of its agenda in the contemporary situation. The chronological framework of the book covers the history from antiquity to the present day: the author shows how the key raw materials changed from timber and grain in the past to oil and gas in the present, and how such changes affected not only tastes and lifestyle but also political systems and economic vectors, which, in turn, had the opposite effect on the choice of raw materials. The author argues that the desire to possess raw materials and the intensity of their extraction and processing determined the geopolitical interests of the states, led to wars and, ultimately, to new state borders. The author introduces the concept “addictivity of raw materials” in the life of the individual and societies, which implies an unjustified dependence on a certain type of raw materials (sugar, tobacco, opium or oil), and this dependence led to global disproportions and changed the ‘natural’ historical process.