Vol 23, No 3 (2023)

The study of cultural diversity and relevant models of diversity management, including historical patterns of cultural dominance, helps to form immunity to the latest manifestations of Eurocentrism. As a new approach to diversity, interculturalism implies a shift in the focus from the diversity of cultures and multicultural coexistence to the culture of diversity. The main dimensions of the culture of diversity are awareness of diversity, recognition of diversity, engagement in contexts of diversity, and the creation of more common public spaces. Another important trend is rethinking the diversity: a) its destigmatization as a phenomenon associated with Others, with exotic and peripheral loci, and representation of diversity as an advantage in terms of creativity and innovation; b) conceptualization of contemporary social and cultural contexts in terms of superdiversity. Unlike the classical concepts of multiculturalism, interculturalism focuses on both positive contacts as the most promising way of social integration and social dynamics in local contexts of superdiversity. However, the understanding of these processes differs in the political (G. Bouchard), social (T. Cantle) and cultural (R. Zapata-Barrero) directions of interculturalism. Under the destruction of social structures and institutions, interculturalism focusing on the development of interpersonal contacts and relations across borders can become a basis for the search for compromises and mutual understanding. However, the ideas of interculturalism and the processes launched by it turned out to be ‘locked’ in Western contexts, outside of which polarization is obvious in both political and cultural spheres. These tendencies imply an epistemological and ontological distinction between the West and Russia, producing gaps in the social-cultural space, patterns of escalation of schismogenesis and cultural encapsulation, and the rejection on intercultural contacts.

The article aims at revising Durkheim’s pejorative assessment of utilitarianhedonistic impulses as the reasons for the differentiation of labor in the consumerism perspective. The author considers Durkheim’s criticism of economism and utilitarianism through his theory of social solidarity as having moral rather than utilitarian foundations and shows the transformation of Durkheim’s concept of solidarism and the idea of division of labor based on it in social practices of the contemporary consumer society. Thus, the concentration of morality in the rules (according to Durkheim) that regulate social behavior proves that the rules and morality of the consumer society are determined by consumerist values and make every individual play the consumer role. The inconsistency of solidarism under consumerism is expressed in the fact that, despite the high degree of social integration which demands that as an organic part of the social we have to ‘sacrifice’ ourselves to this whole, in the consumer society, there is a reverse trend - the dominance of consumer values, attitudes and stereotypes which determine models of social behavior based on selfishness. In the second part of the article, the author considers utilitarian-hedonistic needs multiplied by consumerism as one of the key reasons for the progress and differentiation of labor. Hedonistic intentions manifested in consumer practices should be considered not as mental or psychological (according to Durkheim) but as social facts. The author argues that Durkheim’s concept of social solidarity, which seeks to overcome economism and utilitarianism in the interpretation of the progress of labor, may be of scientific interest as an alternative (moral) approach. However, it ignores the potential of the permanent desire for pleasure in the social-cultural environment of consumerism; therefore, in the consumer society with appropriate morality, this approach loses to the utilitarianeconomic interpretation of the progress of labor. One of Durkheim’s main arguments in the critique of the hedonistic and eudemonistic causality of the progress of labor is that if the differentiation of labor aimed at increasing happiness and pleasure, then this progress would have reached its limits long ago, but the contemporary consumer society proves the opposite.

In the contemporary society, under globalization, digitalization, urbanization and networkization, the body acquires new meanings, is included in new discourses and becomes a significant object of sociology. The article considers the possibility of sociology of the body as an independent scientific direction similar to such directions as sociology of medicine, sociology of sexuality, feminist sociology, sociology of sports, sociology of food and nutrition, sociology of aging, etc. The problem of the body has a long tradition of scientific research, and the author identifies the prerequisites for sociology of the body in various areas of social knowledge: philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and general sociology. The author describes four basic research fields in sociology of the body: body as an object of social control; issues of sex and gender; body as an object of consumption; body and technology - development of biotechnology and selftracking technologies. These thematic blocks of sociology of the body are not isolated from such related fields as sociology of medicine, sociology of sexuality, feminist sociology, etc. All directions in the sociological study of the body are interrelated; however, each of them, including sociology of the body, has its own research field. Thus, sociology of the body studies the body in all its diverse social manifestations; the body as an element of social structure and social action; mutual influence of the body and contemporary transformations, such as urbanization, globalization, digitalization, networkization, etc.; emerging social movements focusing on the construction of identity and of the individual corporal project. The body becomes a project that can/should be improved and promoted. The “formed” body reflects such life attitudes of the individual as a sense of style and taste, attitudes to health, self-control, etc. Thus, through the body, the individual creates one’s social representation and identity: the image of “I”.

The article presents the results of the interdisciplinary philosophical-sociological study of heroism. In the theoretical introductory part, the authors conducted the semiotic analysis of the concept of heroism in the context of the concept of chronotope in Western-European culture; identified the constants of the Russian semantics of the ‘hero’, ‘heroism’ and ‘heroic’; described the dynamics of changes in the meanings of the ‘heroic’, ‘deed’ and ‘feat’. The sociological approach follows the philosophical understanding of heroism and considers this phenomenon through a social relationship (In N.K. Mikhailovsky’s perspective). To comprehend the relationship between the hero and the crowd, the authors refer to such sociological approaches as creative and relational theories of social action and P. Donati’s relational sociology. The empirical part presents the results of the sociological survey of 1,350 Russians from different generations in eight federal districts; thus, the authors consider the concepts of hero and heroism as representations of collective (historical) memory. The empirical study consisted of two parts: the first one focused on the collective memory of Russians and their historical knowledge, the second one - on heroes and heroism in the interpretation of the Soviet and post-Soviet generations. The results of the first part show the general weakening of collective memory, and the events of older history are less interesting and less known than, for example, those of the Soviet period. Most of the significant events in the Russian history are perceived as triumphant, not as traumatic, and most military campaigns, including the current ones, are perceived through the figure of the winner, not the loser. Respondents believe that there was more heroism in the past. Heroism is associated with such personal qualities as strength, activity, a sense of duty, desire to save others not for profit, the ability not to give up even in the most difficult situation. The hero is perceived not only as a savior, but also as a truth-seeker, which is especially significant for Soviet generations.

The quality of education directly depends on the level of the teachers’ professional training. There are many measures to improve the quality of education and teachers’ professionalism, and a significant part of them, including programs of the Russian national project “Education”, aim at providing a system for the professional development of the pedagogical community. One of the means in the trajectory of the personal-professional development of teachers is a professional standard. It has been implemented over the past ten years; however, there are still difficulties and limitations in its implementation, the elimination of which implies a systematic approach and special social-managerial mechanisms based on the following methodology: theory of social fields by P. Bourdieu, concept of a personified social-cultural management model by A.V. Tikhonov, and the dispositional theory of personality by V.A. Yadov. To identify the specifics of social-managerial mechanisms for the implementation of the teacher’s professional standard, the authors conducted a survey of pedagogical workers of educational organizations in the Orel Region. The respondents of the expert survey were heads of educational organizations and specialists of municipal structures in charge of the education system. The survey focused on teachers’ awareness of the content of professional development, their attitudes to the state education policy and expectations from the teacher’s development system and the national project “Education”. The survey showed a rather optimistic perception of the education system modernization by teachers, despite the ambiguous assessment of its specific measures. The need in developing personal-professional competencies of teachers by means of the additional professional education is obvious: a complex of such competencies is a condition for the perception of innovative and managerial processes. Social-administrative mechanisms should be based on the increasing subjectivity of teachers, their intentional and active readiness to participate in modernization of the education system. The study of the state policy measures in the field of the teachers’ professional development allowed the authors to identify four groups of mechanisms: motivational, control-evaluation, organizational and adaptive. Each group has specific features, but they are interconnected. The authors argue that we need to understand and take into account the tasks and regulatory, resource and procedural features of the identified mechanisms in order to minimize the risks of social conflicts and maintain social order in the education system.

In unstable conditions, the scale of extremism as a form of illegal actions tends to grow. The statistical decrease in the number of extremist crimes was the result of legislative changes. In the risk group, there are primarily young people from 18 to 30 years old, who are more susceptible to psychological pressure from extremist and terrorist organizations, and especially the student youth, who have already begun to escape from parental control but still did not achieve the full adult responsibility. Public calls for extremist acts are based on various social-psychological mechanisms of influence and aim specifically at this age group. A low level of emotional intelligence, empathy and psychological well-being is essential for entering an extremist environment. In January- February 2022, a survey was conducted to test the hypothesis of a relationship between the level of empathy and propensity to violent extremism. The article presents the results of this survey, such as the lack of direct relationship between the level of empathy and the age. The survey’s unexpected result is that the general level of boys’ empathy is higher than that of girls, and girls are more likely to be extremist when they have a higher level of empathy. Thus, an increasing level of the youth’s empathy seems to be a way to prevent extremist behavior withing a comprehensive program but not a universal strategy for countering youth extremism. The article can become a basis for an effective pedagogical strategy to prevent extremism and to reduce the youths’ risks of being involved in it. The developed approach should take into account the gender peculiarities of empathy, which influence the manifestations of violent extremism.

Informatization of society has led to a set of fundamentally new problems that humanity has not faced throughout the history of its development. These are the challenges of ensuring the information security of man, society, the state and the entire biosphere of our planet. The article considers the key information security issues of the contemporary world. The authors focus on the nature and essence of information, analyze the concept of information security in a wider and narrower interpretations. They argue that the practices of applying information technologies without ensuring the necessary information security significantly increase the likelihood of information threats, primarily the information inequality, the possibility of manipulations, cyber illnesses, computer crimes, information warfare, etc. Artificial intelligence is one of the key elements of the information age, which is already able to analyze, process and classify huge volumes of rapidly changing and extremely heterogeneous data; thus, the widespread use of artificial intelligence technologies becomes an essential factor in ensuring information security. Artificial intelligence can facilitate the free exchange of information, but it can also be used to spread disinformation and fake news. At the same time, the content moderation for information hygiene purposes can be based on the artificial intelligence algorithms. Thus, artificial intelligence technologies can and should serve as a means of ensuring personal information security. This means that security measures must be comprehensive and include not only instrumental and technological but also ideological and cultural measures - educational in nature, providing the appropriate orientation of the individual.

The relationship between Russia and Mongolia in the civilizational and geo-political paradigms of Central Eurasia development is extremely important for political science, sociology and regional studies. The authors’ definition of Central Eurasia differs from the generally accepted neutral interpretation due to its connection with a specific civilizational space - three local civilizations - the historically summarized limits of their dominant influence. The article considers the following limits of the influence of the Mongolian, Russian and Chinese civilizations from ancient times to the present: the great steppe empires (from the state of the Xiongnu to the Great Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan) with the center in Mongolia, the Russian Empire and the socialist camp with the center in Russia (USSR), and the economic corridor Russia-Mongolia-China with centers in three countries. The recognition of the taxonomic equilibrium of Russia, China and Mongolia as the cores of the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian civilizations, united by the space of Central Eurasia, allows to reconsider the Russian-Mongolian relations from ancient times to the present. The authors admit the existence of the world civilization hidden in Inner Asia and based on more than two thousand years of the nomads’ written history - the Mongolian civilization. The authors develop a new scientific direction - civilizational political science which considers the interaction between societies through the intertwined civilizational world order. The authors believe that civilizations cover the entire global space; introduce the concept “cascade of the civilizational boundaries”, which requires a combination of modeling methods and geoinformation technologies with cultural-historical ideas; consider the historical tradition of relations between Russia, Mongolia and China in the Eurasian region as being revived in the new context of trilateral cooperation.

The article is a review of the book edited by M.K. Gorshkov Historical Consciousness of Russians: Assessments of the Past, Memory, and Symbols (Sociological Measurement) (Moscow: Ves Mir, 2022. 248 p.). The author identifies the key characteristics of the theoretical-methodological tools of this sociological diagnostics: analysis of civil identity through the national-state symbols; identification of specific features of the historical memory of social, regional and generational groups about the significant achievements of society and the state; representativeness of the sociological data provided by a multi-stage stratified sample. The article describes seven most significant characteristics of the historical consciousness of Russians as factors strengthening the civil identity and the country’s sustainable development. The author argues that the book has both theoretical and practical significance due to being based on a comprehensive multi-aspect analysis of the historical consciousness and to providing grounds for a national strategy for sustainable development and for new approaches to teaching sociologists. The author makes some proposals of courses that would help younger generations of sociologists to develop critical thinking, historical consciousness, and sociological imagination.

The article presents an overview of the IV Forum “Sociology of Health: Contemporary Healthcare in Dialogue with Everyone” organized by the Research Institute for Healthcare Organization and Medical Management of the Moscow Healthcare Department on November 17, 2022. The article summarizes presentations made by sociologists, heads of medical organizations of Moscow and other Russian regions, academic researchers, and representatives of non-profit organizations. The authors identify four key social and humanistic aspects of dialogue in the healthcare system: value basis, methodology, role of the civil society, and main issues. The Forum focused not only on methodological issues, but also on the applied research, such as projects aimed at smoking cessation, motivating to blood donation, developing psychological support service for cancer patients, etc. The authors emphasize the need for social-humanitarian technologies in the healthcare system for its patient-oriented transformation, including introduction of sociological monitoring.