Vol 24, No 3 (2024)

In 2023, the Center for Sociological and Political Research of the Belarusian State University conducted a longitudinal sociological study “Family Formation, Stable Family Relationships and Fertility in the Changing Social-Economic Conditions” in the framework of the international project “Strengthening the Scientific and Educational Potential of the Republic of Belarus in the Field of Collection, Analysis and Use of Demographic Data to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”, implemented by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Republic of Belarus in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and funded by the Government of the Russian Federation. The conceptual and methodological basis of the study is the international research program “Generations and Gender” launched in 2001. Based on the methodology of this program, the similar studies were conducted in 26 countries, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Japan, Italy, Belgium, Norway, etc. The article presents the results of the second wave of the study, focusing on the current functional problems of the Belarusian family in the changing social-economic conditions: trends in family formation in the new life circumstances, criteria of stable family relations, and the evolution of social attitudes towards having children. The authors make conclusions about the dominant reproductive attitudes, the planned number of children, and changes in the family intergenerational relations. The results of the study will contribute to the development of additional measures to improve the state socialdemographic policy.

The desire to improve living conditions and social well-being has always determined efforts of both researchers and reformers, especially since the last quarter of the 20th century, filled with different types of development ideas. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda implies accelerating the pace of basic human development with “leaving no one behind”, focusing mainly on improving the standard of living. However, in the contemporary world, well-being has become a multidimensional rather than a purely objective-economic concept, which determines the need for relevant approaches and methods for assessing and ensuring social well-being, especially in the non-western, developing countries. The first part of the article presents an overview of conceptual approaches and empirical methods typically applied in the study of well-being as rather a universal and unambiguous phenomenon, which is not relevant for the contemporary social realities. The second part of the article presents a specific case (Ghana) proving the validity of criticism in relation to the objectively ‘biased’ measurements of social well-being. One of the key social-economic challenges in Ghana is the low standard of living, especially in rural areas and northern regions suffering from the “multidimensional poverty”. In Ghana, basic studies of welfare and measurements of poverty (supported or conducted by the state institutions) rely on the monetized consumption and income approaches, following the European Commission’s definition of poverty as a state of economic deprivation, thus missing its subjective and social dimensions crucial for ensuring equity and social justice. The authors suggest an interpretation of social well-being as a combination of personal (overall satisfaction with life), relational (quality of social connections) and societal (social integration, acceptance, contribution, actualization and coherence, institutional trust) measurements, i.e., a combination of economic wellbeing, life satisfaction and societal well-being in the assessment of poverty and inequality at the national level. This interpretation was tested in the sociological survey conducted in 2022 as a basis for such an understanding of social well-being that aims at reducing inequality and improving living standards through better informed policies and programs.

The article considers motivation of users of the “informal” sperm donation services and the new social phenomenon of ‘co-parenting’ which is defined in the sociological context as a new model of parenting - when a child is raised by two parents who are not in a traditional marriage. This new social phenomenon is associated with the spread of assisted reproductive technologies, in particular gamete donation, which allows infertile couples and single people to realize their reproductive rights. At the same time, ‘third’ parents (donors) can be involved in both giving birth and raising a child. Co-parenting creates new social relations and transforms traditional institutions of family and parenthood, raising questions about the legal status, rights and responsibilities of all participants, and about the impact of such a parenting model on socialization. In the contemporary society, the problem of infertility can be solved with new reproductive technologies: in addition to the traditional search for donors (through reproductive clinics), an alternative method has recently become widespread - the search for a donor of gametes (reproductive cells) on specialized websites. “Informal” gamete donation reflects deep social-cultural shifts in relation to reproductive technologies, which generates changes in parenting models, ethical norms, social attitudes and values. The authors conducted an empirical study, the object of which was the database of one such website (N=2960). This study allowed to present a social-demographic profile of the user of specialized Internet resources for finding a partner for joint childbirth in Russia, and the main motives of male donors and female recipients were identified. The results indicate the need for the improved access to formal donor programs and programs involving third parties in the parenting project, for the development of ethical standards regulating practices of “informal” sperm donation, and for further research to identify social, ethical and psychological consequences of “informal” sperm donation and effective strategies to eliminate negative consequences of this practice.

In recent years, the unfinished sentences technique has become increasingly popular, especially for identifying everyday interpretations of concepts with ambiguous connotations (e.g., patriotism, heroism, etc.). The authors applied the unfinished sentences technique to study the phenomenon of cancel culture, which has been included in the scientific discourse relatively recently. The article presents different approaches to the definition and study of cancel culture, focusing on possible consequences of this phenomenon for society, and some concepts that are associated with cancel culture and can provide (albeit partial) explanation for it. The article describes the procedure and results of the exploratory study conducted by the authors and based on the unfinished sentences technique. Thus, respondents tend to define cancel culture as a means of influence used by society in case of unacceptable behavior. Respondents believe that no one is safe from “cancellation”, but decent people are less likely to be among the “cancelled”. Contrary to the media position, respondents more often associate cancellation not with media personalities (as its most likely objects) but with everyday immorality and stupidity; therefore, in general, attempts to cancel someone are perceived negatively based on the belief that cancel culture leads to emotional and social problems. As a rule, respondents consider actors with abnormal behavior (criminals, dishonest people, etc.) as deserving cancellation, thus, considering cancel culture as a means of protecting society from the destructive behavior of its members. If “cancellation” affects their personal interests, respondents would use the following tactics: in case of their “cancelling” respondents would prefer to correct their mistakes; if their loved ones are cancelled, respondents would focus on support and assistance; if the organization whose services respondents use is cancelled, they would rather be indifferent, since this situation does not directly affect their personality or self-perception.

The search for an optimal model of local self-government that best reflects the interests of local communities has always been a pressing issue for the Russian Federation, since local government is closest to the population and is expected to solve most everyday problems. This issue is considered in the article based on the monitoring sociological studies conducted in the Krasnoyarsk Region as a micro-model of the Russian Federation according to many statistical indicators and sociological data. The results of the surveys allowed the author to make the following conclusions. First, the transition since 2010 to the indirect elections of heads of local government (“city-manager” and “council-commission” models) has not led to an influx of effective managers into power - heads of local government remain insufficiently effective and unpopular but win indirect elections provided the preliminary approval of their candidacies by the regional government. Second, the turnover among the heads of local governments has increased significantly: in half of the territories of the Krasnoyarsk Region, the heads elected in 2015 did not work until the end of the period under consideration from six months to three years; therefore, 2, 3 or even 4 managers held the position of the administration head. Such early resignations were initiated mainly by the law enforcement agencies (every fifth head of local authorities was convicted under a criminal article) and regional authorities. Third, municipal leaders have lost popularity, so the municipal elections turnout has significantly dropped. Fourth, over a ten-year period, the acuteness of social problems that worry citizens has not been eliminated or at least reduced. Fifth, the population’s self-assessments of financial situation and social well-being have deteriorated. All this indicates the risks of losing legitimacy by local authorities in the large Siberian region.

The basis for the effective use and mobilization of the resources of the scientificpedagogical staff (SPS) of Russian universities in the interests of their development are adequate approaches to assessment. The practices of the SPS assessment are a part of university management activities, and today these practices require critical analysis for identifying directions for their improvement. The relevance of this research task is determined by the lack of comprehensive knowledge about the resource potential of the academic staff of Russian universities and about the possibilities of this potential productive realization under the current resource constraints of the higher education. The article aims at presenting management approaches to assessing the SPS resources applied in regional universities and at identifying ways for their improvement. The empirical basis of the article is the sociological study conducted in 2023-2024 using semi-structured interviews with representatives of academic community (N = 40) and university management (N = 25) in the Ural Federal District. The authors focus on the shortcomings of the formalized approach to assessing the resources of the academic staff, which is mainly used in programs for the university development and is based on quantitative metrics and limited information base (reports, statistical data, HR department certificates). The comparative analysis of the opinions of the academic and administrative staff showed a critical discrepancy between their ideas not only about the qualities and resources of the SPS but also about the efficiency of approaches used to assess them. The practical significance of the study lies in the explanation of the need for the integrated qualitativequantitative approach to assess resources of the academic staff based on the principle of “necessary and sufficient”. This approach allows to reveal all critical points in the academic staff state and development and to ensure the speed and validity of decisions in the university HR management.

Public perception of artificial intelligence may not coincide with its actual capabilities, but it plays the key role in how algorithms are developed, implemented, used and regulated. Mass media are not bystanders to this perception but shape public opinion: they influence attitudes towards technologies by setting the agenda and framing news. Given the fact that the issues of artificial intelligence have become increasingly requested in search engines and discussed on news resources in 2023-2024, we need to focus on the dominants of technological discourse and control over the transformation of society under the influence of new technological forms/orders. The sociological study conducted by the authors aimed at identifying representations and strategies for constructing the image of artificial intelligence in the Russian media under the active implementation and routinization of algorithmic technologies. The study was based on the discourse analysis as developed by sociology of knowledge - to understand how social actors form and use discursive strategies to realize their own interests. The article presents the results of the analysis, showing how the media represent artificial intelligence, which actors participate in the discussion and what meta-frames for the technology the media use. Thus, the authors mention that the news discourse at the time of the study was not sensitive to the potential risks of algorithms: possible negative consequences were considered less often than advantages, and the list of threats was usually incomplete and rather hyperbolic. The authors focus on the tendency to perceive artificial intelligence systems as superior to human capabilities, which can lead to the anthropomorphization of technical progress, and, therefore, to new ethical and social challenges.

The 21st century has created new societies, states and communities that defend their uniqueness and difference. This phenomenon is not new, its age is comparable and may be equal to the age of humanity. The greatest instrumental opportunities for studying the phenomenon of identity are provided by the theory of values, in particular of the Baden school of neo-Kantianism. The transfer of basic values from one generation to another is extremely important for preserving social identity which is manifested in the feeling of a value connection with the past and other generations not only by history and culture, but also by ethics and teleology. Values are transferred through language, everyday practices and space organization. The values of space, along with ethnic, religious and linguistic ones, predetermine social identity; interrelation and mutual influence of values act as the identification basis of society. Using examples from France, Germany and Russia, the authors show the mutual influence of values, space and language, and the attempts to change social space and values through targeted linguistic policy, describing the impact of spatial structures on social identity and the effect of reverse influence under changes in social space due to the transformation of the field formed by the structured positions of actors. Thus, the article presents differences in the value bases of the space perception in the French, German and Russian sociological and geopolitical schools. The authors pay special attention to the axiological features of Eurasianism as focused on the traditional values of Russia’s peoples and on partnerships with those countries of the Eurasian space that reject globalism and radical liberalism in favor of multipolarity and national traditions.

Despite the claims of the contemporary society to progressive scientific rationality, it is difficult not to notice in our everyday life increasingly more manifestations of the “magic” in quite standardized forms, typical for the “consumer society”. The absence of an established sociological tradition for conceptualizing the magic and of the systematized empirical data for the study of its current forms explains the need for the reconstruction of the general logic of the revival of the magical/esoteric as a sociocultural phenomenon. The authors identify four conditional periods of the “magical renaissance”, which allowed the esoteric movement to acquire its features of a countercultural movement, criticizing the social order and providing space for experimental construction of identity and non-conformist self-expression (this is not a stereotypical secret community, closed to the uninitiated and hidden from the public, but rather open, internally differentiated systems of diverse structures and holistic ideas about the world order, which combine intuitive and spiritual beliefs with religious and scientific elements). In the Russian history, there are relatively synchronous waves of popularity of esoteric practices (with the exception of the second stage of the magical renaissance), so the authors identify common features of esoteric movements: a high level of commercialization, relative institutionalization, the predominance of people with higher education among members and followers, countercultural orientation, visual aestheticization, the private nature of practices, etc. Thus, the form, content and symbolic load of magical rituals of current esoteric movements can be considered in a structural-functional context - through collective problems, requests and needs reflected in ritualized actions (esoteric practices) which only look like manifestations of the archaic magical thinking.

The relevance of the issue under consideration is determined by at least two circumstances: first, leading representatives of cinematic sociology point to a sharp reduction in the number of empirical studies of films due to the “lack of proper informational and sociological support for the Russian cinema” [3. P. 74; 22. P. 152]; second, the narrative turn continues, “emphasizing the textual nature of all social practices” [24. P. 48] and the temporal characteristics of films. The authors, having conducted surveys of Tyumen moviegoers, which were ordered by the cinema owners in the spring of 2024 (N = 2502), use narrative analysis to explain moviegoers’ practices based on the rhetorical-functionalist theory of narrativity [19] and other relevant scientific approaches. Three groups of respondents were questionned: two target samples structured by gender, age, income and place of residence (582 people in cinemas using personal interviews; 438 people from the cinemas’ customer base using telephone interviews), and 1462 residents of Tyumen, and this sample was stratified by gender and age taking into account the characteristics of the cinemas’ target audience. The comparative historical method of narrative analysis was also used - the collected data were compared with materials on similar issues obtained by E. Altenloh 110 years ago [11; 12]. The article presents some empirical data with the results of analysis which included both formal procedures and those based on systematization of specialized literature and media discourses. The authors make the following conclusions: first, films that refer to famous plots, favorite characters and current narratives become especially popular with the mass audience; second, new interpretations of old stories have become key factors in the development of the contemporary film industry which largely sacrifices the semantic content for new aesthetic technologies.

The article is a review of the book Social Identification of New Religious Movements in the Republic of Belarus (Minsk, 2024. 664 p.) by V.A. Martinovich. This book presents a littlestudied aspect of culture - diverse new religious movements (NRM), peculiarities of their attitudes to society and public reactions to their activities. Based on the examples from the history of sociology of religion, the author argues that there is a gap between the typology of religious movements and the analysis of the diverse confessional space, including the empirical testing of its methods: identification of religious organizations with some types of religious movements is often replaced by the study of religiosity in its various dimensions and influences. Martinovich created a specialized archive with more than 600,000 units and developed an information-analytical mechanism for the data description, systematization and analysis - register of religious organizations, which allowed to identify information sources, differentiate them by the developed indicators, taking into account all representatives of the confessional space, and introduce the systematized data about NRM into scientific circulation. Thus, the quantitative indicators of actors in the confessional space and the degree of relevance of the content of NRM became an object of social construction. The study of the social identification of religious organizations shows considerable heuristic potential, making a substantial contribution to the conceptual apparatus of public discourse regarding NRM - their development and transformation, stigmatization, and moral and ethical problems associated with their activities.

The article is a review of the book by A.S. Breslavsky Suburbanization and the Future of Russian Cities: An Introduction (Moscow: Center for Humanitarian Initiatives; 2024. 170 p.). The author briefly presents an overview and interesting examples of regional forms and various ways of suburbanization, since the book is an introduction to this subject field. The author focuses not on details (figures and illustrations) but on the systematization of knowledge and data - the book includes an extensive reference list, allowing all interested readers to continue studies of suburbanization.

The article presents an attempt to review the collective monograph Typological Analysis in Sociology as a Diagnostic Procedure (G.G. Tatarova, N.S. Babich, G.P. Bessokirnaya, A.V. Kuchenkova; ed. by G.G. Tatarova, A.V. Kuchenkova. Moscow: FCTAS RAS, 2023, 358 p.), which summarizes many years of searches and findings of G.G. Tatarova with her students and colleagues in the subject field of typological analysis as a sociological method, meta-methodology, diagnostic procedure and a special direction in the development of sociological methodology. The book reconstructs the general logic of the evolution of the typological method, once again confirming the interdisciplinary status of the sociological discipline as successfully borrowing and adapting philosophical conceptualizations, psychological approaches and tools of mathematical formalization to its own tasks. The authors provide examples to demonstrate the possibilities of typological analysis as a diagnostic procedure and a tool for working with “big data”, clarifying both the heuristic possibilities of its methodological solutions and inevitable “methodological traps”.

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