No 2 (2012)

The article presents criticism of a widely spread assertion of the progressive nature of the world's monotheistic religions. The author identifies the differences in understanding the social nature of religions in different cultures: religion as private faith; religion as the duty of respect towards the community, its Gods and ancestors; religion as the path of cognition. Ethnic religions are considered, primarily, as social ones; while metaphysical religions are viewed as religions of the elites.

The methodological problems of the expert judgment method are examined in this article. The author describes the basic stages of forming and applying this method, and builds a model for cases of non-definable systems. The unique nature of the expert judgment method is substantiated while studying a special class of phenomena, which cannot be analyzed with other methods, including those considering the specific state of modern society.

The article reviews the definitions of social activity, existing in the scientific literature, and the author attempts to formulate his own definition so that subsequently, having described the specific nature of the virtual space on the basis of the latest studies of its Russian segment, it would be possible to propose a variant of the definition of social activity suitable for the analysis of the phenomena of interaction and communication in the Internet computer network.

The article represents an attempt in the format of qualitative sociological research aimed to compare the value-based (cultural) systems of communities formed by different migration waves. The key differentiating feature of the Russian diasporas is the specific basic identity and the purpose of residence outside the country of origin. The author points to the monopoly of the country of origin as a characteristic of identification; he also analyzes the possibility of rivalry, though not in a short-term perspective.

The development of the infrastructure in modern municipal entities is one of the most pressing problems of the Russian state. This article focuses on the analysis of the results of researches, which describe the characteristics of the infrastructure in big cities of Russia. The poor condition of urban roads, poor quality of health services, inefficient functioning of the culture and leisure complex - these problems are very important today for the population of big cities.

The article is devoted to the analysis of six main models of customer behavior in contemporary society and the specific tasks of marketing departments of companies at today's stage of development. The given models take into consideration: motives for choosing a product, the degree of product awareness and independence of choice, the degree of customer satisfaction with the product, lines and possibilities of making an impact on customer choice through marketing and promotion stimulation. The author believes that these models may serve as a basis in the formation of effective marketing strategies, as they describe the customers in all the stages of their actions in the process of buying products, accumulating and analyzing the experience of using them.

The article gives a brief description of historic conditions leading to the formation of nations, and on the basis of attributive features of a nation the set of national interests is identified. Considering national interests as a variable, the author stresses that they depend both on the wishes of ordinary people and on the ability of the state to streamline them in a constructive manner. National interests are classified according to their dynamic characteristics, and the special role of the state as the mouthpiece of national interests is pointed out.