No 3 (2011)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the concept sense of touch, which is considered in all its aspects and dimensions. The author's aim is to determine what is touch in terms of philosophy, what types it has and what traditional functions (i.e. prior to the emergence of virtual reality) each of these functions performed. The conducted research allows the author to make a conclusion about the importance of perceiving the role and significance of man as a homo tangens - man touching and tangible.

The phenomenon of constructing social problems by the mass media is a very significant and symbolic feature of contemporary society. The article systematizes the basic characteristics of the so called constructivist approach to the analysis of the functioning of the mass media that was developed in the 1970s as an alternative interpretation of 'public institutions', primarily, of the mass media, their role in the actualization of social problems and assigning this status to the events in the world around. On the basis of a bright example of the approach under consideration - the agenda-setting theory - the authors make an assessment of the constructivist potential of the print mass media in contemporary Russian society.

The growing complexity of today's world, faster social and technological innovations and the resulting impossibility to explain the universe in terms of the classical, traditional systems lead to the emergence of new social and cultural patterns, behavioral standards and particular thinking which make up new sub-cultural paradigms. In this article the author attempts to identify the basic factors forming youth sub-cultures and define their peculiar features in contemporary Russian society.

The paper considers the adaptation resources and practices of urban Udmurts on the basis of sociological research. The authors point out that a considerable number of urban Udmurts could not fully adapt to the changing social realities. On the ethnic scale, it leads to failures in the transfer of ethnic culture from generation to generation.

The article presents the results of the sociological research The analysis of the image of the beggar in the Moscow underground, using the methods of unstructured interview and semantic differential. The author analyses the prerequisites for the emergence and the current state of the poor in Russia. She also proposes some principles of identifying and assessing the images of perceiving beggars based on applying projective methods and the quality approach to the collection of sociological data. As a result of the research, the methodology was tested and Moscow inhabitants' perception images of the beggar were assessed.