Article
Russian Faith Matters: Religiosity and Civil Society in the Russian Federation
Inspired by recent studies of the relationship between religiosity and norms of civic participation in the West, the authors examined four areas of possible correlation between similar norms and values in contemporary Russian society: authoritarianism, charitable giving, volunteering, and support for NGOs. The authors obtained survey responses from 1,500 randomly selected Russian citizens from 105 urban and rural locations in 43 regions across the Russian Federation. Results emphasize that in Russia, as in much of the developed world, active religious attendance matters and that the impact of such behavior in Russia is generally prosocial, not authoritarian, and possibly driven by the moral discourses found in religious communities. Results also suggest that the impact of religiosity in Russia is diminished by the relatively small segment of the population that claims regular religious attendance. Together these results highlight the importance of further studies of pious Russians’ behavior and beliefs.
Everything connected with the issue of economic and social inequality is very urgent and rather debating in many countries. It has reached its bolding point. Why?
This chapter presents main features of giving in modern Russia. This includes state of the third sector, of the governmental support of the civil society, citizens’ engagement into monetary donations and significant factors that influence it.
Russia is a country with a long-standing philanthropic tradition. Its philanthropic sector underwent an intensive process of institutionalization from the mid-19th century up to the revolution of 1917. The post-Communist transit after 70 years of a state monopoly for solving social problems spurred the formation of a new nonprofit sector, which supplemented the insufficient public sector to satisfy the needs of Russian citizens. The third sector in Russia is still modest in size and its relationship with the state is rather complicated. Nevertheless, the sector developed into an important actor in a public life. From the typological perspective of Salamon and Anheier (1998), Russia is characterized by the social-democratic nonprofit regime as judged by its current ratio of public expenditure funding sources. The state is the largest donor supporting the nonprofit sector, namely socially oriented NPOs. However it is still rather suspicious about human rights activities and third sector’s participation in politics. These factors obstruct third sector development, preventing NPOs from securing financial stability. Formal channels of monetary donations are relatively weak in Russia, majority of Russians are most trustful of giving money directly to the needy that to NPOs. Citizens are often poorly informed about NPOs and do not trust many of them. Basing on all-Russian mass-polls data about direction, amount, frequency of giving is provided as an evidence for this thesis.
This book presents the results of public opinion surveys on participation in charitable activity in Russia. This includes volunteerism and donations, as well as surveys on attitudes towards issues related to interaction between the State and charity providers. These surveys were conducted by the Center for Civil Society Studies and the Non-profit Sector (State University — Higher School of Economics) within the framework of monitoring the status of civil society in Russia.
The data provided characterizes the environment for the development of charitable activity in Russia, the level of the Russian people’s participation in volunteer work and charitable donations, assessments of the interaction between the State and charitable organizations, and between Russian and foreign charitable organizations. This book will be of use to social and political scientists, economists, teachers and students of the social sciences, experts, and anyone interested in the status of charitable activity and civil society development in the Russian Federation.It is known that charity, as with any social institution that depends on both external and internal factors. In this article the author analyzes the relationship of charity and the level of development of such internal factors as trust. The analysis was conducted on a global level and at regional level in Russia. The resulting lack of relationship to regional level and its presence in the world say that in Russia at the moment there is no required number of relevant data, based on which one could draw a conclusion about the level of philanthropy.
This paper provides an analysis of the expirience of St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Karelia in the field of interaction between civic organizations and regional parliaments. The research is based on comparision of legal regulation and practical implmentation of civic participation in different regions.
Overview of philanthropy for internationally focused audiences.
Summary
The article concerns interpretations of the term «civic engagement», operationalization of civic engagement phenomenon.
Objective To define indicators of civic engagement. The article consists of three parts. Firstly an interpretations of the term, secondly indicators of civic engagement and finally the characteristics and features of civil engagement in Russia. Methods of research
Public Opinion Foundation interviews for citizens of the Russian Federation aged 18 and over. These took place in person at the interviewees’ place of residence. Results
Foreign and Russian researchers have observed that civic engagement is a complex concept with no universal meaning. Researchers emphasise that behavioral practices and ideological preferences (such as social and interpersonal trust and willingness to cooperate) are significant components of civic engagement. The empirical section of the study indicated that Russians show a tendency to be involved in individual informal aspects of civic engagement (i.e., helping behavior). Participation levels in the activities of not for profit organisations and interest in politics appeared insubstantial. In short, dissociation between the citizens and the state was revealed in the sphere of civic engagement.
Practical implications
The results may prove a useful framework in the analysis of empirical social and political surveys.
Several approaches to the concept of fatherhood present in Western sociological tradition are analyzed and compared: biological determinism, social constructivism and biosocial theory. The problematics of fatherhood and men’s parental practices is marginalized in modern Russian social research devoted to family and this fact makes the traditional inequality in family relations, when the father’s role is considered secondary compared to that of mother, even stronger. However, in Western critical men’s studies several stages can be outlined: the development of “sex roles” paradigm (biological determinism), the emergence of the hegemonic masculinity concept, inter-disciplinary stage (biosocial theory). According to the approach of biological determinism, the role of a father is that of the patriarch, he continues the family line and serves as a model for his ascendants. Social constructivism looks into man’s functions in the family from the point of view of masculine pressure and establishing hegemony over a woman and children. Biosocial theory aims to unite the biological determinacy of fatherhood with social, cultural and personal context. It is shown that these approaches are directly connected with the level of the society development, marriage and family perceptions, the level of egality of gender order.
This article is talking about state management and cultural policy, their nature and content in term of the new tendency - development of postindustrial society. It mentioned here, that at the moment cultural policy is the base of regional political activity and that regions can get strong competitive advantage if they are able to implement cultural policy successfully. All these trends can produce elements of new economic development.