Article
Новые данные, новая статистика: от кризиса воспроизводимости к новым требованиям к анализу и представлению данных в социальных науках
The article analyzes main causes and consequences of the interdisciplinary crisis of the reproducibility and reliability of the results of scientific research that has unfolded in the social sciences in parallel with the «data revolution». This crisis is expressed not only in the growing concern of scientists about the reliability of research results and the possibilities to establish the practices securing the transparency of empirical data and the statistical software used for their analysis, but also in disputes on limitations of the routine approach to significance testing and feasibility of alternatives based on Bayesian approach. Some aspects of the relationship between theory and data-driven methods of searching for patterns in empirical data are briefly discussed in the context of describing a new approach to multimodel analysis aiming at evaluation of model robustness and model uncertainty.
This small collection includes translations of Max Wber's famous works: Politics as a Vocation and Main Sociological Concepts. They were written almost simultaneously and can be seen as compliments to each other. The translator introduced the collection. In his essay he outlines main problems of Max Weber theoretical and political sociology.
While many past theoretical discussions on nature of social norms were centered on a problem of their precise definition, I propose an analysis of peculiar character of sociological theorizing about norms which is grounded in a wider interdisciplinary context (particularly, on sociologically relevant implications from H.L.A. Hart’s and H. Kelsen’s views on law and norms) and based on systematization of principal norm-related questions which varying types of theories attempt to answer, i.e., nature of norms, social mechanisms of their maintenance and change, analytic and empirically-based distinctions between norms and rules and conventions, irreducible complexity of norms, etc. Besides, the chapter presents a systematic review of classical and modern approaches to elucidation of intricate relations between multiple normative systems, e.g., law and morality. I also discuss some recent arguments against moral relativism in social sciences brought forward by S. Lukes.
The article argues that sociological analysis of justice and fairness perception phenomena requires a closer examination of their purported relationships with everyday descriptive knowledge available to social actors. The results of an experiment studying relationships between individual judgments on fair division of putative centralized transfer payments addressed to different groups of the general population and subjects ordinary pre-existing knowledge of relevant social and economic facts are presented and analyzed. The experimental results obtained indicated that in most cases no significant correlations between individual judgments on just distribution of money transfers aimed at 1) equalizing average salaries for those working in different economic sectors and 2) Internet-access levels for different age cohorts, on the one hand, and relevant everyday predictions for salaries and Internet-access distributions, on the other hand, were observed. The weak-to-moderate correlations between individuals everyday cognitions and their justice-related judgments were revealed only in few cases for particular groups of hypothesized money transfers beneficiaries and could have a direction contrary to theoretically expected one. The results obtained give some indirect support to a cognitivist theory of moral feelings (R. Boudon) and cast doubts on popular broad interpretations of the Thomas theorem.
The first volume contains articles devoted to the problems of sociology of space, as well as the theory and the history of sociology. The main issues considered here are the theoretical analysis of the phenomena of empire, the theoretical problems of mobility and globalization and the perspectives of sociological theory in Russia. The are followed by the articles on the value of the classical works of J.-J. Rousseau, F. Toennies, M. Weber et al. The conluding chapters are devoted to the German conservative sociology of intellectuals.
The collective monograph contributes to theoretical understanding of the mutual influences and reconfigurations of scientific and lay knowledge about society. This book summarizes the results of theoretical, historical and sociological studies of varying conceptualizations of social knowledge in different disciplinary fields of social sciences, carried out on the basis of an analysis of a representative corpus of classical and contemporary works. The contributors to this volume make use of conceptual tools of the sociology of knowledge, theoretical sociology, as well as modern methodological approaches of cognitive social science in order to attain generalizations about inner mechanisms of reciprocal influences of ordinary social knowledge and social sciences and to make first steps toward closing the lacunae in our understanding of the processes of reflective reconfiguration of scientific and common-sense knowledge about society. These processes are illustrated with examples taken from a broad range of disciplinary areas: sociology of science and social studies of professions, social ecology and bioethics, social epistemology,modern social theory and conceptions of “folk sociology”. The book is supposed to be useful to readers in many different fields of social sciences and humanities, including those studying sociology at advanced level. It also will make an immediate appeal to the general reader familiar with contemporary social theory.
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.