Article
«Идеальный» президент глазами российских и французских студентов
The authors compare the normative views of Russian and French students concerning the President of the country. The research is based on 200 interviews conducted in Moscow and in Paris. In the majority of cases students offered similar key features of an ideal president. However, the research shows that the category of an ideal president has different meaning among the young of Russia and France. So similar at fi rst glance, the images of the ideal French and Russian leaders, in fact, refl ect the different national views on the personal qualities which are necessary for the head of modern state.
The study aims to find out how plagiarism and cheating as dishonest practices correlate with personal characteristics of students (e.g. their involvement in learning and research activities) and specific features of the learning environment. The survey of university students and professors conducted as part of the 2014 Monitoring of Education Markets and Organizations provided the empirical basis for research. The impact of factors was assessed using two binary logistic regressions with response variables describing presence/absence of cheating and plagiarism experience. We show that these types of academic misconduct are not affected by whether or not the university applies formal or informal plagiarism checking techniques. Professor intolerance to cheating and willingness to take strict punitive measures appears to play a more important role in preventing academic dishonesty. Probability of using dishonest practices is also decreased by such factors as intensive preparation for classes, confidence in working in one’s field of study in the future, orientation towards the quality of education instead of its accessibility when choosing university and major.
The article considers Weber’s theory of charismatic power as an interpretive model for the examination of religious beliefs. Traditionally, academic thought has interpreted the source of the power as either a leader’s personal characteristics or constructive actions performed by his / her group. Instead of searching for the causes of charismatic authority, I am interested in ways of performing charismatic authority and techniques for its realisation. My fieldwork was conducted in a remote Russian village with an Orthodox community, devoted to a spiritual elder (starets). Through careful ethnography, I will describe the post-Soviet conditions that have transformed a collective farm into a religious group, the group’s organisational characteristics, and the process by which the leader’s charisma is routinised. The main goal of the article is to analyse the communicative practices of the community. I suggest that many of the presuppositions on which our everyday face-to-face communication is based would not hold in a case in which an interlocutor, according to believers, had superhuman abilities (e.g., the ability to predict the future). Thus, the micro level of interactions can change the whole structure of a community. My primary perspective for the reconsideration of charismatic authority is a perspective drawn from linguistic anthropology.
This paper presents findings from in-depth interviews (N = 136) conducted among students at leading Russian universities. Qualitative analysis reveals a three-way divide in how the students imagine Russia’s future. The largest group is optimistic about Russia, seeing it as a global power. A second, smaller group expects Russia to decline in the coming years, while the third group is undecided and unwilling to make forecasts. The paper considers the arguments of the ‘optimists’ and ‘pessimists’, who respectively backed and criticized Crimea’s incorporation into Russia. The paper highlights the association between support for the annexation and optimism about Russia’s future.