Article
От сытых нулевых - к молчаливым десятым: поколенческие уроки российской молодежи начала XXI в.
The paper presents an analysis of the key events associated with changes in youth culture and civic activities in modern Russia, occurring during the first decade of the 21 st century. Discursive representations of youth typical for this period (government programs directed toward the youth theme, media projects, activist initiatives), as well as policy responses to the growth of youth activities, including projects of youth mobilization, are also discussed. A key event - the financial and economic crisis (recession) in 2008 - is regarded as a turning point / the turn of the century, which particularly affected the reconceptualization of the youth question in modern Russia in different dimensions: political-activist, patriotic, urban, subcultural and others. In this article we suggest a new focus of considering new forms of youth activism, through the prism of the solidarity approach. We analyze key trends in new youth solidarities in the political, cultural and economic dimensions.
With low take-up of both private health insurance and the existing public drug reimbursement scheme, it is thought that less than 5% of the Russian population have access to free outpatient drug treatment. This represents a major policy challenge for a country grappling with reforms of its healthcare system and experiencing low or no economic growth and significant associated reductions in spending on social services. In this paper, we draw on data from a recent Levada-Center survey to examine the attitudes and social solidarity of the Russian population towards drug policies in general and towards the introduction of a proposed voluntary drug insurance system in particular. In addition to being among the first to explore these important questions in the post-Communist setting, we make three important contributions to the emerging policy debates. First, we find that, if introduced immediately and without careful planning and preparation, Russia’s voluntary drug insurance scheme is likely to collapse financially due to the over-representation of high-risk unhealthy individuals opting in to the scheme. Second, the negative attitude of higher income groups towards the redistribution of wealth to the poor may further impede government efforts to introduce voluntary drug insurance. Finally, we argue that Russia currently lacks the breadth and depth of social solidarity necessary for implementing this form of health financing.
The ethnographic tradition in which this research was conducted requires the nurturing of close and trusting relations between researchers and respondents. Building and maintaining this level of closeness, it transpired, also demanded significant emotional labour from all those involved since it meant overcoming the mistrust and inequality that haunt the research process. We addressed this by modelling our relations with respondents on the everyday practices of the group itself. We also tried to move beyond a purely formal commitment to ‘equality’ in our relations by recognising the equal right of the respondents to question and ‘research’ us. Adopting such an approach, however, had an unanticipated consequence; our interlocutors persistently expected ‘something extra’ from us and, through tests and provocations but also demonstrations of affection, turned the research process on its head, making themselves the agents and us the dependents in the research relationship
Clothing and fashion play significant role in the process of ageing, helping to put the bodily experience in the context of culture (Twigg 2000). It is especially important for young people as social subjects, becoming independent and not having sufficient experience and social competences. In this case, clothing is the space of social experiment in which youngsters socialize, explore, measure and learn to construct presentations of their bodies.This paper focuses on the meaning of fashion and clothing in everyday life of Russian working class youth mainstream without subcultural (or any specific cultural) background. Following results is based on 61 IDI with trade schools students of St. Petersburg. Conventionally, students of trade school are related to working class in Russia, whether representatives of middle or higher class associate themselves with higher education (Walker 2000, Zaslavskaya 1997, Belenkii 2005).
In the article the main sociological problem of social solidarity is discussed in terms of sociology of emotions. Emotions as integral part of human behavior operate on micro- and macrolevel of social structure and promote social consensus and make adjustments to normative behavior. On the basis of analysis of the body of works on sociology of emotions the author concludes that sociologists tend to study social solidarity through «moral emotions». Namely these emotions have strong effects on individual and social behavior and hold up moral order and social solidarity. In the author’s opinion moral emotions are the part of emotional regimes, which are developed in social order and support social solidarity.
Social capital is shown to be connected not only with macroeconomic indicators at societal level but with peoples economic behavior (n = 634). Relationships of social capital and attitude to money are considered. Assumption that social capital can fulfi ll the regulative function in peoples attitude to material resources which can manifest itself at individual level in peculiarities of attitude to money is expressed. As far as different forms of capital can convert into each other, persons high social capital must be joined with his lesser money - orientation. Social capital at the individual level has a negative infl uence on intensity of the following monetary attitudes (according to A. Furnham): Retention, Power, Inadequacy, Security.
Sociology of altruism, morality and social solidarity: introduction in a new field of study.
In the articles, reviews and abstracts submitted to your attantion under analysis are issues of social theory, empirical sociological studies, history of sociology. The contributions discuss the actual tendencies and perspectives of sociological science in Russia and abroad.
Some basic subjects of the history and theory of sociology are considered in this book. Among these subjects are sociocultural tradition; social cohesion; sociological theory; its development in the past, present and future; influence of fashion in this development; origins of interrelations of sociologies in France and Russia; epistolary genre in the history of sociological thought, namely in the work of Marx and Durkheim.
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.
We address the external effects on public sector efficiency measures acquired using Data Envelopment Analysis. We use the health care system in Russian regions in 2011 to evaluate modern approaches to accounting for external effects. We propose a promising method of correcting DEA efficiency measures. Despite the multiple advantages DEA offers, the usage of this approach carries with it a number of methodological difficulties. Accounting for multiple factors of efficiency calls for more complex methods, among which the most promising are DMU clustering and calculating local production possibility frontiers. Using regression models for estimate correction requires further study due to possible systematic errors during estimation. A mixture of data correction and DMU clustering together with multi-stage DEA seems most promising at the moment. Analyzing several stages of transforming society’s resources into social welfare will allow for picking out the weak points in a state agency’s work.