Article
Открытое письмо профессору Л. Г. Титаренко
The article examines the status system of the local academic community of St. Petersburg sociologists. The list of most cited authors was obtained from citation analysis of selected Russian sociological journals. The results suggest that the status system is divided in isolated segments with few citation exchanges between different segments. Each part of the sociological community produces its own list of influentials. With a few exceptions there are no authors central for the whole community. Even the embeddedness of various segments in the same local space does not stimulate circulation of attention between different parts of the community.
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.