In America today, two communities with sub-Saharan African genetic origins exist side by side, though they have differing histories and positions within society. This book explores the relationship between African Americans, descendants of those Africans brought to America as slaves, and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, who have come to the United States of America voluntarily, mainly since the 1990s. Members of these groups have both a great deal in common and much that separates them, largely hidden in their assumptions about, and attitudes towards, each other. In a work grounded in extensive fieldwork Bondarenko and his research team interviewed African Americans, and migrants from twenty-three African States and five Caribbean nations, as well as non-black Americans involved with African Americans and African migrants. Seeking a wide range of perspectives, from different ages, classes and levels of education, they explored the historically rooted mutual images of African Americans and contemporary African migrants, so as to understand how these images influence the relationship between them. In particular, they examined conceptions of ‘black history’ as a common history of all people and nations with roots in Africa. What emerges is a complex picture. While collective historical memory of oppression forges solidarity, lack of knowledge of each other’s history can create distance between communities. African migrants tend to define their identities not by race, but on the basis of multiple layers of national, ethnic, religious and linguistic affinities (of which African Americans are often unaware). For African Americans, however, although national and regional identities are important, it is above all race that is the defining factor. While drawing on wider themes from anthropology and African studies, this in-depth study on a little-researched subject allows valuable new understandings of contemporary American society.

Contributors to this volume discuss a variety of ways the African past (African history) influences the present-day of Africans on the continent and in diaspora: cultural (historical) memory as a factor of public (mass) consciousness; the impact of the historical past on contemporary political, social, and cultural processes in Africa and African diaspora.

This volume is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

This book is based on the collection of articles centered around Russia and its policies. The articles are grouped under three parts. The first part contains articles on international relations, Russian foreign policy, and the situation in the world. The main themes they cover include Russian policy in Asia and the Eurasian integration — in which Moscow plays the most active role.

The second part looks at the theorization of Russia’s internal processes, issues concerning reforms to the communist system, its troubled transition from Communism, and analysis of the country’s current political regime. While elaborating on various reforms and transition from the communist system, the author has suggested certain alternatives concepts. Many of the articles analyze the shortcomings and inconsistencies of the modern Russian political system.

The third part is devoted to current issues in Russian politics, the democratization process, growing authoritarian tendencies, mass protests, and that evaluate the programs and policies of individual leaders. The book will be of interest to those specializing in Russian foreign and domestic policy as well as to all those interested in following the developments of this country, its role in the world, and the global situation in general.

Working Title: From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Liability

Subtitle: A Socio-Legal Study of Corporate Liability in Global Value Chains

Series: N/A 

 

A number of recent events in the last decade have renewed interest in Russian discourses on international law. This book evaluates and presents a contemporary analysis of Russian discourses on international law from various perspectives, including sociological, theoretical, political and philosophical. The aim is to identify how Russian interacts with international law, the reasons behind such interactions, and how such interactions compare with the general practice of international law. It also examines whether legal culture and other phenomena can justify Russia's interaction in international law. Russian Discourses on International Law explains Russia's interpretation of international law thrugh the lens of both leading western scholars and contemporary western-based Russian scholars. It will be of value to international law scholars looking for a better understanding of Russia's behaviour in international legal relations, law and society, foreign policy, and domestic application of international law. Further, those in fields such as sociology, politics, pholosophy, or general graduate students, lawyers, think tanks, government departments, and specialised Russian studies programmes will find this book helpful.

Liberalism in Russia is one of the most complex, multifaced and, indeed, controversial phenomena in the history of political thought. Values and practices traditionally associated with Western liberalism—such as individual freedom, property rights, or the rule of law—have often emerged ambiguously in the Russian historical experience through different dimensions and combinations. Economic and political liberalism have often appeared disjointed, and liberal projects have been shaped by local circumstances, evolved in response to secular challenges and developed within often rapidly-changing institutional and international settings. This third volume of the Reset DOC “Russia Workshop” collects a selection of the Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism conference proceedings, providing a broad set of insights into the Russian liberal experience through a dialogue between past and present, and intellectual and empirical contextualization, involving historians, jurists, political scientists and theorists. The first part focuses on the Imperial period, analyzing the political philosophy and peculiarities of pre-revolutionary Russian liberalism, its relations with the rule of law (Pravovoe Gosudarstvo), and its institutionalization within the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). The second part focuses on Soviet times, when liberal undercurrents emerged under the surface of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. After Stalin’s death, the “thaw intelligentsia” of Soviet dissidents and human rights defenders represented a new liberal dimension in late Soviet history, while the reforms of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” became a substitute for liberalism in the final decade of the USSR.  The third part focuses on the “time of troubles” under the Yeltsin presidency, and assesses the impact of liberal values and ethics, the bureaucratic difficulties in adapting to change, and the paradoxes of liberal reforms during the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Despite Russian liberals having begun to draw lessons from previous failures, their project was severely challenged by the rise of Vladimir Putin. Hence, the fourth part focuses on the 2000s, when the liberal alternative in Russian politics confronted the ascendance of Putin, surviving in parts of Russian culture and in the mindset of technocrats and “system liberals”. Today, however, the Russian liberal project faces the limits of reform cycles of public administration, suffers from a lack of federalist attitude in politics and is externally challenged from an illiberal world order. All this asks us to consider: what is the likelihood of a “reboot” of Russian liberalism?

This book examines the waves of protest that broke out in the 2010s as the collective actions of self-organized publics. Drawing on theories of publics/counter-publics and developing an analytical framework that allows the comparison of different country cases, this volume explores the transformation from spontaneous demonstrations, driven by civic outrage against injustice to more institutionalized forms of protest. Presenting comparative research and case studies on e.g. the Portuguese Generation in Trouble, the Arab Spring in Northern Africa, or Occupy Wall Street in the USA, the authors explore how protest publics emerge and evolve in very different ways – from creating many small citizen groups focused on particular projects to more articulated political agendas for both state and society. These protest publics have provoked and legitimized concrete socio-political changes, altering the balance of power in specific political spaces, and in some cases generating profound moments of instability that can lead both to revolutions and to peaceful transformations of political institutions.

The authors argue that this recent wave of protests is driven by a new type of social actor: self-organized publics. In some cases these protest publics can lead to democratic reform and redistributive policies, while in others they can produce destabilization, ethnic and nationalist populism, and authoritarianism. This book will help readers to better understand how seemingly spontaneous public events and protests evolve into meaningful, well-structured collective action and come to shape political processes in diverse regions of the globe.

This report summarizes the results of a German-Russian dialogue project, which was implemented and designed by inmedio peace consult gGmbh (Berlin) and the Institute for Law and Public Policy, ILPP (Moscow) and funded by the German Federal Foreign Office under the ‘Expanding Cooperation with Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia’ Programme. Using a mediative dialogue approach, 20 experts from academia, thinks tanks and NGOs as well as journalists and cultural exchange/dialogue practitioners met near Moscow in September 2018 and in Berlin in November to analyse and reflect on the Russian and Western narratives on what went wrong since the end of the Cold War regarding the deterioration of Russian-Western relations.

    

This book provides a critical account of the third sector and its future in Europe. It offers an original conceptualization of the third sector in its European manifestations alongside an overview of its major contours, including its structure, sources of support, and recent trends. It also assesses the impact of this sector in Europe which considers its contributions to European economic development, citizen well-being and human development.

The Third Sector As A Renewable Resource for Europe presents the findings of the Third Sector Impact (TSI) project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7). It recognises that in a time of social and economic distress, as well as enormous pressures on governmental budgets, the third sector and volunteering represent a unique ‘renewable resource’ for social and economic problem-solving and civic engagement in Europe.

One of the key developments in 20th and 21st century history has been the demographic revolution, or demographic transition, which radically changed the course of fundamental demographic processes involving the birth rate, mortality and migration. These changes have had, and continue to have, a significant effect on all aspects of life in modern and developing societies, including their economies, social relations, culture and political life. In addition, they greatly influence the crucial sphere of international relations, and create unprecedented challenges for international security.

Demographic change affects the international situation both directly and indirectly, through the social processes experienced by all societies which embrace this change.

Miscommunicating Social Change analyzes the discourses of three social movements and the alternative media associated with them, revealing that the Enlightenment narrative, though widely critiqued in academia, remains the dominant way of conceptualizing social change in the name of democratization in the post-Soviet terrain. The main argument of this book is that the “progressive” imaginary, which envisages progress in the unidirectional terms of catching up with the “more advanced” Western condition, is inherently anti-democratic and deeply antagonistic. Instead of fostering an inclusive democratic process in which all strata of populations holding different views are involved, it draws solid dividing frontiers between “progressive” and “retrograde” forces, deepening existing antagonisms and provoking new ones; it also naturalizes the hierarchies of the global neocolonial/neoliberal power of the West. Using case studies of the “White Ribbons” social movement for fair elections in Russia (2012), the Ukrainian Euromaidan (2013–2014), and anti-corruption protests in Russia organized by Alexei Navalny (2017) and drawing on the theories of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Nico Carpetntier, this book shows how “progressive” articulations by the social movements under consideration ended up undermining the basis of the democratic public sphere through the closure of democratic space.

While workers movements have been largely phased out and considered out-dated in most parts of the world during the 1990s, the 21st century has seen a surge in new and unprecedented forms of strikes and workers organisations. The collection of essays in this book, spanning countries across global South and North, provides an account of strikes and working class resistance in the 21st century. Through original case studies, the book looks at the various shades of workers’ movements, analysing different forms of popular organisation as responses to new social and economic conditions, such as restructuring of work and new areas of investment.

The end of socialism in the Soviet Union and its satellite states ushered in a new era of choice. Yet the idea that people are really free to live as they choose turns out to be problematic.  Personal choice is limited by a range of factors such as a person’s economic situation, class, age, government policies and social expectations, especially regarding  gender roles. Furthermore, the notion of free choice is a crucial feature of capitalist ideology, and can be manipulated in the interests of the market. This edited collection explores the complexity of choice in Russia and Ukraine. The contributors explore how the new choices available to people after the collapse of the Soviet Union have interacted with and influenced gender identities and gender, and how choice has become one of the driving forces of class-formation in countries which were, in the Soviet era, supposedly classless.

The book will of interest to students and scholars across a range of subjects including gender and sexualities studies, history, sociology and political science.

Intended to bridge the gap between the latest methodological developments and cross-cultural research, this interdisciplinary resource presents the latest strategies for analyzing cross-cultural data. Techniques are demonstrated through the use of applications that employ cross-national data sets such as the latest European Social Survey. With an emphasis on the generalized latent variable approach, internationally prominent researchers from a variety of fields explain how the methods work, how to apply them, and how they relate to other methods presented in the book. Syntax and graphical and verbal explanations of the techniques are included. Online resources, available at www.routledge.com/9781138690271, include some of the data sets and syntax commands used in the book.

The Report predicts that the coming five years will witness the five countries keep improving in national innovative competitiveness, with China and Russia maintaining their strong growth momentum, India growing at a moderate rate, and Brazil and South Africa gradually picking up speed and climbing out of the trough. It estimates that the five countries’ national innovative competitiveness will be keeping steady growth by 2030. 

 

The General Reports part presents a comprehensive analysis of the current status and achievements of STI cooperation between China and other BRICS countries and proposes priority areas of BRICS STI cooperation to provide valuable decision inputs for the BRICS countries to accelerate the improvement of their national innovative competitiveness. The Country Reports part respectively analyzes and makes predictions on the national innovative competitiveness of the BRICS countries based on a survey of their STI development and STI cooperation within the BRICS framework. The Thematic Reports part focuses on four thematic areas closely related to STI, i.e. digital economy, financial inclusion, energy, and agriculture, and offers detailed analysis of the STI development and potential of the countries in relevant areas, providing additional inputs for a further understanding of the national innovative competitiveness of the BRICS countries.

This book combines the approaches of history and criminology to study parricide and non-fatal violence against parents from across traditional period and geographical boundaries, encompassing research on Asia as well as Europe and North America. Parricide and non-fatal violence against parents are rare but significant forms of family violence. They have been perceived to be a recent phenomenon related to bad parenting and child abuse often in poorer socioeconomic circumstances – yet they have a history, which provides insights for modern-day explanation and intervention. Research on violence against parents has concentrated on child abuse and mental illness but, by using a rich array of primary and secondary documents, such as court cases, criminal statistics, newspaper reports, and legal and medical literature, this book shows that violence against parents is also shaped by conflicts related to parental authority, the rise of children’s rights, conflicting economic and emotional expectations, and other sociohistorical factors.

This book offers a comparative analysis of value and identity changes in several post-Communist countries. In light of the tremendous economic, social and political changes in former communist states, the authors compare the values, attitudes and identities of different generations and cultural groups. Based on extensive empirical data, using quantitative and qualitative methods to study complex social identities, this book examines how intergenerational value and identity changes are linked to socio-economic and political development. Topics include the rise of nationalist sentiments, identity formation of ethnic and religious groups and minorities, youth identity formation and intergenerational value conflicts

Abstract

Introduction Alcohol consumption is a considerable public health problem that is especially harmful to young people. To develop effective prevention programmes targeted at adolescents, it is important to understand the social mechanisms triggering alcohol consumption. Among such mechanisms, peer influence plays an important role. The effects of peer influence are very difficult to evaluate because of the entanglement with social selection, that is, a tendency of people to befriend others with similar behaviour. The recently developed stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) approach is designed to disentangle social influence from social selection. The aim of this study is to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies employing SAOM methodology to evaluate the effects of social influence on adolescent drinking behaviour.

Methods and analysis In order to analyse the co-evolution of alcohol consumption and adolescent friendship networks, we will collect articles that use SAOM methodology through systematic electronic searches in Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, The Cochrane Library (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), EBSCOhost (MEDLINE, SocINDEX, Academic Source, ERIC), ProQuest (ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global), PsycINFO (PsycNET), Excerpta Medica database (Embase) and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). We will collect the literature from academic journals, dissertations/theses, reports and conference materials. Three reviewers will retrieve and independently assess potentially relevant material in terms of whether they comply with prespecified criteria. Subsequently, we will summarise the results of the studies in a systematic review. If a sufficient number of studies can be found, SAOM quantitative results will be extracted and meta-analysed. The project will go from 1 December 2018 to 1 December 2019.

Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval will not be required as our work is based on published studies. A list of all the studies included in this work will be available for review. We plan dissemination in a peer-reviewed international scientific journal and through conference presentations. Our review will highlight the peer effect of peers in adolescent drinking behaviour and provide guidance for developing effective prevention and intervention programmes. We expect it to be informative for policy and practice, decision-making as well as for further research in public health and sociology of adolescents.

Globalizing forces have both transformed the higher education sector and made it increasingly homogenous. Growing similarities among universities have been attributed to isomorphic pressures to ensure and/or enhance legitimacy by imitating higher education institutions that are perceived as successful internationally, particularly universities that are highly ranked globally (Cantwell & Kauppinen, 2014; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). In this study, we compared the strategic plans of 78 high-ranked, low-ranked, and unranked universities in 33 countries in 9 regions of the world. In analyzing the plans of these 78 universities, the study explored patterns of similarity and difference in universities’ strategic positioning according to Suchman’s (1995) 3 types of legitimacy: cognitive, pragmatic, and moral. We found evidence of stratified university strategies in a global higher education landscape that varied by institutional status. In offering a corrective to neoinstitutional theory, we suggest that patterns of globalization are mediated by status-based differences in aspirational behavior (Riesman, 1958) and “old institutional” forces (Stinchcombe, 1997) that contribute to differently situated universities pursuing new paths in seeking to build external legitimacy.

European regions experience accelerating ageing, but the process has substantial regional variation. This paper examines the effect of this variation on regional economic cohesion in Europe. We measure the effect of convergence or divergence in the share of the working age population on convergence or divergence in economies of NUTS 2 regions. The effect of convergence or divergence in ageing on economic convergence or divergence is quite substantial and, in some cases, is bigger than the effect of changes in productivity and labour force participation. Convergence of ageing leads to economic convergence only when the share of the working age population in rich regions exceeds that in poor regions and the former regions experience a substantial decline in the share of the working age population, or the latter regions experience an increase. During 2003–12, an inverse relationship between convergence in ageing and economic convergence was the rule rather than the exception.

Background: Creating visualizations that include multiple dimensions of the data while preserving spatial structure and readability is challenging. Here we demonstrate the use of geofaceting to meet this challenge.

Objective: Using data on young adult mortality in the 32 Mexican states from 1990 to 2015, we demonstrate how aligning small multiples for territorial units, often regions, according to their approximate geographical location – geofaceting – can be used to depict complex multi-dimensional phenomena.

Methods: The idea is to align small-multiples for territorial units, often regions, according to approximate geographical location. We illustrate the technique using data on young adult mortality in the 32 Mexican states from 1990 to 2015.

Results: Geofaceting reveals the macro-level spatial pattern while preserving the flexibility of choosing any visualization techniques for the small multiples. Creating geofaceted visualizations gives all the advantages of standard plots in which one can adequately display multiple dimensions of a dataset.

Contribution: Compared to other ways of small-multiples' arrangement, geofaceting improves the speed of regions' identification and exposes the broad spatial pattern.

The paper reflects upon the relevance of Weber's sociology in the 21st century. In the first part importance of his sociology is explained by referring to the idea of a state that is now returning back into the political and social realm. The second part overviews the contributions to the special issue dedicated to the intellectual legacy of Max Weber.

December 19, 2016, witnessed three tragedies that could not go unnoticed by the Russian media: dozens of people died as a result of a surrogate alcohol poisoning in Irkutsk, a Russian ambassador was killed in Turkey, and a terrorist attack took place at the Christmas market in Berlin. In this article, we use the network agenda-setting theory to analyze how these tragedies were covered by different types of mass media. We show that ties between the tragedy and a network of other acute issues are more important than objective circumstances, such as the number of victims or the geography of the event. The context in which the events were examined led to greater attention to the killing of the ambassador and less attention to the surrogate alcohol poisoning. We believe that the state can exercise indirect control over the agenda by creating a network of events that will correctly guide discussions about tragedies.

The article presents the author’s reflections on theories in general and demographic theories in particular. The epidemiological transition, i.e. periodization of changes in the structure of causes of death, proposed by A.R. Omran in 1971 and later raised to the rank of theory, is taken as an example. The author points out the insufficiency of Omran’s concept to explain the contemporary mortality trends and suggests possible directions of theorizing that would enable correlating the new stage of life expectancy growth with the notion of “epidemiological transition”.

Objectives To use the estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 to describe patterns of suicide mortality globally, regionally, and for 195 countries and territories by age, sex, and Socio-demographic index, and to describe temporal trends between 1990 and 2016.Design Systematic analysis.Main outcome measures Crude and age standardised rates from suicide mortality and years of life lost were compared across regions and countries, and by age, sex, and Socio-demographic index (a composite measure of fertility, income, and education).Results The total number of deaths from suicide increased by 6.7% (95% uncertainty interval 0.4% to 15.6%) globally over the 27 year study period to 817 000 (762 000 to 884 000) deaths in 2016. However, the age standardised mortality rate for suicide decreased by 32.7% (27.2% to 36.6%) worldwide between 1990 and 2016, similar to the decline in the global age standardised mortality rate of 30.6%. Suicide was the leading cause of age standardised years of life lost in the Global Burden of Disease region of high income Asia Pacific and was among the top 10 leading causes in eastern Europe, central Europe, western Europe, central Asia, Australasia, southern Latin America, and high income North America. Rates for men were higher than for women across regions, countries, and age groups, except for the 15 to 19 age group. There was variation in the female to male ratio, with higher ratios at lower levels of Socio-demographic index. Women experienced greater decreases in mortality rates (49.0%, 95% uncertainty interval 42.6% to 54.6%) than men (23.8%, 15.6% to 32.7%).Conclusions Age standardised mortality rates for suicide have greatly reduced since 1990, but suicide remains an important contributor to mortality worldwide. Suicide mortality was variable across locations, between sexes, and between age groups. Suicide prevention strategies can be targeted towards vulnerable populations if they are informed by variations in mortality rates.

Most contemporary sociologists’ aversion towards nationalism contrasts with the alleged nationalist views of one of the key classics of sociology, Max Weber. The considerable accumulated scholarship on the issue presents a unified belief that Weber was indeed a nationalist yet varies considerably in the significance attributed to the issue. Most authors entrench Weber’s nationalism within biographical studies of Weber’s political views as an individual beyond Weberian sociological theorizing. A different approach suggests that the notions of nationality in Weber’s works do have certain theoretical value as potentially capable of enriching the current understanding of the nation. The present article aims to bring together the notions of nationality dispersed within Weber’s various writings with the Weberian methodological individualism. The main argument of the article is that individualism and nationalism in Weber’s thought are not a contradiction despite the collectivism associated with the essentialist view of the nation. Instead, they represent a reflection of the fundamental shift from an earlier view of society as a meganthropos towards the pluralist problematization of the micromacro link definitive for the modern social theory. Analyzing the internal logic of this change provides new insights into the currently debated issue of retraditionalization, especially in relation to the ongoing renaissance of nationalism.  

Using Monte Carlo simulation experiments, this paper examines the performance of popular SEM goodness-of-fit indices, namely CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR, with respect to a specific task of measurement invariance testing with categorical data and many groups (10-50 groups). Study factors include the number of groups, the level of non-invariance in the data, and the absence/presence of model misspecifications other than non-invariance. In sum, the study design yields a total of 81 conditions. All simulated data sets are analyzed using two popular SEM estimators, MLR and WLSMV. The main contribution of this paper to the methodological literature on cross-cultural survey research is that it produces revised guidelines for evaluating the goodness of fit of invariance MGCFA models with many groups.

This paper investigates the logics of teachers’ discursive resistance to the Unified State Examinations (USE) almost two decades after its introduction into the Russian education system. By drawing upon NVivo-aided Discourse analysis of online teacher discussions, interview and focus group data, the analysis critically examines the pedagogical underpinnings of USE vis-à-vis the traditional assessment system in the teaching community in two Russian cities: Moscow and Rostov-on-Don. Drawing on the concept of ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ the analysis shows how, when interpreted through the lens of grassroots pedagogical values, the semantics of the globalized concepts of ‘educational standardization’ and ‘standardized testing’ takes on domestic culturally-specific meanings complementary and, at times, contradictory to the intended ones. In Russia specifically, the notion of ‘standardization’ comes into conflict with the pedagogical idea of a creative personalized and, therefore, profoundly ‘non-standard’ education, while academic assessment continues to be perceived as the non-quantifiable and subjective outcome of teacher-pupil interaction over time. The analysis underscores the interpretative and symbolic dimensions of educational policy and calls for more nuanced efforts to culturally tailor and translate borrowed educational meanings on the part of educational elites.

The article analyses representation of LGBT-movement activity, namely Saint Petersburg LGBT prides, in Russia. Framing theory, which views the media as an arena in which groups of interest promote their frames, or interpretations of the discussed issue, is used. Frames juxtapose elements of the text in such a way as to provide the audience with a scheme to perceive the message. Social movements are viewed as a group of interest that introduces new frames in the public deliberation. Two types of frames can be distinguished, namely collective action frames and status quo frames. In this study, usage of two collective action frames were examined (equality frame and victim frame), and two status quo frames (morality frame and propaganda of homosexuality). Additionally, the sources of quotes used in news stories were analyzed. The study focuses on articles dedicated to Saint Petersburg LGBT prides in years 2010-2017 in the most popular local Internet websites. The analysis shows that the coverage of LGBT prides can be divided into two distinct periods: 2010–2013 and 2014–2017. In the first period, LGBT activists dominated the coverage, quoted about twice more actively than government officials. Equality and victim frames were prevalent. In the second period, activists were cited significantly less often, with the propaganda of homosexuality frame dominating in the discourse. However, contrary to findings of previous studies on social movement representation, across the whole period under consideration LGBT activists were quoted more actively than government representatives. This finding calls for further exploration of the conditions which allowed for such coverage in the context of political heterosexism and homophobia.

The study analyzes the construction of the network links of Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny with various issues of Russian public discussion in the national print media. The theoretical framework is issue ownership theory, according to which political actors have a range of issues that are most strongly associated with them. Ownership by the politician of topics that are perceived as important in the society determines his popularity among the population. In this study, we use the Integrum database, which contains extensive print media archives of approximately 500 Russian magazines and more than 250 national newspapers. We analyze the period from 12.12.2016 to 12.12.2017, i.е., one year after Alexey Navalny's announcement of his intention to participate in the presidential election in 2018. The analysis shows that Putin has more opportunities to form an agenda, as he attracts much more attention from national media than Navalny does. Putin is often mentioned in connection with economic issues and international relations, which attract the attention of the population and are perceived as important, while his activity in these spheres is perceived as successful. Navalny is associated with the issues of corruption, NGOs and civic activism. Corruption is an important topic for Russians, but the low attention of the media to Navalny does not allow him to gain the maximum benefit from owning this story.

The availability of alternative information via online news sources is often said to induce social discontent, especially in states, where traditional media are under state control. But does this relation really exist, and is it universal? In contrast to previous studies, where generalized Internet use is treated as a proxy for online news consumption and general political participation is a proxy for protest participation, we render a test of relationship specifically between online news and protest participation. We explore survey data from WVS for 48 nations in 2010-2014. The analysis provides evidence that the likelihood of individual protest participation is positively associated with online news consumption. The study also shows that the magnitude of the effect varies depending upon the political context: surprisingly, despite supposedly unlimited control offline as well as online media, autocratic countries demonstrated higher effects of online news than transitional regimes, where the Internet media are relatively uninhibited.  

This article discusses the phenomenon of recent decades associated with the redevelopment of former industrial areas and factory districts. These areas previously had a homogeneous environment in which residents construct a local solidarity, but now functions and image of industrial districts are changing. Transformations of former industrial spaces is analyzed on example of two Moscow neighborhoods. The author’s research based on case study includes interviews with residents and developers, observations, analysis of media discussion and online communities, and secondary data analysis. Relying on concepts of social differentiation and social identity, the author considers former industrial neighborhood in terms of housing statuses, visual representations, senses and subjective perception.Redevelopment accentuates the differences between the “old” residents of industrial neighborhoods who live in the former factory buildings, and the “new” residents who buy dwelling in new buildings constructed on the former factory spaces or in nearby areas. These differences related with spatial representations and helps to build a model of socio-cultural and territorial dynamics of the industrial areas. The research shows that the formation of a new territorial identity occurs in conditions of social and housing inequality.

This study provides new evidence on the impact of historic household formation patterns on present day levels of social capital (SC). We distinguish effects on bonding and bridging social capital, of which only the latter is beneficial for a society as a whole. Our results challenge the view that large household size in the past per se was responsible for institutional drawbacks of contemporary societies restricting social capital. We unveil the true processes lying behind the idea that prevalence of nuclear households fostered institutional development, testing three mechanisms through which household size may influence social capital: (a) family size in terms of the number of household members; (b) the strength of loyalty bonds within the family, and (c) generational and gendered power hierarchies within the family. Our hypotheses are explored on the basis of 26 European countries covered by the Life in Transition Survey (LiTs) in 2010. The contrast between Western and Eastern European countries in the LiTs provides a controlled environment that is free from the potentially confounding influence of European colonialism. We generate a new historical database using historical census data for 429 sub-national regions in 5 West European and 21 East European countries. Individual responses from the LiTs are attributed to the sub-national region in which the respondent lives. We find that power relations within the family have more essential consequences for contemporary values and attitudes than nuclearity/extendedness dimension. Within-family hierarchies revealed to be the strongest predictor of social capital today, indicating lower levels of bridging SC and higher level of corruption in form of monetary transfers or exchange of favors. We suggest that within-family hierarchies in the past might have affected the contemporary level of SC provoking a longstanding commitment to authority within the society. This evidence is illustrated by the significant positive correlation between the historical index of within-family hierarchy and autocracy preference as measured on LiTs data. Societal commitment to authority rooted in historical family pattern might have prevented generalized trust formation and fostered vertical patron-client relations, favoritism and corruption. Our results may drive further research from concentrating on family extendedness (nuclearity) as a predictor of the current state of modernization towards using more meaningful indicators of within-family hierarchies.

There is an extensive body of research devoted to how political satire affects political knowledge and political behavior. Extant studies are focused on political satire in democratic countries and do not pay enough attention to authoritarian regimes. This study extends this research to non- democratic regimes, while also adding to it by exploring the extent to which the use of political satire encourages exposure to political information. We conduct an online experiment on the sample of Russian students. We borrow satirical pictures from Lentach – popular Russian socialmedia public page, whose motto is “a propaganda of common sense” as opposed to biasedpolitical messages proliferated by government-controlled media outlets. Using both frequentist and Bayesian approaches, we found that access to political information containing satirical illustrating content increases attention to the information, relative to political news reports accompanied by standard news illustrations. The findings contribute to the literature on the political entertainment and exposure to political information, as well as to research on media under authoritarianism.

The correspondence study has now become a standard method of measuring discrimination in the labour market. For the first time in the literature, we present a correspondence study of ethnic discrimination in Russia. A sample of over 9,000 job applications makes it one of the largest such studies ever conducted. We include 10 ethnic groups and run the experiment in four Russian cities, whose populations have varying ethnic compositions. Ethnic preferences of Russian employers are different across locations. In Moscow and St Petersburg, employers treat applications from ethnic Russians and ethnic groups of European origin (Germans, Jews, and Ukrainians) in about the same way. Visible minorities of Southern origin are discriminated against. Men from ethnic groups of Southern origin experience stronger discrimination than women. In Kazan and Ufa, two cities with ethnically mixed populations, and in which indigenous ethnic groups have a privileged status, all applicants are treated about equally. We discuss the effects, on discrimination, of ethnic autonomy and of the ethnic composition of a population; these effects may apply to other ethnic federations beyond the Russian case.  

The paper analyzes the existing approaches to the concept of scientific career, as well as career patterns of PhD holders. The authors consider the choice of alternative career options that do not involve a strict hierarchy or a clear understanding of where a person’s career path will take him. Taking into account the approaches developed earlier in the framework of the sociology of science, the sociology of employment and the theory of life cycles, as well as on the basis of the results of modern empirical research, including the results of the international project “Careers of Doctorate Holders (CDH)” (OECD, Eurostat, UNESCO Institute for Statistics), the authors propose a new model of academic career and identify the main factors, allowing to assess the success of a career. The model was tested on the data obtained during a survey among Russian researchers involving 828 respondents aged between 30 and 49 and employed by universities, research institutes, organizations of engineering services, industrial enterprises, medical centers and clinics. The analysis revealed 5 main factors determining the research career: recognition in the academic community; application of the scientific results in practice; implementation of research interests; formal criteria for successful employment (salary and level of position); mobility (including international). The results of the study confirmed the initial hypothesis that the factors affecting career success can be classified by their significance for the individual / for the professional community / for society as a whole.

The purpose of this research is to reveal how macro-, meso- and micro-level factors influence the choice of matrimonial behaviour. The ability of determinants of various levels to explain cross-country differences in matrimonial behaviour was examined (second wave of the Generations and Gender Survey); differences in matrimonial behaviour of the Russians were also investigated (a panel part of three waves of the Russian part of the same survey). It was revealed that the form of marriage historically formed in the country, the values profile of the citizens, and the family policy of the government can explain the cross-country differences in matrimonial behaviour at the macro-level. The type of settlement determines the choice between cohabitation and marriage as a first union at the meso-level, while at the micro-level it is determined by the age at entry into the union, conception prior to the union, matrimonial experience of parents, circumstances of leaving the parental home and entering the labour market and educational level. The explanatory ability of these variables is different for men and women, as well as for various generations of the Russians.

The study is devoted to the investigation of the interrelations between migration and demographic behavior (partnerships, marriages, and childbearing) of modern Russian women. The quantitative research conducted on 2,229 individual biographies of women between 19 and 43 implies the use of descriptive analysis and Event History Analysis (Cox regression) within the Life-Course Approach. The results of the research are viewed within the framework of the hypotheses explaining the impact of migration on demographic behavior already described in scientific literature. The Russian female population is characterized as mostly immobile (more than two thirds of women never experienced migration, at least before age 43). The paper discusses various economic and demographic factors affecting the risks of occurrence of demographic events in migrant and non-migrant life careers. The disruption hypothesis describing the negative effect of migration on marital and reproductive behavior, is partially disproved: 1st migration exhibits no effect on the risk of 1st childbearing or 1st partnership among adult women; the risk of 1st marriage is negatively affected among women after 21.  The selection and the interrelations-of-events hypotheses may explain the demographic behavior of the two suggested groups of migrant women in Russia: educational migrants and marriage migrants.

The study analyzes the construction of the network links of Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny with various issues of Russian public discussion in the national print media. The theoretical framework is issue ownership theory, according to which political actors have a range of issues that are most strongly associated with them. Ownership by the politician of topics that are perceived as important in the society determines his popularity among the population. In this study, we use the Integrum database, which contains extensive print media archives of approximately 500 Russian magazines and more than 250 national newspapers. We analyze the period from 12.12.2016 to 12.12.2017, i.е., one year after Alexey Navalny's announcement of his intention to participate in the presidential election in 2018. The analysis shows that Putin has more opportunities to form an agenda, as he attracts much more attention from national media than Navalny does. Putin is often mentioned in connection with economic issues and international relations, which attract the attention of the population and are perceived as important, while his activity in these spheres is perceived as successful. Navalny is associated with the issues of corruption, NGOs and civic activism. Corruption is an important topic for Russians, but the low attention of the media to Navalny does not allow him to gain the maximum benefit from owning this story.

The article presents the results of the study of radical innovations in the global food industry which were obtained through semantic analysis of heterogeneous unstructured text data sources by applying innovative big data text mining system. The approach used allows performing rapid, yet comprehensive aggregation of the whole polyphony of existing knowledge of the technology development in any sector for traditional foresight, future oriented technology analysis, and horizon scanning studies. The sources for the analysis include research papers, patent applications with both full-text data and additional structured metadata, analytical reports by main international organizations and national key players, various media and news resources, including all the major technology innovation, disruption and venture capital news websites. Their processing with an introduced approach for trend- and technology-mapping helps to identify ongoing and emerging technology-related trends, weak signals on possible scientific breakthroughs in the global food industry, including most promising startup strategies and food innovation controversies. This kind of analysis can be performed on a regular basis owing to constant accumulation of textual data and serve as a framework for constant science and technology (S&T) monitoring for early warning on changing technology landscape and its implications on agriculture and food markets.

The paper analyses problems associated with technologies classification for the purposes of futures studies, in order to ensure definitive inclusion of technologies in specific classes/types when conventional approaches to classification are applied. The evolution of classification approaches in the scope of science philosophy is shortly reviewed, together with the latest research on expert-based and computerised (algorithmic) classification and methodological dilemmas related to hierarchical aggregation of technological and production processes are analysed. Common problems with classifying technologies and industries frequently encountered in the age of converging technologies are examined, using the agricultural sector and related industries as an example. A case study of computerised classification of agricultural technologies based on clustering algorithms is presented, with a brief analysis of the potential and limitations of the methodology. For doing so a two-stage approach to classifying technologies is suggested, based on distinguishing between platform (multipurpose) and industry-specific technologies. An adaptive approach to analysing technological structures is proposed, based on many-to-many relationships and fuzzy logic principles.

The working paper presents the results of a study of language transmission in small communities of Russian-speaking migrants living in Madrid. The research seeks to clarify the role played in this process by the characteristics of the environment, the resources of small communities and families, as well as the motivation of parents, the barriers and difficulties they face, and the strategies they use to overcome them. The empirical base consists of interviews with Russian-speaking parents, teachers and organizers of Russian-language structured forms of activities for children, as well as data of observation conducted during visits to these programs, meetings and walks with parents and children. The study demonstrates that while the super-diversity framework describes well what happens with the first-generation migrants, intergenerational changes in the practices of the use of language are great relates to the main conclusions of the assimilation theory. Using the superdiversity lens to study the language transmission has made it possible to pay attention to various combinations of migrants' attributes, which ultimately determine the existing diversity in the language practices and communicative environments of first-generation migrants. There are important similarities, which lie across borders of the dichotomy of mixedness - migrantness of a family. Many parents consider bilingualism as an integral part of good parenting, possess a number of techniques that are considered important, but in practice they face a lot of difficulties caused by specific features of family, “communities” and social context that they cannot overcome.

The collapse of the USSR and structural changes in society gave rise to family and marriage transformations in Russia and other post-Soviet countries of Eastern Europe. Estonia is among the examples of rapid marriage transformation and the spread of cohabitations and extramarital births. At the same time, throughout the post-war era Estonia accepted Russian migrants. Studies show that the adaptation of the Russian population in Estonia proceeds slowly, and that patterns of matrimonial behavior among the Russian migrants and their descendants in Estonia are closer to patterns of ethnic Russians in Russia. In this study, the Generation and Gender Survey data for Russia (2004) and Estonia (2005) were used to analyze the prevalence of first and second childbirths in first and higher-order unions and the determinants of fertility after repartnering among the Russian and Estonian populations in Estonia and Russians in Russia. We consider the impact of partners’ age and parenthood status at the beginning of higher-order unions, as well as social variables (e.g. education, type of settlement and ethnicity).  The results show that the contribution of higher-order unions to total fertility increased significantly in all studied populations. However, first childbirths in high-order unions are rare among both the Russians and the Estonians, second births after repartnering are more widespread among Russians in Russia. Divorces and separations significantly increase the interval between first and second births, but there is no difference in time interval duration between the three considered population groups. The determinants of childbearing among Russians in Russia and Estonia in higher-order unions are very similar: they are the age of women, the type of habitation and the initial nature of the union. The effect of the parenthood status and marriage cohort is individual for each population group: in Russia, if a male partner has no child(ren) from previous relationships, the couple has a higher chance of having a mutual child. The probability of childbearing after repartnering significantly increased in 1990-1999 in Estonia.

The present paper operationalizes one of the oldest concepts in the sociological literature about social stratification. Relying on Weber’s theory, the authors consider life chances in terms of positive and negative privileges. This framework is fertile ground for constructing a series of indices measuring opportunities and risks in key areas of life such as economic conditions, work situation, human capital accumulation, and consumption and leisure activities. Drawing on empirical data from three 2015 representative Russian surveys, the authors classified the Russian population on a continuum of life chances. The majority of Russians obtain just one third of the maximum scores on the life-chance scale. It is also shown that the life-chance scale has a strong correlation with the peaks of income distribution; however, the relationship between lower- and middle-income groups are not that salient. Finally, we show that life chances are uniquely distributed across different localities in contemporary Russia. We admit therefore the high analytical power of the neo-Weberian concept of life chances in stratification studies. Measured via a multidimensional index, life chances appear a good alternative to a gradational approach and the relational stratification schema developed particularly for the working population.