Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya

The article examines specifics of the current culture of rural residents. The essence of the transition from the use of local socio-cultural infrastructure to a wider scale of mastering cultural values through networks, streams, virtual channels, and home pastime is shown. In studies of the rural population culture, the dominance of meanings and values corresponding to the all-Russian identity is noted. Human culture is most fully manifested in life situations in which the choice between right and wrong, justice and its antipodes is inevitable. Among spiritual values, the importance of religion has grown. Although the share of those who consider themselves believers varies from a third to a half, the semantic connotations of the attitudes towards God are very contradictory. Numerous “prophecies” on television prevent people from understanding the religious dogmas of traditional religions. The community transformation processes are studied based on the assessment of the participation degree of rural community members in modernization processes, as well as their adaptability to changes and characteristics of social resources available to the rural community. From these positions, the evolution process of the peasant mentality from classical traditionalist forms in pre-industrial society towards rationalization and individualization in modern society is analyzed. A number of works defend the idea of the uniqueness of the social group of farmers in Russia as a separate original class, different from peasants, which requires the development of a separate approach and deep social and cultural studies of the normative-regulatory and activity-motivational foundations of their life. From this perspective, it is important to assess other groups of rural residents. The differentiation of social and structural groups in terms of participating in public activities is quite significant. The most active are representatives of the rural intelligentsia (teachers, doctors/paramedics, settlement administration employees), there is potential for activity expansion among unemployed women engaged in homework and children care. Young people are attracted by environmental and patriotic actions, for they see prospects of developing interaction between the authorities and citizens by modern communication methods – development of the platforms for negotiations with municipalities, broadcasting successful practices of interaction between the authorities and the public. However, some young people are not interested in and do not need public and political activity. Public sector employees are characterized by higher support of traditional values compared to other groups. Housewives, engaged in raising children appreciate family security, social justice and social order, respect for traditions and the opinions of others. Farmers appreciate equality and social order, and hired agricultural workers – social justice, while rural pensioners appreciate traditionalism and equality. Unemployed villagers are characterized by minimal indices of all proposed values. It is concluded that the “rigid” technology of quantitative methods has been supplemented in recent years by the use of qualitative methods of sociological research. This was facilitated by several factors. First, an understanding of the role of intangible factors in the development of society has come not only among sociologists but also among managers. Second, the use of the methodology of participatory research contributes to the formulation of new research hypotheses, the construction of sociological concepts that have not yet been noted by scholais. The most active residents of small towns and villages (especially those practicing non-agrarian seasonal work) have already mastered different social realities: physical and digital, material and symbolic, production and consumer, modernist and traditional ones. All of the above is more fully and deeply accessible for analysis by means of qualitative methods, but often a survey of rural residents is dictated by the need to maintain a representative sample rather than an interest in the problems of the village: rare surveys are characterized by a fragmentary problem field, a small sample size, and a simplified research methodology.

The article is based on the data of the long-term monitoring by the Institute of Sociology of RAS for the past 25 years to analyze the dynamic assessments by Russia’s population of entrepreneurship and involvement in entrepreneurial activity. The study shows that, first, there is a certain part of adults who are engaged in entrepreneurship, albeit there share in the population is not significantly changing over time and fluctuated in different years within 2 to 6%. Second, the entrepreneurial activity is hindered by various barriers, which vary at that depending on administrative restrictions (over 40% of Russians mention them), the stage of a person’s life cycle and the place of his/her residence. Third, the ideal socio-economic model in the mass consciousness implies a high degree of state involvement in the economy and its acceptance has doubled over the past 20 years (from 18.2% in 2001 to 36.8% in 2019). This economic model which not only limits the opportunities for the development of entrepreneurship, but also assigns it a deliberately secondary role. Thus, although Russians do not completely reject entrepreneurship as a legitimate form of economic activity, it should play a niche role. Entrepreneurship seems at that to be more attractive for young people and people with higher education, as well as for the two capitals inhabitants. In Russia, differences in the level of involvement in entrepreneurship and perception of this socio-economic phenomenon depending on human capital (age, education), as well as on the type of settlement, although decreasing over time, are still present. Entrepreneurship is often a realm for the younger and more educated people. It evokes a more positive attitude among residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The older and the lower the level of education, the lower the level of respondents’ involvement in entrepreneurship, the higher the level of rejecting entrepreneurship and phenomena closely related to its development – market economy and competition. With some exaggeration, it can be said that the attitude to entrepreneurship, like a litmus test, allows to distinguish two Russias. The first is the Russia of metropolitan centers, educated and younger people. The second is the Russia of an older and less educated population living on the periphery of the country. In Russia today, two opposite trends can be distinguished, which in the long run might affect the level of entrepreneurial activity and the perception of this phenomenon by the mass consciousness. On the one hand, these are demographic processes, as well as digitalization and related socio-economic processes (emergence of platform economy, the introduction of AI in business processes, etc.) objectively contributing to the formation of a hybrid type of worker-entrepreneur-self-employee and make entrepreneurship an everyday reality for growing parts of the population. On the other hand, the processes of re-nationalization of the economy, restrictions on the freedom of private property objectively narrow opportunities for entrepreneurial initiative and marginalize this phenomenon.

The article presents the results of a sociological study of fears associated with retirement and fears of aging using the method of unfinished sentences. The fears of people who have reached retirement age, were studied. The importance of studying the fears of older people in sociology is postulated, including from the point of view of increasing the effectiveness of social policy in relation to older people. It was revealed that fears caused by retirement and fears of aging differ. The former are dominated by a decrease in income, health deterioration, and loneliness. Fears of aging are primarily fears of loneliness, serious illnesses, helplessness, and infirmity. Concerns about material difficulties are on the far periphery here. The effect of “pushing back” the age boundaries of aging, as the age of the respondents increases, was confirmed. Both, personal markers of aging in its application to themselves and ideas about ways to “push back” old age are focused mainly on the physical aspects of aging, health status, and various elements of a healthy lifestyle. A weak degree of respondents’ attention to the cognitive elements of a healthy lifestyle was noted; a certain gap was found in the motivation to maintain it and to follow the principles of active longevity.

The article continues author’s publication based on the analysis of three trends in modern Russian conservatism conventionally called “whites” – representatives of the right-wing sovereign-patriotic ideology; “reds” – bearers of the left-wing sovereign-patriotic ideology; and “greens” – supporters of Islamic conservatism in the Russian republics. One of the key conclusions in the previous article was that negative consolidation is currently a main mechanism in the ideological unity of these movements. This article analyzes alleged stability of such an ideological bond under the pressure of domestic political problems, primarily related to differing attitudes of these movements to migration, ethnicity and religion. Although representatives of the three ideological conservatism currents use common terminology of “defending traditional values” and fight against a common enemy in political polemics, they put fundamentally different, often irreconcilable meanings into these narratives. Therefore, the conservative ideology of “Russia’s special way” and “traditional values” does not restrain the growth of ideological and political conflicts within conservative mainstream of Russian ideological life. In addition, there are different dynamics in development of the studied cconservatism currents in Russia. In our opinion, the “whites” and, first of all, their nationalist wing, are increasing their influence in society to a greater extent than other varieties of Russian conservatism. At the same time, “nationalist” narrative greatly weakens the negative consolidation bonds of “Whites,” “Reds,” and “Greens” towards a common rejection of the West, liberalism, “non-traditional” sexual orientations, and other “non-traditional” values. Popularity of nationalist discourse is explained by its simplicity and appeal to the problems that really concern many people, by skillful combination of populist rhetoric and activism. Further growth of nationalist populism in a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country is dangerously fraught with mass conflict.

The existence of stereotypes at universities that STEM majors are not for women creates an uncomfortable atmosphere and a feeling of outsiders for them. The study examines how women cope with an undesirable sexist environment finding ways to maintain personal status in the professional community. The article provides an overview of theoretical approaches and empirical studies of underrepresentation in STEM specialties and the existence of stereotypes that lead to situations of gender stigmatization of girls in the environment of IT departments. Based on 23 semi-formalized interviews with female students studying at a Computer Science major of one of highly rated Moscow universities, the situation of stigmatization of female students in the educational process is studied. The result of the study is the systematization of practices for coping with gender stigmatization in the educational environment and the construction of a continuum of these practices from eight types of justifying gender stigma for girls to resistance to it and the collective construction of a mechanism for equalizing the positions of girls and boys.

P. A. Kropotkin considered it possible to form and exist in the future a society in which state coercion and inequality of individuals separated by class and class barriers would be replaced by their voluntary associations and free cooperation. His social ideal is the unification of equal and free citizens in the absence of centers of concentration of power. In such a society, the former State should be replaced by a federation of self-governing communities. P. A. Kropotkin’s conversion to anarchism was facilitated by his participation in the narodnik movement, but the main reasons were his rejection of autocracy and the state centralization of the Russian Empire with the privileged position of the feudal nobility. His proposed way of strengthening society from below and destroying the all-powerful state turned out to be a social utopia, especially in Russia. However, P. A. Kropotkin’s ideas about the need to develop civil self-government and cooperation have partially been realized in most countries of Western and Central Europe and in those countries of the world where the central government does not interfere in the competence of local communities.

The article discusses possibilities of using software (using QDA Miner Light as an example) and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze in-depth interviews in sociological research. The authors consider a long-known, but not very widespread in the Russian-speaking segment, QDA Miner, as well as the new and increasingly popular Open AI, as tools that can complement traditional approaches to analyzing qualitative data. Various interview arrays are used to test the tools. The article shows how the use of these technologies improves efficiency of information processing, minimizes errors associated with manual coding, tests research hypotheses and obtains new conclusions. All this together allows not only to significantly speed up the analysis process, but also to improve quality of the conclusions obtained. The authors argue for a balanced approach combining traditional methods with innovative technologies to achieve a deeper understanding of research topics and enhance reliability of findings. By showcasing capabilities of both established software and emerging AI tools, this study contributes to advancing methodological practices in sociology and encourages researchers to adopt a more versatile toolkit for qualitative analysis.

The critical commentary is written as a response to the article by Goshin M. E. et al., published in the journal “Sociological Studies” No. 3, 2024. The article analyzes and criticizes the position on the possibility of studying “agency” in relation to children. It points out the lack of a clear definition of the term itself, the ambiguity of the Russian-language perception of foreign lexical tracing, the artificiality of the creation of derivatives – “agency index”, “unpacking the agency”. It’s noted that the Russian extensive interdisciplinary scientific tradition of studying independence and activity of children is ignored, the methodology and methods of empirical research in the children’s environment are weakly substantiated, important aspects of the analysis of the conditions and factors of formation and education of subjectivity, initiative of children and adolescents are omitted. Arguments are given in favor of transferring initiative from individualistic significance to a prosocial vector in future studies. the authors’ position on studying the social activity of the modern young generation of Russia within the framework of the children’s and youth movement is presented.

There is a need to identify ways and means to improve public health, which receives significant attention at the level of developing the legislative framework. But actual public health indicators show a number of problems. One of them is the formation of a healthy lifestyle for Russians, a necessary culture of health. A new scientific direction in the field of health, salutogenesis (“the origin of health”) is associated with the analysis of factors that determine physical and mental health in conditions of an insufficiently favorable external environment. This involves studying the health of healthy people, aimed at developing a person’s self-confidence, an active attitude to life, and a sense of responsibility for one’s health. The aim of the article is to include the topic of salutogenesis into scientific debate. Salutogenesis has become most widespread in a number of countries in the form of the salutogenic design concept, aimed at making people active creators of their own lives, able to use internal resources. In Russia, salutogenesis is realized in the activities of the “Healthy Cities, Districts and Towns” Association, in the existence of a number of scientific and educational departments in various cities.

The article presents results of a study of the population attitude in the Sverdlovsk region to everyday corruption. As a result of a representative questionnaire survey (N = 600), the ideas of the region’s population about the prevaling everyday corruption in Russia as a whole, as well as in the Sverdlovsk region and in a specific place of residence of the respondents were revealed. According to the majority of respondents, the level of corruption in the country, region and place of residence over the year either did not change or decreased: this is the opinion of 52,2%, 57,2%, 62,4% of Sverdlovsk residents, respectively. The direct experience of corruption situations in which respondents living in the Sverdlovsk region found themselves is analyzed. 5,9% of respondents reported having such experience. At the same time, it is noted that there is a problem of uncertainty in assessing real corruption experiences of Sverdlovsk residents, who cannot always clearly understand whether a corruption situation really occurred or not: only every fifth respondent confidently stated that such a situation existed. Most often, corruption situations were related to the activities of preschool institutions (18,5% of respondents stated this), social payments (14,8%), and housing and communal services (11,8%). Particular attention was paid to the problem of ordinary citizens readiness to participate in corrupt actions. Sverdlovsk residents’ attitudes to direct participants in corrupt transactions was also revealed. A majority of respondents (53,2%) condemned both parties of such transactions, while every tenth respondent refused to condemn those involved in everyday corruption.

Фундаментальная наука требует понимания вопросов – что такое теория, может ли она быть единой или множество теорий необходимость, а также знания методологических принципов и методических процедур. Нужна ли разработка новой методологии, которая могла бы стать общей и позволила разработать единый стандарт для всех прикладных исследований или это невозможно в силу разнообразия и изменчивости общества и происходящих в нем процессов, что стандарты могут оказаться неприменимы?

В рецензируемой книге ставится задача выделить и исследовать ту часть социальной реальности, которая репрезентируется как малая родина. Сложность заключается в том, что, имея устойчивые ассоциации и коннотации, понятие ”малая родина“ остается неясным в социологии и общественных науках в целом. С одной стороны, его используют в качестве дополнительной, детализирующей опции в исследованиях идентичности, повседневности, социальной активности и общественных настроений. С другой – для конкретизации территории, когда речь идет о местной (муниципальной) политике, местной истории, географии, культуре. Авторы предлагают в анализе учитывать эмоционально-оценочный образ малой родины – конкретного места, где индивид родился или прошел первичную социализацию. Для этого они дают определение гражданской идентичности как формы неполитической со-принадлежности и активности членов гражданского общества, что противоречит сложившей в общественных науках традиции. В рецензии обсуждаются результаты представленного исследования, дается общая оценка работы, в том числе отмечаются трудности, с которыми столкнулись авторы.