Петербургская социология сегодня. 2018. Вып. 10.
2018. N 10
Barriers of the Labour Market and Transnational Migration
Low Standard Of Living as a Social Obstacle on the Way of Industrial Modernization
This article gives reasons for changing the state policy in the field of wages of industrial enterprises’ employees. Decent wages in these enterprises are considered in the article as a precondition for the implementation of the process of industrial modernization and an important step in the formation of the new type of industrial workers. The practices of govern- mental control over the rate of wages are also analyzed. The article relies on the data of sociological research carried out by the authors in one of the Volga regions in the form of monitoring during 2002–2014, as well as on the regional statistics.
Transnational Practices: On the Issue of Defining the Concept
Current migration studies are characterized by disciplinary and methodological fragmentation, by the lack of unified approach to the study of contemporary migration processes. The aim of this article is to offer one of the promising ways of building a conceptual framework for the study of contemporary migration that combines comparative transnational approach and sociology of everyday life. This makes possible to overcome disciplinary restrictions and to take into account the influence of similarities and differences in the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres on migration processes. It also makes possible to analyze informal practices and everyday interactions of transnational migrants, both in host society and in country of origin. The key concept of this approach is “transnational practices”. The article presents the author’s definition of transnational practices and discusses the rationale to address methodological apparatus of sociology of emotions in studying everyday life of transnational migrants, which is organized through the implementation of transnational practices.
Analysis of Transnational Migrants’ Network Paths to Ideological Radicalization: An Overview of Current Research
The paper examines how the growth of digital technologies and online interactions trans- forms the research perspective on extremist activities of transnational migrants. The authors present an overview of current research on “digital transnationalism” and the ideological radicalization of transnational migrants in particular including studies of virtual / digital diasporas, transnational online communities, online extremism, etc. The paper argues that analysis network spaces where transnational migrants interact helps to reveal typical network paths of migrants that correspond to typical trajectories of migration. The authors notice that studying network paths of people involved in extremist practices is an important problem in contemporary Russia. In conclusion, they consider current situation and prospects of research on “transnationalism online” and “extremism online” in the social science.
Factors of Ecoactivism
Two factors of Eco activism are considered in the article: 1) personal traits related to socio- demographic characteristics and 2) attitudes and values; also shows the spread of eco-activism both in Russia and in the world as a whole. The dependence between Eco activism and the level of education is revealed: among Eco activists there are more people with higher education. It was expected that the representatives of this group — as a whole are more financially secure than the rest of the survey participants. Among Eco activists, there are more than those who refer themselves to the middle class, upper middle class and even the upper class. The leaders in environmental activity were the Volga and Siberia, which occupy the lowest lines of Russia’s environmental rating. In the course of the study, the hypothesis of “objective problems and subjective values” of R. Inglehart was confirmed: it was revealed that Eco activists are recruited, firstly, among residents of regions where there are objective environmental problems, and secondly, at the expense of the inhabitants of megacities that demonstrate a greater commitment to post-materialistic values.
History and Theory
Images of Revolutionary Events of 1917–1920 in Post-Soviet Tatarstan: Elitist Discourse and Mass Representations
The paper, firstly, analysis images of 1917 revolution history and events of Civil war of 1918–1920 that are produced by political and intellectual elites by post-Soviet Tatarstan. Secondly, we consider images of that period which are created in mass historical representations of the population of the Republic. Revolutionary events of 1917–1920 are produced in elite discourse with the reference to national history of Tatars on the regional level. That’s why great attention is given to national democratic movement of Tatars while these events are described. The Whites in Civil war are estimated negatively because they were committed to the idea of “united and indivisible Russia” and didn’t recognize the rights of Tatars of national self-determination. At the same time elite discourse is ambivalent about the Bolsheviks although they are estimated all-in-all negatively. Declaration of Tatar ASSR in 1920 is the main achievement of the revolution and the war. This declaration is represented as a partial reconstruction of the state sovereignty of Tatars that they lost in 1552. Revolutionary events of 1917–1920 are represented in mass historical discourse of Tatarstan dwellers as one of the main landmarks of the XXth century history along with the Great Patriotic War and dissolution of the USSR. In contrast to elite discourse mass historical representations do not connect revolutionary events of 1917–1920 with national history of Tatars and consider these events as ones of all-Russian scale and history. However these events are emotionally evaluated very differently. Federal Mass Media (and not textbooks and other academic and popular literature on history of Tatars) play an important role in creating of mass historical representations about revolutions of 1917 in Tatarstan.
Analytical Coding
The article reports coding techniques widely applied in sociological researches with the help of the qualitative data analysis software as a specific method for instrumental concordance by sociologist of natural language evidences provided by informants. We argue that a short- coming of these techniques is the instrumental weakness of the coding tool. We propose the methods of analytical coding that make the relationships widely used in contemporary programming (modularity, inheritance, visualization, compilation, etc.) practically accessible for sociologist during conceptualizing materials supplied by informants. Using the example of the conceptualization of the informant's textual evidence, we demonstrate how the proposed methods allow the sociologist to elaborate and integrate natural language statements based on textual evidence, compile coding results in the form of semantic network, visualize the entire process of operating informants’ utterances.
Problems of Russian Family
Interethnic Marriages in the Contemporary Russian National Script
The article is dedicated to the examination of interethnic marriage rates in contemporary Russia as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Its dynamics and characteristics, integrating as well as opposing the phenomenon of widespread interethnic marriages in USSR are studied and interpreted. The task of the article is to determine how nationally mixed marriages correlate with national script of contemporary Russia, do they fit in, and whether they are value approved and a phenomenon conditioned culturally. For this purpose, the statistics of interethnic marriage in Russia and its regions, survey data of public opinion and mythology existing around the phenomenon of contemporary interethnic marriage rates, expressed both in the media and clearly manifested in many scientific studies provoking distortion of the facts, are analyzed. On the basis of this, the social-culturological interpretation of the studied phenomenon is presented.
Transformation of the Open Adoption Practice in the Context of Rural-Urban Migration (Case of Post-Soviet Buryatiya)
The article deals with the transformation of the practice of open adoption in post-Soviet Buryatiya. The transfer of the child or the “exchange” of children within the extended family is considered by the author of the article as another form of childcare that allows to transfer the “burden” of care from one generation to another or to redistribute it in-between representatives of the same generation. This type of intergenerational care is rarely become the subject of research, since the open adoption of children of relatives is the norm in a limited number of societies. The study was conducted within the framework of qualitative methodology. The method of the leitmotif interview was used to collect empirical material (23 interviews); the method of thematic coding and the method of discourse analysis were used for the analysis of documents. The technique of analyzing the categorization of interaction was used in the analysis of interview transcripts. An analysis of the public discourse of the tradition of open adoption shows that this custom is positively interpreted. The custom of open adoption becomes in demand as a legitimate way to level out the lack of care in the family of a rural migrant. If earlier the need for adoption was legitimized by shamanistic faith in the life of ancestral spirits on the earth, today Buddhism justifies parents who give their children away for adoption with the concept of “buin”. The custom of open adoption is encouraged at the level of public discourse, but stigmatized in private area. A change in the attitude towards this custom in the private sphere shows that the extended mothering that was adopted in the families of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th century, when women of one large family participated in the childcare, is replaced by the ideology of intensive mothering.
Impact of Parents and Peers on the Frequency of Alcohol Consumption among Adolescents
This article examines the impact of social environment factors on alcohol consumption by adolescents of 15–16 years. As a theoretical basis for the study we used the provisions of the general theory of crime (M. Gottfredson, T. Hirschi), social learning theory (R. L. Burgess, R. L. Akers) and alcohol expectancy theory. We used binary logistic regression to estimate the impact of family and peer variables and alcohol expectancies on the frequency of alcohol use. Results suggested that weak parental control, peer alcohol abuse and positive alcohol expectancies had significant effects on the frequency of alcohol use. Practical recommendations for the prevention of alcohol use by adolescents, including work with parents, with adolescents themselves, and strengthening of control measures to comply with the legislation regarding the sale of alcohol to minors are offered.
From Tradition to Individualization: Autobiographical Narratives about Changes in Family and Gender Relations
The results of a number of studies indicate the non-linear nature of the global process of demographic modernization and problematize the ambiguity of this process in its various manifestations. The article presents the results of a qualitative research, which make it possible to supplement some of the characteristics of this problem. Changes in family and gender relations in the post-Soviet period are analysed on the basis of autobiographical narratives of women of two generations. The article discusses the following issues: the stability of traditional norms and values in family and gender relations, the contradictory combination of traditional norms and values with the egalitarian attitudes of Soviet emancipation, the contradictions between women’s views about family and gender relations and the real practices of their family life. The author concludes that in the post-Soviet period, there are changes in women’s views on family and gender relations, which are characterized by increased independence and pragmatic orientations in these relations. These changes the author considers as one of the defining trends of the global process of demographic modernization — individualization of private life the modern man.
Birth and Not Birth
The possibility of fertility growth in Russia in the medium term is analyzed in the context of reducing the number of women of fertile age. From this perspective, abortion is considered as a potential resource for increasing the number of births. The validity of this position is confirmed by historical data on the study of abortions in Russia. The results of a quantitative analysis of the prevalence of abortions in the subjects of the Russian Federation and their relationship with other factors, in particular, the instability of marriages, are given. The conclusion is made about the possibility of leveling abortion behavior of certain groups of women. As a condition for the development of targeted programs for the prevention of abortions, the availability of complete and reliable statistics of abortions is put forward, which is currently available in the database of health institutions, but is not provided to state statistical bodies and is not available to researchers.
Scientific Life
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