Vol 30, No 4 (2024)

The competition and consensus of sociology and empirical aesthetics are conditional concepts. They demonstrate the possibilities of exploring art through a common interest in art. At first sociologists and aestheticians were not ready to apply their scientific potential to a common cause in the study of art. Their ideas were close to the philosophy of art (I. Taine), but the angles of studying art and the prevalent ways of reflection differed. There is competition between them when it comes to their choice of research practices. Sociologists have focused on various aspects of the transfer of symbolic patterns between generations and social communities. Within the framework of empirical aesthetics, emphasis was placed on the formation of aesthetic experience. At the same time, aestheticians considered art as a phenomenon influencing the formation of said experience. In addition, they paid attention to the transmission of such experiences between individual subjects. Initially there were no opportunities to combine the efforts of researchers. The article found that sociologists and aestheticians were approaching a consensus. The meaning of consensus is to “pivot” art towards a person. The article assesses the similarities and discrepancies in the views and approaches of sociologists and aestheticians. Their main task is to identify the institutional characteristics of art. At the stage of coming to a consensus, a general research trend has emerged, called the “global art project”. As revealed, the proposed “project” was aimed at deploying art for the individual.

Using data from the 30th wave of the “The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey — Higher School of Economics (RLMS–HSE)”, the process of intergenerational transmission of parental involvement practices is analyzed by comparing data on current practices involving children with those of parents’ retrospective experiences. The analysis showed that mothers in both generations are more involved in interaction with children than fathers, and the most significant channels for the transmission of parental practices are mother-to-daughter and father-to-son, while the retrospective frequency of father’s involvement is also important for the “father-son” pair. The study reveals factors influencing the transmission process: higher education, urban residence, and having your firstborn at a later age reduce its level, probably due to broader life experience utilized in parenting. It is shown that mothers consistently engage in practices such as attending parent-teacher meetings and taking their children to the doctor, while these practices are less common for fathers and may be influenced by personal experiences and external factors. The practice of taking vacations with a child and physical activity are the most dependent on retrospective experience for both parents, while the reading experience gained from their own father is also important for men. The overall level of parental involvement has been found to be positively correlated with similar practices among other relatives, indicating the involvement of grandmothers in the lives of previous generations. In general, the overall level of engagement of modern parents is consistent with a similar retrospective indicator.

Recently there has been a decline in citizens’ participation in elections and party membership — forms of political activity that are institutionalized and deeply rooted in the political system. They are being replaced by such forms as participation in demonstrations, strikes, boycotts and signing petitions, which, with them being institutionalized to a lesser degree, allow citizens to influence political decisions while maintaining their distance from the political system. Trust in political institutions is considered essential for political participation because it creates a positive attitude towards the political system and prevents alienation from politics in its institutionalised forms. However, political mistrust promotes critical perceptions of political elites, which can lead to increased non-institutionalised political participation. At the same time, researchers have noted the influence on political participation not only of individual-level variables, but also of country-level characteristics — the specifics of the political system within which political participation is realised. The purpose of this article is to investigate whether lack of trust is a prerequisite for or a barrier to political participation and how the characteristics of a country’s political regime are related to political participation, using the example of participation in demonstrations. The results of the European Social Survey and V-Dem data analysis demonstrate that participation in public demonstrations is negatively related to trust in political institutions. In addition, two characteristics of the political regime are found to be associated with participation in demonstrations — in countries with greater access to justice and higher levels of physical violence, citizens are more likely to participate in the form of political activity that this article is looking into.

Nowadays smartphones are the main source of access to online platforms and services and the key driver of internet proliferation both in Russia and abroad. Expanding the functionality of smartphones and registering statistics on their usage creates a new and important source of digital data on user behavior for researchers. However obtaining this type of data requires the development of new methodological approaches and solving a number of technological, legal and ethical issues. A significant step in this process is a comparative assessment of survey data based on retrospective self-reports that are traditionally used for researching online user activity with objective data on behavior based on digital traces of online activity. This article presents the results of an experiment on cross-validation of self-reported data on smartphone usage and digital behavioral data (N = 80). The data for the experiment were collected within the methodological approach referred to as “data donation”, which means that the respondents share with the researchers the data that their mobile devices have already collected. The results of the experiment show a moderate positive correlation between retrospective self-report data and digital behavioral data on mobile phone usage. There is no statistically significant time window effect for estimating the volume of smartphone usage over a short (day) and longer period (current week). It indicates a comparative stable validity of self-reporting and, consequently, its reliability-reproducibility within a week. Thus, when there is no possibility to collect and integrate digital behavioral data into the study, the use of retrospective self-reports may be warranted.

The functioning of social institutions is the basis of social life. The creation of new institutions can take place through the development of formal requirements and classifications at the level of old institutions. The focus of the study the results of which are presented in this paper is examining the process of appropriating newly created rules and classifications at the level of individuals during the development of a new institution. The methodological framework chosen was M. Douglas’s theory of cognitive institutions, which allowed us to identify the stages of creating a new institution by correlating three definitions of the concept of ‘institution’: a large-scale industrial process, a legitimized social group and a convention. The empirical object was the project ‘Volunteers of Financial Education’ and its participants. The functioning of the project is considered in the broad context of work on improving financial literacy among the population. The detailed characteristic of the institutional design of this project is given, classifications created within its framework are analyzed, the process of origin of the new institution is shown. The study of volunteers’ inclusion in the process of improving financial literacy among the population allowed us to identify five options of individual choice: inclusion through the development of classifications; through the adoption of classifications; through solving the problems of local communities and non-adoption of classifications; inclusion mediated by involvement in other volunteer activities, without the adoption of classifications; participation in volunteer activities on the basis of personal motives without the adoption of classifications. The description of the three levels of the process of institutionalization of new classification grids allowed us to obtain a comprehensive characteristic of the system of improving financial literacy in Russia.

Sheregi’s account on his own scientific research is an unusual tale with multiple layers to it, with its origins lying in events that transpired half a century ago and the tale itself culminating in reports about current scientific research. The events mentioned in the account are not assigned any specific dates, but the era is given away by major events that happened during any given time and even more so by the subject matter of whatever studies are presented. You have your Komsomol construction projects, including the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), then you have a series of studies that were supposed to gauge what the youth thought about decisions made at Komsomol conventions. Then you have opinions held by various groups of the youth and the general population in regards to Mikhail Gorbachev’s social and economic innovations. As time goes on election surveys and attempts to predict who will win an election become a relevant topic. Then you’re presented with a comprehensive look into research on issues related to youth, college students, teachers, next to that you have studies that look into various forms of deviant behavior exhibited by young Russians.This isn’t simply a list of topics for research: in his work Sheregi delves into the very essence of his approach towards dealing with sociological subject matter. For example, when analyzing the ethnic composition of the workforce involved in the construction of the BAM dispatched from different Soviet republics, he noticed that the vast majority of those who were coming in were ethnic Russians, which prompted him to conclude that the country would soon fall apart. Content analysis of corresponding plans of publishing houses for the years 1975–1985 refute official statements made by the government alleging that inflation was nonexistent in the country.One thing that is unique compared to autobiographies written by other Russian sociologists would be Sheregi describing his own career path. It basically boils down to him actively avoiding government service. The new forms of labor relations, as well as new approaches towards coordinating scientific research that came about during the time of the perestroika immediately caught his attention, they reminded him of what he learned in the early years of his own life living in the Hungarian part of Western Ukraine, which for a long time harbored skills and traditions inherent to a capitalist economy. Also Sheregi elaborated on what motivated him to establish his own (private) research center, on top of inventing a particular way of organizing scientific research that turned out to be much more effective compared to what was practiced in state-curated sociology departments. One initiative of his center that stands out in particular is the publication and distribution of literature on sociology, which is something that has been actively ongoing and almost exclusively done charitably: at the moment this “small library” consists of about 250 books. In recent years various circumstances of his life have prompted F. Sheregi to make a comeback and once again pursue theoretical sociology, and just as before his efforts involve inventive ways to formulate problems and a unique outlook on their genesis and resolution.

This historical study examines an article by G.S. Batygin about sociology of morality, in which he proves its impossibility. The author sees the relevance and significance of the article in the fact that it has become a dividing milestone on the path from the “old” to the so-called “new sociology of morality”. The argumentation of G.S. Batygin is reconstructed, the main provisions and concepts of the article are critically analyzed. For comparison, the points of view on sociology of morality of other Russian authors are provided, who believe that this sociological discipline is not only possible, but actually exists. According to the author, the moral phenomena themselves are interpreted by G.S. Batygin not entirely correctly — only as reflected phenomena of consciousness — obviously because this corresponded to the requirements of the scientistic paradigm which he decided to adhere to in his article. Nevertheless, the author believes that within the framework of this paradigm, G.S. Batygin’s argumentation aimed at proving the impossibility of morality is irrefutable in notional and logical respects. But if it is proven that scientific sociology of morality is impossible, then the question arises whether it is possible in another paradigm and based on another way of cognition, namely philosophical? The path towards it was outlined by the pioneer of the sociology of morality, E. Durkheim, as noted by G.S. Batygin. The author considers M. Scheler’s “material ethics of values” and “sociology of knowledge” as examples of philosophical sociology of morality. In conclusion, he characterizes his own theoretical and methodological position, in light of which Batygin’s article is regarded as a morally significant act.

Based on materials from a semi-structured interview conducted by the author in March of 2024 with the man of the hour, as well as personal memories of more than half a century of scientific and casual communication with him, important issues of J.T. Toschenko’s activities in the field of sociological science, sociological education, the functioning of a sociological journal, relations with colleagues, as well as scientific tolerance are examined. The role of this scientist in the development of Russian sociology and in creating a positive creative atmosphere around it is shown.