卷 31, 编号 1 (2025)

In world sociology there are currently several versions of the theory of multiple modernities. One of them draws on S. Eisenstadt’s civilizational analysis which highlights the socio-cultural foundations of various types of a modern society. In addition, theories of alternative, entangled and successive modernities are presented in the works of J. Arnason, G. Therborn and P. Wagner. The article presents an analytical review of these theories. The use of different combinations of the aforementioned approaches for analyzing social transformations in Russia and the USSR is highlighted. It is noted that followers of the multiple modernities theory argued that globalization could take various forms and go in many directions. However other approaches prevailed in most studies of globalization processes in sociology and global history, although they did not dedicate sufficient attention to the multiplicity of such processes and the continuing rivalry between them. From the multiple modernities perspective the Soviet version of modernity has been characterized as an alternative mode of globalization. As Arnason emphasizes, communist modernity was a global phenomenon and its dynamics were an important part of 20th century globalization processes. This scholar focuses on civilizational aspects of the Soviet version of modernity which ultimately proved to be unsustainable. Arnason also poses the question whether modern-day China could form an alternative model of globalization.

The article presents the results of an empirical study aimed at identifying socio-cultural markers of the northern and Arctic identity of young people living in Russia’s Arctic region. The study looked into the manifestation of territorial identity markers as a potential deterrent factor in the migration attitudes of young people. Based on data from a representative sociological survey, the fact is established that territorial identity has indeed emerged. It is revealed that the northern identity is more pronounced, and the Arctic identity is moving towards becoming separate and independent from the northern identity. From there by means of factor analysis a set of ten identity markers for two dimensions is proposed: “being a northerner” and 2)“sense of pride and belonging”. It was found that young people's self-association with the North is determined through emotional attachment, cultural and historical connection and commitment to the community of northerners. The dependence of the expression of a set of socio-cultural markers of northern identity and migration attitudes of young people has been statistically substantiated. It is proven that the more markers are expressed, the more the attitude “I don't want to go anywhere” is expressed. The scientific novelty of the study lies in empirically substantiating the significance of the northern identity as a variation of territorial identity as a deterrent factor in the migration attitudes of young people and identifying markers of its formation among young people in the Russian Arctic.The results of the study will be of use to people in the scientific community, regional and state administration, public organizations and associations dealing with youth policy issues when it comes to justifying and developing policy decisions aimed at retaining and securing youth in the North.

The article examines the subjective wellbeing of married and single mothers by analyzing their level of satisfaction with life, financial situation, work, wages, as well as level of anxiety and social optimism. The empirical basis of the article is built on data from the “Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey — HSE” (RLMS–HSE, 2004–2023). During the course of the study, the authors identified significant differences in the subjective wellbeing of married and unmarried women. Women from single-parent families, compared to married women, demonstrate a lower level of life satisfaction, while the differences are especially noticeable in terms of dissatisfaction with life — it is expected that there are more dissatisfied women from single-parent families. It is noted that a lower degree of job satisfaction is a group characteristic for unmarried women. Single mothers are more likely to express dissatisfaction with their financial situation, as well as a higher level of anxiety about possible job loss, inability to support themselves over the next 12 months. The proportion of women who attribute their financial status to the lower rungs of the social ladder is twice as high among women from single-parent families compared to those who are married. Married women show a greater tendency to expect positive changes in their lives.

The article is devoted to analyzing and systematizing the digitalization risks that are in the focus of the scientific community. The empirical data is comprised of publications in peer-reviewed journals indexed in Scopus in 2010–2024. Four groups of digitalization risks were identified and described: digital inequality, digital addiction, privacy problems and a group of other risks. The specifics of identifying and gauging risks were revealed. It is shown that privacy risks are identified as a subjective sense of threat by individuals, while both subjective and objective criteria are used to measure the risks of digital dependence and digital inequality. It is concluded that there is a tradition of studying risks in some scientific fields that is absent in others. For example, tools from the field of psychology are widely used to identify and measure digital addiction but are almost absent from the field of sociology. Similarly, different vulnerable groups were found to be exposed to different risks. The focus of digital inequality researchers has been on the elderly as the most exposed to this risk. On the contrary, in studies of digital addiction, young people are the most vulnerable group. Age and digital literacy are mentioned as factors influencing different groups of digital threats. Despite attempts to identify a single group of factors behind the spread of digitalization risks, the research field remains highly fragmented.

The article examines AI from the perspective of moral agency and moral patiency. In the forepart, an overview of the main theoretical arguments as well as some experimental data regarding the (im)possibility of grounding the moral status of intelligent machines is provided. Evidence shows that perceived anthropomorphism and animism, this being culturally dependent, significantly influence the moral recognition of AI. The second part of the article highlights some research perspectives that seem promising for sociology of morality to be applied to the AI field: (a) discrimination of moral situations specific to interaction with AI, (b) discovering the cultural background of moral agency and patiency of AI, (c) expertise in AI code of ethics development, (d) inquiry into AI value alignment when delegating morally relevant decisions. The remainder of the article interprets moral status of AI as a stratification of integrated moral responsibility for social consequences in human-machine interactions and represents a pyramid within which several layers are distinguished, demonstrating the tendency to link the moral ‘non-recognition’ of AI with enhancing its autonomy and ‘consciousness’.

The article deals with the history and interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “social space”. With the help of the concept, Bourdieu described a set of interrelated social phenomena that support and reflect each other. He defined social space as a multidimensional distribution of agents (individual or collective) over objective positions determined by the distribution of effective resources or capitals — economic, cultural, social and symbolic. Capitals conceptualize the nature of social space by introducing different dimensions into it. According to Bourdieu, social space is the result of a complex interplay of various relations that give social positions their properties. Social positions within this space do not exist separately from or prior to these relationships — they are constituted by them. The study of social space is a search for invariants. Sociology according to Bourdieu is a social topology — the understanding of spatial relations between social positions in different variations. Bourdieu’s social space not only structures sociological knowledge, but also provides methods for obtaining it.

Nonlinear biographical analysis is the author’s methodology of B.Z. Doktorov and is applied in a science project on the history of Soviet/Russian sociology. It is shown that such biographical analysis is based on the following principles. The principle of “thick present” denotes cognition through retrospective and prospective immersion into the subject of analysis from the perspective of today’s realities. Constant refinement, supplementation and rewriting while taking into account the past and the present ensures the truthfulness and completeness of one’s life story. Another principle of the project is multidimensionality, where the biographical search applies a variety of means to describe the life of the scholar, in particular combining historicism and memoirism. The principle of stratifying “biographical subspace” multitemporality emphasizes the inseparability of the individual and the social environment, the uneven rhythms of the past, the smooth flow of common and external factors of experience into unique and internal life trajectory details. The ethical position of the non-linear biographer allows for partiality as a confession of predisposition and bias. Such a principle is seen as an advantage that helps to avoid the dogma of objectivity and to embrace any practices and processes of the past. The inseparability of personality and creativity in the history of science points to the person-centricity of nonlinear analysis. In addition to institutional attributes, informal ties, communication networks, internal motivations and attitudes are included, thus preserving the importance of personal factors in the history of science. It is concluded that the methodology of nonlinear biographical analysis focuses on the depth of biographical disclosure and the completeness of understanding the individual.

Housing precarity (precarity of housing) is the modern issue of insecure/unstable living arrangements, which has only recently begun to be widely discussed in scientific circles. The first extensive experience with and research results on this multidimensional phenomenon were obtained by European scientists representing various scientific fields. Instability in the labor market, financialization of housing, more intense migration processes, the threat of eviction and/or displacement, the development of informal living practices and other factors contributed to the precarization of the housing sphere, the development of a domestic culture of precarity and the formation of the so-called housing precariat. The book “Precarious Housing in Europe: A Critical Guide” edited by S. Münch and A. Side, which has already received positive reviews from other scientists, is the first to summarize the results of many years of research into housing precarity in EU countries. The work pays special attention to various manifestations of housing precarity and its extreme form - homelessness, vulnerable social groups (youth, migrants, etc.), as well as state policy in the housing sphere. Despite the fact that the book is the result of interdisciplinary collaboration, it is a landmark publication in the field of housing sociology, and therefore is of interest to researchers from other countries.