Volume 25, Nº 3 (2025)

The article is based on the results of the joint Russian Chinese research project. The authors use sociological and statistical data to consider the specifics of the structural shifts in the population’s consumption, which occurred under modernization in Russia and China. During the last thirty years, given an increase in population’s income and expenses, the proportion of household spending on food has decreased, but in China this decrease was more intensive and steady. Both countries show a considerable increase in the consumption of services. In China, the main focal point is a gradual transition from consuming to survive towards consuming for development (household spending on education, travel, leisure, household appliances, communication services and transportation), while in Russia the authors focus on the increasing demand for recreational services (spending on healthcare, fitness-wellness, entertainment, educational, tourism) that improve a family’s quality of life. However, despite positive trends, household consumption structure in both countries is still not on par with today’s demands. Moreover, in recent years, a point of particular concern for China has become high spending on housing and low demand for services in culture and leisure, while in Russia a recent decrease in purchasing power among the impoverished and the middle class has raised concerns. In both countries, there is a significant discrepancy in consumption between different income groups, urban and rural areas. The authors emphasize that the growing consumption in Russia and China is also determined by new trends in the development of information-communication technologies and the formation of a digital economy.

Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) is an international comparative study aimed at examining demographic, social and economic aspects of population life to identify how emerging challenges affect changes in family and demographic dynamics, including marriage, fertility, divorce, gender roles and intergenerational relations. The programme’s main research tool is the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) - a panel study that provides detailed data on daily life, family relationships and social-economic status. Based on the latest available wave of the GGS II survey, the authors examined the data on several countries as representing four profiles (to ensure a representative description of each): the first profile includes Austria and Germany, the second - Norway and the United Kingdom, the third - Estonia and Croatia, and the fourth - Belarus. Belarussian demographic development follows global trends: birth rates are rather evenly distributed across age groups; there is a noticeable shift in childbearing toward later reproductive ages and a persisting gap between the declared ideal number of children and actual fertility rates. Childlessness remains the least preferred model, while the two-child family is the most desired model in all countries under study; however, in Belarus and Estonia younger generations show a trend of declining desired number of children. Such factors as education, financial stability, housing conditions and state support contribute to postponing childbirth, which affects the total number of children born.

The relevance of the study of the youth’s professional plans in relation to the industrial sector is determined by personnel shortage, erosion of institutional benchmarks during the period of professional self-determination, and the increasing role of human capital in production. In recent years, the scientific community has identified the problem of deengineering associated with labor imbalances at enterprises of real sector of the economy and having such deeper origins as deformation of the student youth’s professional self-determination. Under the intensively developing digitalization and social-cultural dynamics, utilitarian values o f the profession become a priority for the younger generation, but the model of new industriality suggests a different orientation - towards professional development, essence of work and management of cultural capital. The study aims at identifying students’ and working youth’s attitudes to the engineering profession and the nature of their professional plans. Several groups were surveyed in Yekaterinburg: 11th grade schoolchildren (N=2233); 2nd-4th-year students of technical schools (N=1865); 1st-6th-year students of universities (N=1009); young workers of the Ural industrial enterprise (under 35, N=204). The data indicates contradictions in the professional plans of young people. New industriality has determined the priority of knowledge in labor, the significance of involvement in production and of responsibility for the high-quality performance, but young people focus on external indicators (salary, career growth, good working conditions) in their professional path. The engineering profession by its nature coincides with impulses of today’s industrial development, but in the youth’s perception, on the contrary, is typically utilitarian.

The article considers shift work on the example of returning labor migrants in the Volga Region. The study aims at assessing prospects for reintegrating shift workers into the labor market of their region of permanent residence. The study combined quantitative and qualitative approaches. The authors conducted an online survey (N=434) of residents of Mordovia working on a shift basis (mainly in Moscow and the Moscow Region - 79 %); the questionnaire focused on the key parameters of employment, income, and migration attitudes. Semi-formalized interviews were conducted with 24 shift workers (19 men and 5 women aged 22-60) on subjective factors of labor mobility and possibilities of return. The key obstacles to the return of shift workers were identified: a significant difference in wages (the average salary of shift workers is twice as high as the regional average); established practices of seasonal work as a social norm; psychological adaptation to a specific work schedule (“free time trap”). Most seasonal workers (82 %) are satisfied with their current employment - stable income (74 %) and flexible schedule (50 %), so only 15 % consider a return, mainly due to age or family circumstances, i.e. there are obvious limitations to the large-scale reintegration of shift workers into the labor market of their region. Shift employment remains a rational strategy for adapting to regional imbalances in the labor market, and traditional measures to stimulate return (job creation) are insufficient without taking into account labor expectations of shift workers. The region should focus on the hidden economic benefits of shift employment: money transfers, support for local businesses due to consumer demand generated by shift workers, long-term investments in the regional human capital, etc.

The article considers the conditions of personal-professional efficiency of employees in the context of organizational AI maturity as the readiness and ability to use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The study is based on the hypothesis that the continuous self-improvement of mature digital organizations affects work processes in the given external environment and directly stimulates personal self-improvement of employees in their professional activities. As an AI-mature organization the authors selected a company that has gone through the largest digital transformation and currently implements digital projects both for business and for solving strategic government tasks; one of its priorities is the integration of AI of “new generation” into the human-centric model of business processes (1). The authors show a high level of correlation between AI maturity and the human-centric focus of personal-professional efficiency, which suggests the need for controlled formation of a creative personality with a high level of subjectivity, motivation, responsibility, adaptability and learning ability, capable of building effective interaction and using digital environment, including AI technologies. The relevant criteria for personal self-development are as follows: adaptability, openness, tolerance for uncertainty, self-regulation, courage and metacognitive abilities. The study proved a potential negative impact of digitalization on mental health due to the level of development of digital environment and workspaces of digital companies. Thus, organizational sustainability in an intensively changing environment requires monitoring of the reserves of personal and professional efficiency and the working base that has the potential for continuous improvement and adaptation as a condition for maintaining and releasing cognitive reserves. The authors assess the prospects for an organizational culture of a selective autopoiesis type provided its AI maturity. The feature of such a culture is a human-centric selection of innovative samples of professional and social-cultural activities of employees under their personal and professional development. Based on the monitoring results, the samples as constructs of the change fund can be refined to be self-disseminated in the form of positive and negative feedback.

The wave-like development of social structure, rejection of “old” standards and adoption of their “new” versions in the rapidly changing geopolitical situation, digitalization and informatization of public relations make not only researchers but also managers take a different look at standardization - primarily in the sociological perspective. The basic principles of quality standards determine the significant role of sociological diagnostics in understanding the penetration of standards into the activities of management entities. The choice of an educational institution as an object of the study is explained by the peculiarities of both university activities and their results. It is in the higher education institution that the attitude towards quality standards is formed on the part of individuals representing different groups of university community. The article provides the authors’ description of the penetration of quality standards into educational activities, identifies formal and informal social regulators, presents an integral indicator of the level of satisfaction of students with educational process at the A.I. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University (index of educational process quality), a matrix of management decisions that can be implemented by the educational organization based on the results of the sociological study and recommendations for improving the management of quality system. The authors admit that the results of their study require expert discussion that can confirm or refute the presented sociological description of the penetration of quality standards, which can become typical for educational organizations and ultimately affect the quality policy of most of them. The authors see prospects for continuing the research work in the development and expansion of management strategy for introducing quality standards into the functioning and management of educational institutions.

The relevance of the study of generational relations of educational communities in Russian universities is determined by the increasing influence of the generational factor on various aspects of academic life and by the insufficient development of the theoretical-methodological foundations of such research. To understand the state of generational interactions between students, research-teaching staff and administrative-managerial personnel, it is necessary to develop the subject field of generational research in higher education. Such work will help to develop theoretical-methodological approaches, which today are reduced almost exclusively to the concept of W. Strauss and N. Howe, and to expand the list of research questions. In the sociology of higher education, there are no systematic ideas about the subject field of generational research of educational communities, its boundaries, structure and segments. The article aims at reconstructing this subject field and assessing the possibilities of extrapolating its structure to the sociology of higher education. The authors identified four fields in the generational approach: generational structure of society and the dynamics of generations; generational self-awareness; intergenerational relations and interactions; their regulation. This approach can be extrapolated to sociological studies of interactions between university educational communities. The authors proposed the following structure of the subject field of generational research in higher education: generational structure of university community (demographic, age, qualification, organizational and managerial substructures) and its dynamics; generational self-awareness (ideas about one’s generation and its differences from other generations, generational self-identity, values, interests and stereotypes); generational interactions in university community (from exchange, agreement, consensus, dialogue to conflicts, breaks, value split); regulation of intergenerational relations (social-cultural and managerial mechanisms). The conducted study contributes to the development of the sociological theory of generations and generational research in the sociology of higher education.

The search for answers to the question of what happiness is and what is necessary for it began in ancient times, but there are still no unambiguous findings. Ancient philosophers proposed various concepts of happiness, linking it with virtue, absence of suffering or life in accordance with reason - today these ideas are still shared to some extent but considered insufficient for understanding and finding happiness. First surveys on happiness date back to the mid-20th century, when the concept of “subjective well-being” became a kind of “grassroot” analogue of a more ephemeral happiness, being a combination of life satisfaction with positive emotions. Gradually, a subject field of many sciences in the study of happiness developed, for instance, sociology focuses on social factors of happiness (support and trust), while economics - on the relationship between economic indicators and subjective well-being. Representative national and international studies of happiness are conducted by major sociological organizations worldwide. In Russia, such “measurements” aim at assessing the level of happiness in the context of general social well-being, including for a comparative international analysis, and at identifying factors influencing happiness and social well-being, including for public policy goals. In recent decades, the state has also shown concern about happiness, recognizing limitations of economic indicators alone and demonstrating a growing interest in less “quantitative” indicators of life quality. The article outlines the main components of sociological studies of happiness (search for its conceptual definition in an interdisciplinary context; features of its empirical interpretation and measurement; factors determining the level and “quality” of happiness) and some changes in their use and/or perception.

Educational migration has become a significant form of labor migration in Central Asia due to a growing number of students seeking higher education abroad and subsequently joining foreign labor markets. The article examines the interconnection between educational and labor migration, highlighting economic, social and institutional factors that make students remain in host countries after graduation. The study focuses on such theoretical frameworks as human capital theory, social mobility and brain drain vs brain circulation, providing a comprehensive analysis of how educational migration influences workforce mobility and national development. The author’s findings show that economic incentives, declining quality of higher education in Central Asia and favorable migration policies in destination countries contribute to the transformation of educational migration into long-term labor migration. Host countries of Central Asian students facilitate this transition by work permit programs and job market strategies, making foreign education a direct pathway to permanent employment. However, such challenges as work restrictions, labor discrimination and labor market saturation remain barriers to labor migration. The article also discusses implications of educational migration for both sending and receiving countries. While destination countries benefit from the skilled labor, Central Asian nations face brain drain, losing highly educated professionals that choose foreign labor markets. To mitigate these effects, the corresponding policies should include investment in national education reforms, incentives for return migration, and international cooperation for the degree recognition.

The article considers a small segment of the non-Western-centric world to understand how a selection of Bangladeshi news media covers the Russia-Ukraine conflict, i.e., the authors focus on the mass media coverage rather than how the Bangladeshi government may influence the news production. The research is based on two questions: RQ1 . How do Bangladeshi newspapers frame the Russian Ukrainian conflict; RQ2 . Which variables seem to impact the conflict coverage by Bangladeshi newspapers. The article begins with a literature review that briefly summarizes the current state of knowledge about the mass media coverage of armed conflicts. The second section presents the theoretical tools used to interpret the collected data on media framing, the third section - the research methodology, the fourth section - the case of the daily Bangladeshi newspapers coverage and framing of the Russian Ukrainian armed conflict. This study of two major daily newspapers in Bangladesh and their coverage of the Ukraine crisis and the Special Military Operation (SMO) represents a Non-Western mass media content analysis. The Ukraine crisis represents a major newsworthy topic in the Global North (the collective West), which is very deeply politicised as a form of information warfare against Russians and Russia’s interests. Therefore, the authors make use of a media framing as a theoretical basis in this qualitative study of the SMO news content of Daily Star and Dhaka Tribune . The results of the study are interesting and controversial: the Bangladesh mass media framing of the news stories resembles that of the Global North. However, there are some specific national features determined by the country’s history and active pursuit of a balanced and neutral foreign policy towards the Global North and the Global South, which creates a nuanced understanding of Russia’s security concerns and dilemma as legitimate, since Bangladesh’s foreign policy philosophy is based on the idea of being no one’s enemy and a friend to everyone. However, this philosophy leads to obvious contradictions and dissonance described in the paper.

The article is a review of B. Groys’s Philosophy of Care (transl. from English by A. Fomenko. Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2024. 120 p.). This short book presents the conceptual foundations for the study of care as having fundamental importance in terms of the relationship between autonomy and dependence, self-care and external, institutional care, i.e., care is not just an “applied” term with which we tend to describe some ideal state of affairs (emotional content of labor in the broad sense) in medicine, education, cultural heritage preservation, environmental safety, etc.

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