2016. vol. 15. No. 2

Sociology can analyze war and warfare under different aspects, for example, as a problem of collective violence. It has rather neglected another important aspect of war, as in the fact that war is also always an organizational phenomenon. In the last few years, several studies on war have been focusing on this aspect by using or referring to Niklas Luhmann’s system theory. This paper looks at some of these aspects by critically asking how these sociological studies use Luhmann’s theory in their analysis of war or war-related social structures. Luhmann’s theory, particularly the theory of society based on the principle of functional differentiation, has a powerful explicative potential, particularly for the analysis of war and warfare. However, only a few studies are actually using Luhmann’s theory in an adequate way by situating the concepts at the correct analytical level. War and “military systems” should be analyzed as organizational structures in society which are managed, first of all, by the political system, a function system of society, and which by no means excludes a multiplicity of interdependen-cies with other systems. A systemic perspective should also take regional “expressions” of society such as “military systems” in specific states or groups of states into account.

This article discusses the theoretical and methodological challenges in the qualitative research of Russian diasporic homes. Its key argument is that a sense of ethnic atmosphere and domes-tic aesthetics is co-created by the researcher and the participant through their shared percep-tions of place in a process that has both advantages and limitations. Specifically, the article looks into the idea of “Russianness,” which is defined as a collection of material and sensory elements that make one feel “at home.” More importantly, this feeling of being “at (a Russian) home” and the atmospheres related to it can not only be experienced by those who live there, but also by its visitors who intuitively recognize the elements and objects of decor, and the domestic environment as being part of Russian culture. The interview situation helps to both reveal and to limit the meanings of the objects and of the stories which then constitute part of the existing atmosphere. Using examples from the previous study of Russian migrants’ homes and complemented by the researcher’s self-reflection, this article will explore the problematic nature of sensory dimension of home, and the challenges in approaching it both theoretically and methodologically. The article’s enquiry is aligned with the argument of the importance of combining different ways of learning and knowing in sociological research (Smart, 2011), and aims to engage with the research context more critically and creatively.

The main aim of the research is to discover the ways of the realization of the main strategies of the anticorruption discourse using the method of critical discourse analysis. The sources of the investigation are the texts of international anticorruption organizations, specifically, “Transparency International”. The intertextuality and interdiscoursivity of the anticorruption discourse demonstrate not only all of the trends that characterized the discourse of later capitalism, but also led to the creation of a new type of discourse. Anticorruption discourse is the kind of neoliberal discourse oriented to the dissemination of democratic regimes and principles of the free market on the global level. Referential and predicative strategies show that civil society takes the leadership in global anticorruption activity, emphasized by the demonstration of the weaknesses of governments and business. Both argumentation strategies and strategies of legitimation demonstrate the main aims of fighting corruption and the conditions of its effectiveness. The topoi of anticorruption discourse represent the features of anticorruption-ism that are formed according to the principle of the “mirror answer”; to be efficient, the curbing of corruption should have the same characteristics. Another kind of opposition includes the plain contrast between corruption and anticorruption-ism, which represents the “positive representation of the in-group (anticorruption civil society) and the negative representation of the out-group (corruption and corruptioners)”.

The article considers rhetoric as the main channel of argumentation in the context of political symbolization. The article draws the substance of political symbolization from the theory of the symbol, introduced by German Romantics. Political symbolization is conceptualized in terms of the multiplicity of unstated meanings in communication within a political context. The findings of the article have a significant implication in that political symbolization is a unpredictable phenomenon; it becomes “visible” as if it has been happening in reality. However, in the collective perception due to the dispositions of interpreters, political symbolization is presented as more essential than the viscera of life. The author shows how the mechanism of persuasion may become an independent, productive source in the sphere of politics. Thus, the mechanism of persuasion cannot be simplified to the translation of the ideas, but it is also capable of producing new meanings. In this framework, political argumentation can be used not only for promoting ideas in the sphere of politics, but might produce politics itself. Arguments that might be marked as “true” or “false” are transformed into judgments of the ideologically normative language. Therefore, the ability “to impose” one’s ideological perspective on the public gains crucial importance as it consists of axiological and cognitive elements. Resources taken from argumentation mechanisms maintain a real political force in the process of agenda-setting. However, not any rhetorical message appealing to a specific political community will lead to the steady and efficient process of collective self-identification, which is always followed by the production of new political meanings through collective judgments.

This article is an introduction to the Russian translation of the first book of Thomas Aquinas’ treatise De regimine principum. The author considers the place of the text within the framework of the European tradition of the Mirrors of Princes, while describing, in brief, the problems of the authorship and the dating of the treatise. Among the European Mirrors of the Princes, the work of Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship or On the Government of Princes, has a special place. Thanks to its author’s reputation, this text became one of the most famous influences in both European Late Medieval Philosophy and Modern Political Philosophy. Additionally, this treatise has become a model for two famous works of the same name, On the Government of Princes, written by Ptolemy of Lucca, and Egidio Colonna. In the discussion of the dating of Aquinas’ book, the author holds the opinion that this work was composed between 1271 and 1273, and was addressed to Hugh III Lusignan, the king of Cyprus. The special place in this article is occupied by a small terminological discussion of the Russian translation of the Latin word “princeps.” The author affirms that the existing translation of this word as “Lord” (gosudar) is impossible and quite incorrect. In the author's opinion, the correct translation is “the ruler,” or “the Prince.”

Among the European “mirrors of the princes,” the work of Thomas Aquinas, On King-ship; or, On the Government of Princes, has a special place. Thanks to the author’s repu-tation, this text has become one of the most famous and influential in both European Late-Medieval Philosophy and Modern Political Philosophy. Among other things, this treatise has become a model for two famous works, both titled On the Government of Princes, and written by Ptolemy of Lucca, and Egidio Colonna. St. Thomas’ thought on tyranny, along with Bartolo’s concept presented in On the Tyrant, underlies the Modern European theory of tyranny. Within the frames of this article, the first book of Aquinas’ work is published in Russian for the first time. This book, which researchers often name The Theory of the Monarchy, contains the description of the good king and the tyrant, and both are part of a Thomistic analysis of a monarchy’s advantages. Chapters 7–9, where Aquinas discusses the worthy king’s reward for ruling in a true manner, occupies a special place in this book. The translation is accompanied by an extensive commentary which contains an explanation of the primary categories of Thomist political and social philosophy, such as the Multitude, Community, Kingship, Rulership, the City, etc.

Modern technological development runs parallel with new social phenomena, which are often hard to describe because of the lack of theoretical resources even when an empirical, experimental observation base and sophisticated and reliable methods for obtaining data are available. Recently, researchers’ attention has been particularly attracted to the phenomena that are referred to in political and philosophical literature as “the multitude”, i.e., large entities which cannot be adequately described by the usual terms of “group”, “mass”, or just “crowd”. The dispersal of multitudes, a coordination originating beyond the verbal means of communication (unintended coordination), the phenomena of physical coherence at the level of anticipation of expressions and activities of the partner, and more, are found, in part, for the first time, and partially find evidence by means of a visual sociology. Visual sociology is already a differentiated school of thought with the empirical research practice of using visual materials (photos and video, mostly) as data. The need to rethink the research ideology of visual sociology and to develop the narrative means which enables the making of this research more productive appears to be all the more urgent. The complementary modus of narratology and visual sociology is not only a promising research perspective, but also a particular problem at the level of methodology which is considered in this article (as well as different approaches to its formulation). Among the theoretical interpretations of this problem, the “theory of non-representation” is specifically considered, and methodological issues are analyzed in the context of the experiment.

The dramaturgical metaphor is inseparably linked with Erving Goffman’s research optics. However, since the early 1960s, Goffman has distanced himself from the dramaturgical approach, and searched for a new source for theorizing. For Goffman, games became one of such sources. Despite the wide arsenal of analytical concepts and research experience formed during this period, Goffman is not perceived as a game theoretician, and his approach to the study of everyday life through the gaming metaphor has not found popularity among researchers of gamification practices. The article aims to reveal the theoretical potential of Erving Goffman’s gaming encounter by briefly marking the main collisions of his approach with adjacent areas, although mostly with symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology. We conclude that, unlike symbolic interactionism, the gaming concept tends to limit the extent of penetration of the symbolic content of interactions; a sequence of moves and results of an encounter only makes sense because of the recursive interpretation of the participants. In contrast, Goffman points out that the outcome of the gaming encounter depends on the previous sequence of moves and the situationally-available set of events. Ethnomethodologists note that everyday life is not interrupted during breaks and is not played by the rules, like games. According to Goffman, the gaming interaction eventually has an interrupted temporality, which, however, does not imply strategic timeouts. In turn, the existing gap with game theory is explained by the fact that Goffman deliberately excludes the strict calculation of everyday life interactions, leaving a significant role for the indeterminate. Despite the fact that Goffman’s concept is both close to one and then to another approach for the same reasons and causes many authors to try to find the similarities between them, it retains the original analytical advantages.

The theme of forgiveness unites H. Arendt’s and P. Ricoeur’s different philosophical interests. Both thinkers analyze this phenomenon in the context of the Avraama-Christian tradition of forgiveness, and ask the question concerning the opportunity of forgiveness in common life. This article gives the reasons for Ricoeur’s references to Arendt’s concept of forgiveness. It puts forward the idea that the rethinking of natality is a basis of Ricoeur’s concept of “forgiveness for us”. This article describes both the continuity and disagreement in Ricoeur’s and Arendt’s approaches to the issue of forgiveness. If Arendt conceptualizes forgiveness in terms of act, Ricoeur examines this phenomenon from the perspective of selfhood. For Arendt, forgiveness is not a typical action, but an event breaking the causal structure of common being. For her, forgiveness is some exception from the public space necessary for its own existence. Ricoeur proposes to consider forgiveness as a constant of common being. He analyzes forgiveness as a difficult act, but always possible “incognito”. Despite these differences, Arendt’s notion of natality becomes the decisive category for Ricoeur in justifying the constant of forgiveness. In introducing the condition of the separation between agent and act, he recognizes natality as a cause of the possible update of a guilty selfhood. This article assumes that Ricoeur’s appeal to Arendt helps him to formulate his own concept of forgiveness based on the review of the principles of the Avraamic tradition and its reception in Derrida’s philosophy. Thanks to Arendt, the place of forgiveness in Ricoeur’s theory as an “experience of the impossible” takes the difficult, but always possible, “incognito” forgiveness.

Students in the humanities (cultural anthropology, philology, etc.) address the problem of cultural mechanisms in social changes. This problem is one of the key topics in the cultural sociology of the collective monography Anthropology of Protest, written about the popular protest in Russia in 2011–2012. In the Anthropology of Protest, protest rallies are described as a nexus of communication between protesters and the government (macro-level communication), and among protesters (local level communication). The authors focus on the analysis of the protest rallies’ slogans and statements as seen on placards and banners. Special issues in the Anthropology of Protest are the role of language games in protest statements, and the effect of the local (topographic, etc.) context of small protest rallies on the form and content of protest statement (in the cases of Occupy Abay, toy “nano-rallies”, and others). The Anthropology of Protest provokes cultural sociologists to more actively discuss the nature of moral classification, as well as the role and impact of the media. The Yale school of cultural sociology realizes moral classification rather in a structuralist style than as a tool of plain binary oppositions. The revised study describes moral classifications as complex non-linear phenomenon with condensation (Verdichtung), displacement (Verschiebung), or other types of effects which are characteristic of language games. The role of the mass media was described by J. Alexander (in the case of the Watergate affair) through the Durkheimian model of collective ritual. An analysis of the circulation of protest texts and topics in social media incline our attention into an alternate theoretical agenda, that of Tarde’s model of inter-personal influence and diffusion.

Review: Alexander Savin, Universitetskie dela: dnevnik 1908–1917 [University Routines: The Diary, 1908–1917] (Moscow, Saint Petersburg: Center for Humanitarian Initiatives, 2015) (in Russian).

Review: Aleida Assmann, Dlinnaja ten' proshlogo: memorial'naja kul'tura i istoricheskaja politika [The Long Shadow of the Past: Cultures of Memory and the Politics of History] (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2014) (in Russian).

Review: Vadim Volkov, Arina Dmitrieva, Mikhail Pozdniakov, Kirill Titaev, Rossijskie sud’i: sociologicheskoe issledovanie professii [Russian Judges: A Sociological Study of Profession] (Moscow: Norma, 2015) (in Russian).

Review: Alexander Gofman, Traditsiya, solidarnost' i sotsiologicheskaya teoriya: izbrannye teksty [Tradition, Solidarity, and Sociological Theory: Selected Texts] (Moscow: The New Chronograph, 2015) (in Russian).

Review: Artemy Magun, Demokratija, ili Demon i gegemon [Democracy; or, Demon and Hegemon] (Saint Petersburg: EUSP Press, 2016) (in Russian).