2019. vol. 18. No. 3

The authors analyze the relationship between the type of political regime and the level of terrorist activity, with a particular emphasis on the so-called factional democracies. The key difference of factional democracies from other political regimes is the presence of polarization between opposing factions. It has been reported that political polarization transforms the conventional institutionalized political process into unconventional politics. The authors draw attention to the fact that in the existing scientific debate, there is no clear conclusion about the nature of the relationship between the type of political regime and the level of terrorist activity in the country. A literature review suggests that there is a curvilinear, U-shaped relationship between the level of terrorist activity and the type of political regime, which is consistent with the findings of previous works describing the relationship between socio-political destabilization and the type of political regime. Preliminary testing conducted by the authors indicates that factional democracies are subject to significantly more terrorist attacks than any other political regimes. While analyzing data on the level of terrorist activity, the authors address the need to split the sample into subsamples, due to the nonlinear nature of the relationship between the level of terrorist activity and GDP per capita, as well as the mean of years of schooling. The presence of a positive relationship between factional democracies and the level of terrorist activity is also verified by applying a negative binomial regression. The authors offer their own answer to the question of why so many previous studies have detected a positive correlation between democracy and terrorism. Attention is drawn to the fact that the positive relationship between democratic regime and the level of terrorist activity can be obtained due to the inclusion of factional democracies into the overall sample of democratic states. If factional democracies are excluded from the sample, the relationship between the level of terrorist activity and the democratic regime turns out to be clearly negative. The findings about the relationship between regime type and terrorist activity are replicated at the subsamples level. The general conclusion is that a factional democracy turns out to be a very strong positive predictor of high levels of terrorist activity, whereas a non-factional democracy turns out to be a statistically-significant predictor of the relatively lower levels of the intensity of terrorist attacks.

The article deals with the constructions of the social problem of HIV/AIDS created by both the authorities and HIV activists in Russia. The work is based on the study of the rhetoric of Russian authorities, participant observations, and interviews with HIV activists. The constructions of HIV/ AIDS that were formed by authorities and HIV activists are significantly different. The Russian President and Prime Minister constructed HIV/AIDS not as an epidemic in the country, but as a “global problem”, representing Russia as a participant in the international efforts to combat AIDS. The authorities problematized the spread of the virus through the rhetoric of endangerment, while at the same time de-problematized HIV in Russia with the strategy of naturalizing the issue (“this is a problem that all countries face”). The HIV activists problematized the violations of the rights of people with HIV in public health institutions, the poor quality of antiretroviral therapy, the practice of late treatment, the lack of HIV prevention that includes sex education in schools, and repressive drug policies. Unlike the authorities’ construction, the problem constructed by HIV activists does not include the rhetoric of moral values. The main discursive way of problematization used by activists is the anti-discriminating rhetoric of entitlement. At the same time, HIV as a threat and a reason for fear is de-problematized by activists through the strategy of disproving stories where HIV activists talk about themselves, and directly interact with people to eliminate their fear of the virus.

The author attempts to analyze several categories of the Japanese political culture of the Nara period of the 7th–8th centuries AD, such as harmony (wa 和), and righteousness (gi 義). The author supposes that the existential disposition of trust forms the basis for such categories. In Confucian tradition, this disposition is expressed through trustworthiness (sin 信). The article begins with an overview of the Japanese political culture of the Nara period in order to clarify the place of wa, gi, and sin in Japanese political thought. The author pays close attention to the roles of language and myth in Japanese culture as well. It is argued that political culture is a sort of superstructure for language, which is a substructure. Since language is the logos of culture as a whole, it is possible to identify the existential meanings of categories of political culture that are ontologically rooted in language. The author claims that the patterns of political thinking in Japanese tradition are reflected in myth. In order to prove this, the authors offers an analysis of the use of such characters as wa 和 and gi 義 in the Japanese chronicles Kojiki and Nihongi, highlighting the variety of their meanings and the close connection with trustworthiness as their basis.

In the beginning of the 20th century, China faced the need to look for new ways of development and, like other countries, turned towards the resources provided by social sciences in the attempt to comprehend and interpret this experience. This article reviews and analyzes Chinese sociological thought of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on management issues. The subject of this work is the genesis of management ideas in sociology in Chinese society. The material for the study comprises the works of thinkers, publicists, and political figures of that time who set themselves the task of applying sociological theories to the development of the country. The main problem discussed in the article is the ratio of Western and native Chinese views and ideas in sociological approaches to the study of managerial processes in China. The analysis of materials from that time shows three different tendencies in the formation of management ideas in sociology; identifying the prerequisites for a new science to be used in traditional ideas about management, demonstrating the predominance of Western science over Chinese traditional sciences, and the attempts at synthesizing the first two tendencies. The conclusion of the article is that, by the time of the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the nascent management ideas in sociology in China were a heterogeneous fusion of Western and traditional Chinese concepts, and was closely related to other sciences such as political science, sociology, philosophy, etc. During this period, traditional ideas that were largely distinguished by speculation and ideology bore the function of an ideological “shield” to preserve the integrity of the Chinese nation in the context of the growing influence of Western powers on Chinese society.

The article considers the phenomenon of martyrdom in the Western nationalisms of the 18th–20th centuries, and is analyzed in three examples. These are the cults of Marat, Lepelletier, Chalier, and other martyrs in France during the 1789 French Revolution; the cult of Abraham Lincoln and other “martyr president” cults in the USA; and the Irish martyrdom ideologies from the 17th century to the 1916 Eastern Rising. The classic studies on nationalism (E. Gellner, B. Anderson, E. Hobsbawm, etc.) do not pay attention to the topic. Other works consider separate cases, though lack a general theory. Thus, the article’s major goals are to discover what is the role of martyrdom in nationalisms, and how is it related to religious ideas. In order to answer these questions, the author proposes a structural, or “compositional”, model, suggesting that the discourse of martyrdom consists of the three motives of founding, militancy, and mobilization. These three components work as an integral “engine” that allows a nationalist movement or a nation-state to fight to create the new reality and preserve what was created. The author suggests that the balance of these three motives in each individual case may differ, so one of the motives may be hypertrophied, while the other two motives are simply “completed” to the minimum level. Proceeding from the fact that martyrdom in nationalisms constantly refers to religious ideas, images, and rituals, the author concludes that martyrdom is an integral phenomenon with no clear borderline between “secular” or “religious” with regard to both individual cases and the elements of a much larger case.

This article offers the institutional side of the global sociological project presented by M. Burawoy for consideration. The main critics of this approach currently ignore the role of institutions, and concentrate more often on the ideological side of the issue. In this paper, it is proposed to trace the usage of the institutional mechanisms of the ISA to promote the idea of the internationalization of sociology on a global scale. On the basis of the historical and sociological method, the connection between the ISA World Sociological Congresses, the institute of the presidency of the ISA, the presidential address, and the project of global sociology found in the approach of the British scientist will be demonstrated. Through the analysis of Burawoy’s articles, the main program statements of the development of global sociology will be defined. Special attention will be paid to the institute of the ISA presidential speech and its usage in the context of the global sociology of Burawoy. This paper postulates the problem of the excessive centralization of the project on the institutional link with the various resources provided by the ISA.

The paper deals with the phenomenological, ontological, and existential grounds of the political philosophy and the philosophy of history as proposed by Vladimir Bibikhin in a course of lectures called (It’s) Time (Time-Being). Following the crucial ideas of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, Bibikhin introduces the concepts of “early” and “late” disciplines, illustrated by the rules of Sophia Alekseyevna and Peter the Great, accordingly. These concepts are introduced to indicate two different ontological structures of historical and political action. An ‘early’ discipline stands for an ontological basis for democracy, whereas a ‘late’ one refers to autocracy and despotism. Drawing on multiple Bibikhin’s works dedicated to Russia, such as Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, The Power of Russia, and Our Place in the Word, the author argues that Bibikhin further elaborates the political and ontological aspects of the above-mentioned concept of the ‘late’ discipline in these texts. In contrast, the book New Renaissance is considered as an illustration of an ‘early’ discipline which is prevalent in the West, according to Bibikhin. Finally, the author proposes a critical evaluation of Bibikhin’s political philosophy in regards to its close link with an ideology and outlines the possible perspectives of implementing some of Bibikhin’s ideas in contemporary debates about the political.

With the increasing role of technological agents in contemporary society, questions surrounding the future of so-cio-economic organization are intensely debated. A variety of predictions have been made, ranging from conservative views that emphasize the gradual integration of techno-actors into human social collectives to radical outlooks that assume the inevitability of a dramatic historic break. This study employs the method of simulation, exploring the on-going path towards automation with the help of classical Marxism. It seeks to understand whether robots and artificial intelligence (AI) might become new value producers and a revolutionary social class. As demonstrated, the continuity of capitalist relationships may facilitate the formation of new social groups and recast class-based political agendas.

We can find the opposition between the judging spectator and the judging actor in Arendt’s unfinished theory of judgment. In analyzing this opposition, some interpreters have come to the conclusion that Arendt finally defines political judgment as the contemplative ability of the silent spectator who is not needed in public. This article argues against this interpretation of Arendt’s approach to the judging spectator, and deals with the fact that Arendt gives the judging spectator the functions of the political narrator. The judging spectator cannot be interpreted only as a contemplative subject in her theory. Certainly, in Arendt’s later texts, judgment is seen as an ability to evaluate the political content not so much of one’s own actions, but the actions of the participants of common life. However, the spectator as the author of judgment cannot be silent since they are included in the political world. This article reveals Arendt’s understanding of the judging spectator in connection to her practical approach to judgment. In the results of the research, it can be said that the judging spectator can be interpreted as a participant of the common political world because speech is needed. While analyzing Arendt’s concept of speech as a part of her action theory, it is possible to state that the judging spectator is the narrator. This person is not the one who contemplates, but is the one who publicly speaks about the actions, and thus forms the political space.

The main focus of the article is a detailed reconstruction of the reception of State Secrets of Venice, the main historiosophical work by V. Lamansky. The article also provides comments on State Secrets received from Russian and foreign researchers. On the basis of the review written by A. Budilovich, the article gives a detailed exposition of Lamansky’s work. It is shown that although Lamansky’s work is formally aimed at the reconstruction of the history of political assassination in Venice in the XV–XVIII centuries, it emphasizes the new elucidation of the Eastern Question as reduced to the problem of Russian and European relations. The facts given in the work are only valuable as a means of the illustration of the idea of the profound controversy between the Romano-Germanic and Greek-Slavic worlds. On this point, the authors demonstrated the continuity between the historisophy of the early Slavophiles (firstly A. Khomiakov) and Lamansky’s historical methodology. It is shown that both early- and later-Slavophiles considered the historical problematics as based on the actual cultural situation. The article proves that Lamansky’s State Secrets of Venice is rather of the political type; it strives to give a moral conviction of European politics, that is, to show Europe in its own true image. In this regard, the authors consider State Secrets of Venice as a work which more fully expresses the later-Slavophile conception of Europe. The article also shows Lamansky’s relation to pan-slavism. It is noted that Lamansky regarded Austro-slavism negatively; he understood it as an attempt to drive Slavs apart and to turn them against Russia, which, in his opinion, is the only true defender of Slavic interests.

This article can be considered as the history of the concept of vulgar sociologism, including both the moment of the emergence of this concept and its subsequent history. In the 20th century, new approaches were formed in the natural sciences about society and man which assumed to consider all of the ideas from the point of view of class psycho-ideology. This approach manifested itself somewhat in the history of philosophical and scientific knowledge, but chiefly in literary criticism (Friche, Pereverzev). As a result, any work of art turns into a ciphered message behind which the interest of a certain class or group hides. The critic has to solve this code and define its sociological equivalent. In the discussions against vulgar sociology, M. Lifshitz and his adherents insisted on a limitation of the vulgar-sociological approach, qualifying it as a bourgeois perversion of Marxism. They saw the principle of the criticism of vulgar sociology in the well-known statement by K. Marx about the aesthetic value of the Ancient Greek epos. The task of the critic does not only reduce to the establishment of social genetics of the work of art because he also needs to explain why this work causes aesthetic pleasure during other historical eras. In the article, it is shown that later attempts to reduce the complete spectrum of modern western philosophy and aesthetics into a paradigm of vulgar sociology of the 1920s is an unreasonable exaggeration. At the same time, in discussions in the 1930s, the question of the need of the differentiation of the vulgar-sociological approach and a sociological method in general was raised. As for sociology, this question remains relevant even today.

The article deals with the social phenomenology of Alfred Schütz. Proceeding from the concept of multiple realities, the author describes religious reality, analyses its relationship with everyday, theoretical, and mythological realities, and identifies the areas where they overlap and their specifics. According to Schütz’s concept, reality is understood as something that has a meaning for a human being, and is also consistent and certain for those who are ‘inside’ of it. Realities are structurally similar to one another as they are similar to the reality that is most obvious for all human beings, i.e., the world of everyday life. Religious reality has one of the main signs of genuine reality, that of internal consistency. Religious reality has its own epoché (special ascetic practices) which has similarities with the epoché of the theoretical sphere since neither serve practical objectives, and imply freedom from the transitory issues of everyday life. Just as the theoretical sphere exists independently of the life of a scientist in the physical world and is needed to transfer results to other people, so the religious reality depends on ritual actions and material objects in its striving for the transcendent. Individual, and especially collective, religious practices are performed physically and are inextricably linked with the bodily ritual. The article notes that although Schütz’s phenomenological concept of multiple realities has repeatedly served as a starting point for the development of various social theories, its heuristic potential has not been exhausted. This allows for the further analyzing and development of topical issues such as national identity and its ties with religious tradition in the modern era, when religious reality loses credibility and has many competitors, one of which is the modern myth of the nation. Intersubjective ideas of the nation that are socially confirmed as the self-evident reality of everyday life cause complex emotions and fill human lives, thus displacing religious reality or forcing the latter to come into complex interactions with the national narrative.

The subject of this article is a critical analysis of the “concept of the future” as proposed by the British social theorist, John Urry (1946–2016). The author briefly examines the intellectual legacy of the sociologist and his contribution to the creation of a new social theory, pointing out that Urry’s books that were translated into Russian do not fully represent his scientific work, but reflect the later period of his research activity. What is the Future?was the sociologist’s last book and was published the same year he died: we can consider it as a kind of last will. This testament, however, reflects many aspects of the writings of the last sixteen years of Urry’s life. As Urry observes, he challenges the social sciences with his book because the social sciences are still not concerned the future as a subject of research, giving it to the mercy of futurology. This article gives an answer to the question of whether we can actually consider Urry’s book as such a challenge. The author argues that some kind of theoretical weakness is inherent in Urry’s concept. Thus, the sociologist calls for the theory of complex developing systems to help to analyze the future, but the conclusions he comes to do not have any heuristic value. However, as the author of the article notes, Urry’s book is valuable not as a theory, but as an attempt to talk about the future from the perspective of social philosophy and its focus on practice. On one hand, the sociologist uses rich empirical material when talking about utopias and dystopias such as fiction, cinema, publicistics, and reports of various organizations, as examples. On the other hand, when discussing such problems as 3D-printing, urban spaces without cars, climate change, dystopias, and so forth, Urry uses the method of scenarios in offering four scenarios for each phenomenon considered. These scenarios by themselves already allow us to imagine what the future might look like. The final chapter of the book is dedicated to a “low-carbon civil society” and the conceptualization of responsible-to-nature “natural capitalism.” The author of the article puts a special emphasis on this, considering that this concept should be supplemented by other ideas about the newest — digital — capitalism. Finally, the article considers the question of the relationship of Urry’s social theory with the theory of postmodernism.

Book Review: Albert Baiburin, Sovetskij pasport: istorija — struktura — praktiki [The Soviet Passport: History — Structure — Practices] (Saint Petersburg: EUSP Press, 2017) (in Russian).

Book Review: Olga Sedakova, Vescshestvo chelovechnosti [A Matter of Humanity] (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2019) (in Russian).