2019. vol. 18. No. 4

The paper looks into sociological implications of two discussions currently developing in behavioral economics and organizations theory: (1) regret theory, exploring the proposition that human decision making is governed by avoiding anticipated regret, rather than maximizing expected utility, and (2) studies of sunk cost fallacy, consisting in making decisions aimed at justifying previous decisions. We argue that these two areas of theorizing, presently isolated, are dealing with essentially the same phenomenon. This becomes evident if we recognize that choices are organized in sequences, with the merits of each particular choice being evaluated in the light of outcomes of the whole sequence. We then explore some general conditions of the ability to anticipate regret: interaction with one’s future Self and sequential organizations of states an individual find him/herself. We then discuss some widely spread forms of individual adaptations to the threat of experiencing regret: dissonance avoidance, prospective rationalization, cultivation of prescience, de-sequencing and open endings. We further explore various forms of collective actions involving regret avoidance, using the development of the sociological discipline as an example.

To date, the topic of Space goes beyond the natural sciences and is increasingly studied by humanitarian and social disciplines. Space exploration by mankind adds a new space of social communication. Space is essential for its development features in several ways: first, the impossibility of survival of biological organisms without special equipment that supports vital functions; secondly, the huge distances and difficulty of movement; and third, the availability of the Space vacuum that is a much larger space of space objects. The study of mankind’s going beyond the Earth from a sociological position is the subject of a new sociological discipline, that of astrosociology. Astrosociology is defined by the author as a branch of the sociological discipline that is related to the sociology of space which studies the social actions, connections, and collective representations of people which arise in the course of Space exploration and appropriation. The task of astrosociology is to answer the questions of how will the space of social interactions change after mankind enters Outer Space, and how will these interactions change and continue to change in the case of the physical presence of social actors in Outer Space. The theoretical problem of astrosociology is formulated by the question of to what extent will existing sociological theories allow to investigate the changes of communities and interactions of social actors mediated by the exploration and appropriation of Outer Space. In order to provide astrosociology with theoretical resources, the author analyzes the sociological theory of space, the theory of globalization and mobility, and the actor-network theory. The analysis allows us to come to a preliminary conclusion about the presence of modern sociology of theoretical resources for research from the sociological standpoint of the human spacewalk.

At present, the direct election of municipal heads has been canceled in most Russian regions, which practically completed the integration of municipalities into single, top-down model of governance. These institutional reforms caused changes in the factors determining the development and management effectiveness of municipalities. We have conducted a comparative analysis of six urban districts in Perm Krai to show that the effectiveness of the municipal administration is mainly stimulated by a constellation of informal, economic, and institutional factors. The presence of a regional actor that exercises patronage and control over a municipality counts as “informal.” An economic factor is represented by the absence of major city/town-forming business companies, which stimulates the city administration to actively raise additional funds through regional development programs. Finally, an institutional factor is the pressure exercised by independent local-council members. The constellation of these three factors determines the effectiveness of a local administration in the context of centralization. We use municipal statistical data, as well as semi-formalized interviews with 39 respondents collected in the six urban districts under study as an empirical basis to verify and prove the stated theoretical propositions.

Inside urban digital projects, clashes occur between scholars (urbanists, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, etc.) and technical specialists (programmers, data analysts, web developers, etc.). These clashes take the form of misunderstanding from the lack of a single language, and the criticism of the normative methodologies of each other, both of which allows us to highlight typical problems. From the materials of in-depth interviews with representatives of urban projects dealing with digital methods and data, we show that the projects create two main directions to resolve problems and coordinate participants from different epistemological traditions: one direction is finding a common language, which is a more pragmatic mode of coordination through “border objects.” We demonstrate these two areas using the example of working with data and methods within interdisciplinary teams. In addition, we single out five patterns of coordination between urban scholars and programmers (a mixture of expertise, collaboration, formal management, temporary assembly, and the orders). Their predominance depends on the presence of institutional pressure, the organizational division of labor, the availability of financial resources for hiring technical specialists and managers, as well as a strong leader who determines the situation.

The article examines the tradition of formation of the concepts “family” (famille) and “household” (ménage) in the political theory of the French lawyer, Jean Bodin. The article looks into different editions of Six Books of the Commonwealthto explore the connotations of the key concepts and the meaning that Bodin ascribed to them. As secondary sources, Bodin uses the works by Xenophon, Aristotle, Apuleus, and Marcus Junianus Justin, as well as the Corpus Juris Civilis. Bodin examines three different traditions, those of Ancient Greece, Ancient Hebrew, and Ancient Rome. Each of these traditions has its own history of the concepts of the “family” and of the “household”. Bodin refers to ancient traditions for polemics, but eventually offers his own understanding, not only of the concepts of “famille” and “ménage”, but also of the term «République», defined as the Republic, a term that (with some reservations) refers to the modern notion of state. The very fact that these concepts are being used signifies the division of the political space into the spheres of the private and the public. Furthermore, the concepts of the “family” and of the “household” are key to understand the essence of sovereignty as the supreme authority in the Republic. The author concludes that the difference between Bodin’s concepts of the “family” and the “household” lies not only in the possession of property and its legal manifestation, but also in the fact that the “household” is seen by Bodin as the basis of the Republic, the first step in the system of subordination to the authority.

The question of how the digital transformation of the public sphere affects political processes has been of interest to researchers since the spread of the Internet in the early 1990s. However, today there is no clear or unambiguous answer to this question; expert estimates differ radically, from extremely positive to extremely negative. This article attempts to take a comprehensive approach to this issue, conceptualizing the transformations taking place in the public sphere under the influence of Internet communication technologies, taking their political context into account, and identifying the relationship between these changes and possible transformations of political regimes. In order to achieve these goals, several tasks are tackled during this research. The first section examines the issue as to whether the concept of the public sphere can be used in a non-democratic context. It also delineates two main types of the public sphere, the “democratic public sphere” and the “authoritarian public sphere,” in order to take into account the features of public discourse in the context of various political regimes. The second section discusses the special aspects of the digital transformation of the public sphere in a democratic context. The third section considers the special aspects of the digital transformation of the public sphere in a non-democratic context. The concluding section summarizes the results of the study, states the existing gaps and difficulties, outlines the ways for their possible extension, and raises questions requiring attention from other researchers.

The article focuses on one of the most mysterious and intriguing stories of the Soviet civilization that is connected with the original ideas of the Bolsheviks and then to the Soviet nomenclature of culture. Chronologically, our research covers the first years of the formation of Soviet state institutions, the so-called Leninist and then Stalinist periods of leadership, and ends with a period that is often called “The Thaw.” In order to grasp the conceptual and doctrinal motifs for building Soviet cultural and state institutions, we used verbatim records of the Party Congresses as our main source of information. Our main task was to clarify why culture was central and strategic for early Soviet leaders. We will show how culture gave political doctrine its conceptual integrity by linking perceptions of state, leadership and governance, and communism and labour. The analysis of our sources testifies to the existence of a quite definite trajectory of cultural policy: (1) the birth of the Bolshevik cultural project, (2) its materialization in the institutions of the Soviet statehood, (3) the normalization of the created state structures and, finally, (4) the marginalization of the cultural issue. We introduced the concept of "cultural fundamentalism" to emphasize the peculiarity of the Bolshevik cultural project in which radical anti-etatism was expressed, which implied compensation by the culture of the abolished statehood. The internal logic of the development of the cultural project led, however, to a paradoxical result — the creation of a total social state. The principal thesis of the article is that the concept of culture played a central and strategic role in the construction of a new socialist state.

The article is an attempt to analyze the most significant aspects of gift exchange in the context of the models of economic integration in the Church’s social milieu. The most important points of the discussion are the propositions and mechanisms of gift exchange designated in recent works by G. Yudin, I. Zabaev, the archpriest N. Emelyanov, and some other researchers providing an idea of the opportunity and the special role of the priest in generating gift exchange. We argue that a number of key issues concerning the opportunity for priests to generate gift exchange remains debatable and sensible. To what extent are priests today free from the competition in, engagement with, and from aiming at maximizing resources? What are the modes of personal dependence/independence in the Church’s social milieu? What are the mechanisms for the formation of solidarity, moral duty, and formal and informal obligations between the priest, parishioners, major donators, and non-Church actors? What is the nature of the exchange processes, and how much do they match the criteria of gift exchange so that they can be distinguished from patron-client relations, the hierarchical distribution of resources, or processes launched by bigmen? These and other issues with regard to the Church environment are analyzed in the article using empirical material and the observations illustrating the specifics of social integration and certain options for exchange relations. We are aiming to delineate approximately what the “status quo” is of today’s gift-exchange processes in the Church, their obstacles, and the points of failure and risks. At the same time, we offer our theoretical explanation of these obstacles and the resulting conflicts that arise during the organization of gift exchange in the Church’s social milieu.

In a rather complicated manner, Max Weber’s writings contain general theoretical reflections that are now incorporated in the canon of sociological theory, in the analyses of social change in the form of historical and comparative sociology, and in reflections on political events, all in the guise of the diagnosis and critique of his own historical age. This article attempts to draw conclusions from the tensions between these aspects in Weber’s work by trying to discover how such a sophisticated combination of cognitive goals is possible today, and what limits it encounters. What the “light of great cultural problems” falls upon, what elements of the past determine the present, and what events are particularly important for understanding of a certain age are questions whose answers must regularly be sought anew. The author relies on the concept of “modernity”, or rather, on the field of interpretation arising around this term. He assumes that the given field is wide enough to better understand our present condition by means of this term. In the meantime, the author believes that for this understanding to be successful, present-day modernity must be appropriately positioned in this field theoretically, historically, and as the diagnosis of our age.

The classical Weberian concept of disenchantment with the world has been criticized during the last several decades. However, this paper proceeds from the assumption that today it is possible to find a modern analogue of the protestant ethic, which helps to create a new version of capitalism. It is typical for late, or “liquid”, modernity to create an atmosphere of total uncertainty, which affects both individuals and organizations, in particular in the business sphere. The modern sacralization of the self, embodied in the discourse of New Age spirituality, takes place along with the shrinking of the public space and the expansion of the consumer society. On the one hand, the celebration of self-development helps individuals to deal with the condition of existential insecurity created by late modernity, and to construct a new behavioral ethic, implying an investment in their own personal growth. On the other hand, such an ideology allows business to adapt to the new, chaotic market reality. A “spiritual manager” inspires their staff to be more creative and pro-active. He or she is a visionary who acts not only for profit, but also for the sake of a mission. Thus, if the initial goal of Weberian Protestantism was salvation, modern spirituality concentrates on self-development in a profane reality because the self becomes the only valuable commodity.

Hannah Arendt is well-studied in Russia; her legacy is noticeable in academic discussions. However, her theoretical positions can hardly bring about a significant change in the present state of local political and philosophical affairs. The reason is the same for both the unusual popularity of her theoretical concepts and their lack of practical relevance. Her non-traditional approach to politics seamlessly fits into recurrent patterns of Russian social life which are no-less distant from the established forms of Western political culture. Being uncritically transplanted into different soil, her unorthodox way of thinking about politics found an immediate enthusiastic reception in Russia, but not at the same level of scrutiny as was in the West. Paradoxically, this proves that Arendt’s views may confirm the local status-quo, rather than challenging it. In this paper, I will try to explain this paradox by presenting both the elements of her theory that remain under-appreciated by her Russian followers, and her dogmatic positions shared with her school of thought, which can be elucidated by reading them against the Russian context. Arendt’s theory features hidden, but distinct, elitist, and liberal tendencies; to some degree, her theory goes well with the Machiavellian character of contemporary Russian politics. However, at the exact point when she finds an unlikely ally in Isaiah Berlin, her normative solutions mostly go unnoticed. On the other hand, reading her texts against the Russian experience exposes some of her preconceptions about human existence, the meaning of political life, and our relations to history, all of which weaken the practical relevance of her thoughts.

This text brings together two ideas, those of Hannah Arendt’s republicanism and Alexander von Humboldt’s cosmopolitanism. Both ways of thinking are seen as alternatives to a republican-biocentric perspective to the current problematic areas of the political and ecological crises. Arendt’s critique of the modern natural sciences and the associated alienation from the earth, which still characterizes the current relationship to nature today, will be presented first. This critique is closely related to Arendt’s thesis of world loss, i.e., the loss of the interpersonal pluralistic sphere. As an alternative to both forms of loss, Arendt develops the concept of an independent sphere of the political based on inter-personality, harmony with nature, and dialogical and consensual politics. While Arendt approaches nature from Kant’s definition of self- and world-relationship and from her own definition of sustainable politics, Humboldt goes the opposite way, that is, from respecting nature as an independent organism to a republican understanding of politics that, like Arendt, rejects the exploitation of humans as well as nature. Arendt and Humboldt both belong to the tradition of the Enlightenment that (in addition to phenomenology, self-reflection, the values of human dignity and human rights, and the unity of understanding and feeling) also includes a cosmopolitanism and freedom of movement for acting and judging citizens.

The following article presents a systematic review of the studies of religion in the mediatized public sphere of Scandinavian countries. The mediatized public sphere is tackled as constituted by interrelated media spaces, those of mass media, the Internet, and religious media and media of popular culture which are specifically organized public spaces, each of which varies in their degree of openness to different publics. A review of the empirical research reveals the specificity of the public (re)presentations of religion in each media space. In the Scandinavian mass media, religious issues are covered within the political frame, and “banalized” (Hjavard, 2013), while religious organizations have few opportunities to influence the representation of religious content. Due to its’ non-strict “entrance fee” and the spread of horizontal links, religious issues are articulated by agents though different ideologies on the Internet. Religious media space is an environment where religious organizations seek to maintain an institutional version of the religious narrative. In the media of popular culture, religious themes as a part of popular culture are interpreted aesthetically, and thus, makes this space a repository of religious meanings and identities that can be used in the course of political and public discussions about religion. The variety of media spaces enables the public circulation of diverse representations of religion, and allows various groups to discuss their ideological articulations of religion. However, this results in the polarization of public debates about religion and the fragmentation of the audience. The proposed model of the media spheres’ division into political spaces can be used as a framework for the analysis of the (re)presentation of religion in the Russian media.

The development of political realism found mainly in English works determined the fact that the term “power” denotes a wide range of concepts which at times turn out to be contradictory. Among the deepest problems is the relation of the concept of political power (authority) and power as the capability to coerce (might). The realism studies of recent decades are aimed to criticize the perceived neorealist misinterpretation of power as a material capability. The figure of Hans J. Morgenthau, an acknowledged founder of the realist school of thought in IR, is used by the critics to redefine power and to criticize neorealism as “unfaithful to its origin.” This article analyzes the attempt to reinterpret Morgenthau’s concept of power with the help of Arendt’s notion of power. This re-interpretation results in the splitting of Morgenthau’s understanding of power into two concepts, one of which is devoid of violence and coercion. The author claims that Morgenathau’s notion of power is essentially violent, and therefore cannot be split into two on such grounds. An attempt to create a non-violent concept of power within Morgenthau’s theoretical framework results in the loss of the critical potential of his project of political realism.

Book Review: Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Assembly (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).