2020. vol. 19. No. 3

The foreword to the thematic issue deals with the attempts to institutionalize and promote the central concept of the Global East. It discusses the “transfer” of the results of the geographical and epistemological reflection between different professional and intellectual communities and networks formed by specialists and “sympathizers”. The role of “face-to-face” discussions in attracting and retaining the interest of colleagues in the conceptual movement, the benefits of which are not obvious to all, is emphasized. It is stated that the debate about the new concept and its ability to generate changes in the organization of knowledge in and about the post-socialist region of the world is important for strengthening cooperation and activating interdisciplinary international research and its publication. It is argued that professional networks and the ways in which knowledge is disseminated within and between them depends on informal social connections. These connections become points of the crystallization of scientific collaboration or the exchange between different groups of specialists.

Carving up the world into Global North and Global South has become an established way of thinking about global difference since the end of the Cold War. This binary, however, erases what this paper calls the Global East — those countries and societies that occupy an interstitial position between North and South. This paper problematizes the geopolitics of knowledge that has resulted in the exclusion of the Global East, not just from the Global North and South, but from notions of globality in general. It argues that we need to adopt a strategic essentialism to recover the Global East for scholarship. To that end, it traces the global relations of IKEA’s bevelled drinking glass to demonstrate the urgency of rethinking the Global East at the heart of global connections, rather than separate from them. Thinking of such a Global East as a liminal space complicates the notions of North and South towards more inclusive but also more uncertain theorizing.

In this article I focus on how the politics of knowledge, have being shaped in a world without socialism, can be also considered as a space of multiple “post’s”. Social researchers from the post-socialist region strive to return their countries onto the map and to identify their place in history, while applying different conceptual approaches based on different ideological premises. Meanwhile, all of these theoretical frameworks are not neutral in their relation to hegemonic discourses. Here I address the methodological nationalism, gender studies, and de-colonial discourse as the examples of “engaged knowledge”, while considering them as the most influential interpretative models among those that have become established in the post-socialist space after 1991, on the ruins of orthodox Marxism. What interests me most of all is the epistemological and political effects that they produce when they are applied to the analysis of the post-“post-socialist condition”. I argue that, depending on the interpretative optics, we might get quite different answers to such questions as whether the time has come to say “Goodbye, post-socialism!”, or to which extent the “Global East” can be considered as a useful category of analysis in the given circumstances. What I understand here by the ‘space of multiple “post’s”, is, firstly, a territory that, after the collapse of socialism, was inscribed into a new spatial constellation, but still continues to search for its place on the geopolitical map of the world and remains very sensitive to the politics of naming; secondly, I invoke it as a space of epistemological heteroglossia, that is, the one in which various ways of conceptualizing both the recent past and the actual present continue to compete with each other.

In his article “In Search of the Global East: Thinking between North and South”, Martin Müller offers a number of radical, although not new, insights on the role that post-socialist states presumably play in the modern world, as well as their perception, and the production of knowledge about themselves in these countries. This article is a response to Müller’s text and a reflection on the historiography of Central Asia, an integral part of the “Global East”. In the first part of this text, we analyze Müller’s own approach and explain why it is problematic from a historical point of view. In the second part, we focus on the production of “external” and “internal” knowledge about Central Asia and propose another paradigm labeled as “tactical essentialism”, which we believe best describes the production of historical narratives in the region at the moment. Despite the differences between the two concepts, it seems to us that “strategic” and “tactical” essentialism are essentially manifestations of the same process, namely, the attempts to oust the Soviet past from the ethos of post-socialist researchers (or replace it with other narratives).

The article is a detailed response to the text by Martin Müller “In Search for the Global East”, written on the basis of the experience of a scientist specializing in post-socialist realities, and included in the global circulation of social and humanitarian knowledge. It deals with the possibility of reflection of the place of the post-socialist part of the world in the world as a whole, from the point of view of a community formed by those who live in the post-socialist space and those who explore different aspects of post-socialist life. The genealogy of discussions about the Global South and the Global North, which are fundamental for such disciplines as geography (political, economic, and human) and urban studies, as well as the formation of the conceptual link of “development = the global South” in the political history of the second half of the twentieth century and in the intellectual history of this period is discussed. It is argued that the Global South is actively discussed in the global debates of geographers, urbanists, and historians. It also occupies a prominent place in transnational, big stories about what is happening in the world, and with the world. At the same time, the post-socialist world (Müller proposes the name “Global East” for it) occupies an insignificant place in these narratives. “Development” (no matter how different and controversial it may be) in relation to that part of the “global” which is comprised from Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia, is understood as a task of national governments, and which must be solved by following Western recipes. The article explains the reasons for the lack of understanding of what this region means today, as well as the difficulties of conducting and popularizing research about it, in particular, the ongoing post-colonial decentralization of the West as a privileged place of knowledge production. The conclusion of the article is that much more research is needed in which different perceptions of the global are compared, including the ones generated in/by the “Global East”.

This section presents exchanges between intellectuals from Eastern and Western Europe, Russia, and North America who kindly agreed to read and comment on Martin Mueller’s article “In Search of the Global East”, relying on the situation in their own academic disciplines, work experiences, and the twists and turns of their scientific research and creative challenges. Researchers, academic teachers, exhibition curators, writers, and architects reflect on the power and influence which geographical names exert on academic life, politics, and culture. Starting from Mueller’s article on the Global East, as well as his other text wherein he expresses his skepticism of the concept of post-socialism, the commentators, evaluating Mueller’s arguments critically, raise a number of fundamental questions. Among these questions is the need to historicize scientific concepts, the issue of the regularly-reproducible misunderstanding (or even exclusion) of the East by Western intellectuals, the tasks the inclusion of the Global East in the overall geographical picture will contribute to, as well as the question of whether the concern that the Global East is not sufficiently heard in the world is narrowly academic. This indirect debate between the author of the key text in this thematic issue and his commentators is significant as an episode of the joint search for a more democratic, creative, and inspiring future for the region that unites Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.

Inequality is amongst the most fundamental and formidable social problems of modernity. It thus does not come as a surprise that it is a major theme that cuts through multiple areas of sociology. However, the major limitation of most social research on inequality is that its focus is often limited to the redistribution of resources, be them material or symbolic. Indeed, some of the most important effects of inequality, ones that make inequality so crucial to studies of modernity, go far beyond unfair access to certain goods. These reveal themselves in elements of social disintegration, lack of social cohesion, multidimensional social exclusion, marginalization of large social groups and gaps between their basic frames of references, which can reach the level of mutual impenetrability. To achieve an integrated perspective, this study follows the lead of quickly developing frontier approaches in the cultural sociology of inequality, and, following its leaders’ appeals, focuses on another dimension of inequality that is complementary to distribution — a social recognition of personal and social group identities. This allows us to assess how economic forces associated with inequality interact with cultural patterns and cognitive processes which persist in the behaviors of both individuals and social groups. Following this line of inquiry, this study focuses on cultural and emotional mechanisms of recognition and how it shapes people’s identity and dignity, and tries to tie these mechanisms to cognitive processes, which shape people’s aspirations and can “ignite” their actions. This study is ultimately intended as a kind of “manifesto” for the sociology of culture and inequality, and thus includes calls for wider intra- and inter-disciplinary input and collaboration in these areas.

One of the most significant factors influencing the co-spatialities regimes of post-urban communities is the development of new urban media. On the one hand, new urban media symbolizes the complex transition to new post-urban communities and new spatial regimes of their existence; on the other hand, they are the basic element of the newly emerging policies of co-spatialities. From the phenomenological point of view, post-politics is treated as the growing dominance of flat communicative ontologies in post-urban spaces, characterized by the disintegration of the traditional modern methods of communication. A post-urban locality is defined as a medial co-being, centering the next here-and-now cartography of imagination, which can be considered as a post-political action. The de-territorialization of post-urban communities takes place through the “smoothing” of urban spaces, turning them into mostly “smooth spaces” with the help of the new media. Specific local geo-cultures, a new, “rhizomatic” type whose development is based on the post-political transcription of socialization and medialization of urban spaces, are formed. The affectivity of post-urban co-spatialities is manifested in the gradual increase in the number of new specific urban actors that herald the slipping away of traditional state and municipal policies. The post-political can be considered as a sphere of geo-semiotic violence aimed at the over-coding of co-spatial situations. The mapping of co-spatialities reproduces the Earth as a total chora of post-political ontology. The post-city nomos constantly forms a communicative periphery with the missing center, where any message can signal the transactions of imagination aimed at the devaluation of “center–periphery” systems.

The paper considers the Russian translation of the article “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” written by British political philosopher and logician John Stuart Mill, and whose article, published in 1859, transforms the criteria restricting the principle of non-interference. Thus, in the essay “On Freedom”, the rule of non-interference into private life is described, but in “A Few Words on Non-Intervention”, Mill expands the principle to the international level, taking into consideration those situations allowing for intervention. The authors highlight the features of war contemporary to Mill, and articulate his military reflection in connection with the phenomenon of national liberation movements and revolts. They analyze Mill’s question if it is legitimate for one government to somehow intervene in the affairs of another. The logic of just military intervention for Mill in the cases described opens up the possibility for the use of force, but only for the civilized States. The philosopher divides the civilized nations from barbarians, where the latter are characterized as incapable of striving for freedom and therefore needing intervention from civilized countries. In this regard, the logic of the article leads to a strategy of humanitarian war caused by rhetoric of the “responsibility to protect”. The first Russian translation of “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” is proposed as a relevant source for the philosophy of war, raising the issue of sovereignty. It is stated that modern military practice poses the question of humanitarian intervention: is it worth neglecting sovereignty if we face a “scandal to humanity”?

The essay “A Few Words on Non-intervention” by British philosopher and politician John Stuart Mill, published in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country in December, 1859, has been translated into Russian for the first time for this issue of the Russian Sociological Review. Here, Mill justifies the foreign policy of the British Empire, and considers the criteria when the doctrine of non-intervention may be ignored in the sphere of international relations. There are three cases that make legitimate military intervention possible: (1) the overcoming of the doctrine of non-intervention when it is necessary to confront humanitarian disasters such as slavery; (2) an intervention allowing people to be given their freedom and to protect their right of self-determination; (3) an intervention as a tool to fight against tyranny.

Traditional Christian confessions — for example, in Catholicism or in Orthodoxy — in scholarly literature, in modern legislation, or at the level of everyday consciousness, are understood primarily as clerical corporations. This corporate reading of modern Christianity also influences the understanding of the phenomenon of religion itself, as it happens, for example, in the famous essay on the “field of religion” by P. Bourdieu. This reading also determines the perception of Christianity as a historical phenomenon as well, which, within the framework of such a representation, appears as a corporation at every moment of its historical existence. This article argues that a “clerical corporation” is not a form of social organization that was originally inherent in Christianity, but a historical phenomenon that embraces various confessional contexts at different times. In particular, the emergence of a clerical corporation is fixed within the framework of an asynchronous comparative perspective relying on the examples of Western European Catholicism of the 11th — 13th centuries, and Russian Orthodoxy of the 17th — 18th centuries.

One of the first publications of religious and philosophical content in the Soviet press was a two-part article by S. S. Averintsev, dedicated to a comparative study of Byzantine, Old Russian, and Western spirituality, with the appendix of a new translation of psalms. The publication of special and methodically-verified arguments in the popular thick magazine was caused by the softening of church-state relations, but the significance of this publication exceeds its thematic side. In this publication, Averintsev undertook a revision of the system of genres and censorship strategies on which the industry of the Soviet thick journal and broader Soviet literature rested. Such a radical rollover of the usual framework for the production of the text was supported by the originality of the translation and by most of the arguments of the article. Some of the reasoning was not directly aimed at individual statements, but at criticizing Soviet literary production. Such a radical project allowed Averintsev to justify his own socio-political program, despite the fact that he did not work in the social sciences. However, a hidden intention against both Soviet journalism and Russian idealistic thought, and the liberal program of Georgy Fedotov in particular, which was blamed as ideologically dependent on the forms of old journalism, allowed Averintsev to develop a series of productive ideas about the political boundaries that could become the basis of the post-Soviet discussion about the mission and liability of the political class.

In this paper, the bibliometric approach was used for the investigation of the research field organized around the concept of moral panic. To examine the current condition of the moral panic field, we analyzed the papers published in the WoS from 1972–2019. As a result of our study, the thematic areas, and the most influential actors in the field were revealed and described. Today, the moral panic filed is dominated by sociologists. Among the leaders in terms of citations are authors from financially-developed countries. This shows that there is an economic inequality in the production of papers. The most cited are publications devoted to online studies. The results of this research demonstrate that there is no noticeable erosion among the empirical contexts, where the concept is used because children and youth are still the most popular object of moral panic studies. They are the classical objects for moral panic papers. At the same time, it could be argued that this field is still in the process of development because the theoretical and empirical papers that prevail are connected with the integration of the moral panic theory with other theories and concepts. We suppose this approach to the conceptual analysis developed in this paper could be useful for the revision of other fields developed around controversial concepts in sociology.

The article provides a comprehensive study and systematization of the main approaches and theories to the study of digital environmental activism based on a related-literature analysis. The authors came to the conclusion that, in the conceptualization of a digital environmental activism, researchers place emphasis either on the features of the digital technologies that drive such activity, or on the basis of the environmental mobilization itself. In this work, combining both approaches with digital environmental activism, the authors understand the voluntary collective activity around common environmental interests and values that are implemented publicly and voluntarily through the use of new informational and communication technologies. The article discusses the main features of digital environmental activism, which include, on the one hand, the enhancement of environmental knowledge, and the change in the paradigm of interaction between actors in which they become not only consumers of information, but also its active producers. On the other hand, digital practices contribute to the alienation of users from the real protest movement by limiting them to virtual means of interaction; additionally, this form of participation is not accessible to all citizens, thereby generating new forms of digital inequality and social distances. The authors examined various types of digital participation which include clicktivism, meta-voting, self-affirmation, e-finance, political consumer protection, digital petitions, botivism, data activity, and hacktivism. The authors critically assess both established and new theoretical approaches to the study of digital eco-activism such as Castells’ theory of network society, deliberative democracy, “citizen science”, socio-psychological theories to explain environmental behavior, and Digital Environmental Humanities. The author’s vision of possible options for data synthesis in the study of environmental online activism for the Russian scientific context is proposed.

The article is simultaneously an extended review of the book by Grigory Yudin entitled Public Opinion; or, The Power of Numbers (EUSPb Press, 2020) and an essay on the phenomenon of public opinion in the light of the repressive tendencies of contemporary society from the standpoint of critical theory. Relying mostly on Adorno, the author shows that public opinion polls are not only the result of the alienating reification, but also an effect of the basic subjectivism which turns the relationship between the subject and society into a detached, contemplative, and judgmental attitude. The objectivization coincides with subjectivization. Thus, in accordance with Yudin’s book, social science, if it wants to be more than an instrument of bureaucratic domination, has to rely on dialectical logic.

“If acceleration is a problem in modern society, then resonance is perhaps the solution” is the key thesis of Hartmut Rosa’s Sociology of Relationship to the World, or “the sociology of the ‘good life’”, which has become one of the brightest and most controversial critical theories at the beginning of this century. The content, the reception, the criticism of the concept of resonance, and the resulting discussions which became the reason for the renewal of the “methodological positivism dispute” in German sociology are the subjects of this article. The first part of the article is devoted to the consideration of the concept of resonance as a theoretical tool for the new critical sociology, an alternative to the resource-based approach prevailing in mainstream sociology which is unable to measure the quality of human life and the subject-world relationship. In conjunction with other works of the author, the paper analyzes the main idea of Rosa, that is, the creation of an updated critical theory of resonant relations. In doing so, Rosa thematizes the dialectics between the normative and descriptive content of resonance and alienation as integral elements of modern lifeforms and the human condition, the dichotomy of the “good life” and the “bad life”, and the differentiation of the horizontal, diagonal, and vertical “axes of resonance” and their role in building of “relationships to the world”. The second part highlights the main areas of the critical “sociology of relationship to the world” and the concept of resonance. Particular attention will be paid to the “methodological dispute”, since it is precisely this debate that is associated with another project of the “big theory” of the early 21st century, that of the “integrative sociology” of H. Esser, an updated theory of rational choice that was transformed into an analytical-empirical sociology as opposed to the new critical theory by Rosa. Finally, in the conclusion, an attempt is made to determine the place of both alternatives from the point of view of the Weberian-studies tradition, since both polemists explicitly or indirectly refer to the classic. The question of whether Rosa’s concept of resonance is a new sociological paradigm or whether it is a sociological theology remains open.

Books Review: Scott T. Allison (ed.), Heroes and Villains of the Millennial Generation (Richmond: Palsgrove, 2018); Olivia Efthimiou, Scott T. Allison, Zeno E. Franco (eds.), Heroism and Wellbeing in the 21st Century: Applied and Emerging Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2018).

Book Review: Gangolf Hübinger, Max Weber: Stationen und Impulse einer intellektuellen Biographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019).