http://sociologica.hse.ru en-us Copyright 2025 Tue, 30 Sep 2025 22:18:24 +0300 https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1088937686.html In recent years, the Russian state has been increasingly pursuing a values policy. In 2022, President Putin approved the Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values. In the paper we propose a measuring tool for sociological diagnostics of a number of values listed in that document, using a balanced set of statistical and sociological indicators. We use the methods of grouping, time series and trends, secondary analysis of data from representative surveys conducted by leading sociological organizations. The hypothesis about the expression and strengthening of traditional values within Russian society has mainly been confirmed. There are relevant indicators for all traditional values under analysis, though in some cases similar values combined into groups. Most of the indicators used (62 percent) improved during the 1990s–2020s. The values of patriotism, citizenship, service to the Fatherland, collectivism, mutual assistance, historical memory and continuity of generations, and unity of the peoples of Russia tend to strengthen over time. On the contrary, the family value does not correspond to the prevailing social practices. In recent years, Russians more often declare the value of family, but are less likely to officially marry, allow divorce for others and are more likely to get divorced themselves, plan and give birth to fewer children, but also abandon them less often. The value of constructive labor is difficult to interpret unambiguously as the labor productivity index fluctuates around zero, the right to work significance decreases slightly, and the assessment of the value of creation grows just as moderately, which generally indicates the contradictory nature of the phenomenon of labor in a post-industrial society. The obtained results contribute to the axiological scholar discourse and are of interest to public authorities responsible for internal policy. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1088967139.html This article addresses the spectaclity of St. Petersburg as a fundamental ontological problem, moving beyond traditional semiotic or historical analyses. The authors argue that St. Petersburg’s identity is not defined by static images or symbols but by a dynamic and conflictual process of “spectacle-making”. They identify a gap in existing research, which often treats the city’s visuality as a completed phenomenon, and propose a novel synthetic methodology combining Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and Nick Land’s philosophy of process and decay. The core of their approach is the application of Harman’s fourfold object model (Real Object-RO, Real Qualities-RQ, Sensual Object-SO, Sensual Qualities-SQ) to conceptualize “Petersburg-ness” (RO) as an elusive essence that perpetually escapes being perceived in full. Its material foundations (RQ) and sensory manifestations (SQ/SO) are in constant tension with this core. Land’s concepts help analyze this process as a “machine” producing and dismantling meanings under the pressures of modernity. The article provides a systematic comparative analysis of five diverse cultural case studies: Alexander Sokurov’s film “Russian Ark,” Olga Bychkova’s “Piter.fm,” Konstantin Moguchy’s theatrical production “Three Fat Men,” Anna Basner’s novel “The Theseus Paradox,” and a series of educational videos about Peter the Great. Each case represents a distinct strategy for engaging with the city’s spectaclity—from meditative immersion and media noise deconstruction to carnivalesque explosion and pedagogical myth-making. The central conclusion is that the spectaclity of St. Petersburg is an “eternal performance” born from an insurmountable ontological rift between its unknowable essence (RO) and its perceptible qualities (SQ/SO). The city’s vitality and the diversity of its representations are explained precisely by this endless conflict between attempts to capture its image and its inherent resistance to final definition. The study shifts the discourse on urban spectaclity from description to ontology, offering a new framework for understanding complex urban spaces in contemporary culture. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1088968563.html The article examines the moral economics of the “good life” in the context of post-socialist inequality, based on critical moral sociology. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with residents of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region (N=60), whose incomes have increased in recent years, but whose social acceptance remains unstable. The authors show how subjects from different socio-economic groups construct moral consistency through narratives about work, care, and minimalism, articulating the right to normalcy and a decent life. The theoretical framework includes three key concepts — dignity, recognition, and moral autonomy — and allows us to describe strategies for moral navigation in a situation of fragmented recognition. Special attention is paid to the gender structure of recognition mechanisms: masculinity is shaped through work ethic and non—dependence, while femininity is shaped through caring, emotional involvement and respectability. The article demonstrates how moral categories become resources of everyday subjectivity, structuring the boundaries of what is acceptable and the mechanisms of social distinction in conditions of instability and limited access to symbolic resources. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089105100.html The history of the establishment of the presidency in Russia has rarely been the focus of scholarly attention. In the works of constitutionalists, the establishment of the presidency appears to be a natural and non-controversial aspect of constitutional reform in the RSFSR. At the same time, there are many inconsistencies and contradictions. Why was the presidency, which was conceived as an integral part of the new constitution, eventually incorporated into the unsuitable soviet constitution of the RSFSR? Why was the issue of introducing a popularly elected president brought to a referendum, rather than the issue of deciding on a model of presidential power, which was then the main subject of constitutional debates? Why did the implementation of the referendum results turn out to be so protracted and confusing? Finally, why were the presidential elections called earlier than the laws on the presidency were passed, and why did the latter precede the introduction of the presidency into the Constitution? Was this not a kind of unconstitutional coup legalized retroactively? This article attempts to systematically answer these questions using Andreas Kalyvas’ theory of extraordinary constitutional politics, which is based on his interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s theory of constituent power. The main thesis of the article is that the establishment of the presidency in the RSFSR was not simply a revision of constitutional laws, but an extra-constitutional transformation in an extraordinary dimension of politics which therefore cannot be fully understood within the framework of ordinary constitutionalism. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089105688.html The paper explores Early Modern patterns of international spatial thought through the lens of sixteenth century just war doctrines, focusing on the works of Spanish scholar Francisco de Vitoria and Italian-English jurist Alberico Gentili. Amid growing instability in the global legal order, the article turns to a foundational legal framework of sixteenth century Law of war — as expressed in Vitoria’s reflections On the American Indians and On the Law of War, and in Gentili’s treatise Three Books on the Law of War — to trace the origins of Early Modern spatial and legal thinking. The study seeks to integrate some crucial Early Modern concepts of world order into Russian-language scholarship. The article is centered on Vitoria’s and Gentili’s conceptualization of the world as a whole (mundus, totus orbis) and their application of Roman private law analogies — such as “res omnium communis” (common property) and “res nullius” (nobody’s property). The author critically examines their shared concept of ius gentium (the law of nations) grounded in natural reason: on the one hand, it constructs a universal legal framework encompassing the whole world, on the other hand, it lacks clear exclusion criteria, relying, instead, on an intuitive understanding of natural rights and natural human behaviour. Additionally, the article challenges the common scholarly portrayal of Gentili as an opponent of the just war doctrine. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089106042.html This article is devoted to the philosophical reconstruction of Heidegger’s anti-modernist ideas from his early and middle periods, with an emphasis on his attempt to overcome modernity not through political reaction and cultural pessimism, but by raising questions about the ontological foundations of modernity and the prevailing modes of thought within it. The external analytical framework used in this article is Jeffrey Herf’s concept of «reactionary modernism», which describes the ways of overcoming modernity that were advocated by the ideologues of the so-called «Conservative revolution» in Germany. In contrast to these intellectuals, whose criticism is embedded in the logic of Modernity and expressed through the inverted concepts of modernist thinking (nationalism, aestheticism, decisionism), Heidegger proposes a more radical strategy of criticising modernity, seeking to go beyond its usual ontological and epistemological instruments. The article reconstructs three antimodernist concepts — technology, decision, and folk — present both in the rhetoric of the «Conservative revolution» and in Heidegger’s philosophy, but acquiring a fundamentally different meaning in the latter. In addition to the concept of reactionary modernism, the author provides an analytical distinction between «weak» antimodernism (the internal reaction of Modernity to itself) and «strong» antimodernism, which seeks to go beyond the boundaries of modernity. It is shown that Heidegger’s criticism is an expression of this strong position — it allows him not only to criticise modernity, but also to develop an original theoretical framework that is not reducible to the symbols and concepts of Modernism. Heidegger, thus, formulates the possibility of a transition towards the «Another Beginning» — that is, a historical reality that lies outside the patterns of Modernism. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089106408.html This article analyzes the “praxeological rule” as a core component of ethnomethodological research policy, exploring its connection to the problem of social order. The author examines the rule in two interconnected aspects: ontological and epistemological. Ontologically, the rule is found in the everyday constitution of social order, while epistemologically, it is proposed by Garfinkel as a principle of inquiry.The “praxeological rule” allowed Garfinkel to define the conceptual field of early ethnomethodology, focusing on a critique of normative social order and its theoretical understanding, while developing an alternative conception of social order. In the 1970s, ethnomethodology’s research policy underwent a transformation, resulting in a more radical understanding of constitutive order. This shift also radicalized the “praxeological rule.” The rule now emphasizes adherence not to actors’ interpretive orientations in co-constituting order, but to an autochthonous, constitutive order that requires no special theory.The article’s main contribution is its demonstration that appealing to the idea of the “praxeological rule” is key to understanding ethnomethodology’s research policy and its relationship to the problem of order throughout the evolution of Garfinkel’s ideas. This rule allows for the mapping of Garfinkel’s phenomenological and pragmatist strategies of thought, which resolve the difficulty of correlating the formal and informal in the production and study of practices that constitute social order. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089106921.html The article takes a broad view of the evolution of neoliberalism as an element of party politics, class relations, popular belief systems and the policies of the international financial institutions (IFIs). Neoliberalism is defined as a version of the liberal ideology that prioritizes market relations, the latter understood as both a means of achieving optimal economic results and an ultimate expression of human freedom. Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has been championed by both center-right and center-left parties, promoted by IFIs such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and lobbied for by big business. It has also resonated with the common sense of the broad sections of the population. However, over the past few decades, there have been significant changes in each of these areas: neoliberal ideology is experiencing a crisis of legitimacy, political parties are partially distancing themselves from it, IMF economists are rethinking some neoliberal prescriptions, and business is increasingly relying on tariffs and other forms of economic nationalism. Overall, the neoliberal moment is arguably exhausted. It is being replaced not so much by a new global ideology, scientific doctrine, and public policy paradigm, but rather by scattered experiments in state capitalism and economic nationalism, often emulating each other and major “trendsetters” such as China. The article documents these processes, drawing on a wide range of research literature and primary data, such as the ParlGov electoral statistics database and the World Values Survey international poll. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089107507.html The focus of this article is the development of the Russian historiography of the socialist city during the first five-year plans in the context of modern media discourse on constructivist architecture. The author notes that this discourse focuses on avant-garde architecture and includes an understanding of the phenomenon of the socialist city. It is broadcast mainly by agents from the creative field (artists, art historians, architects, designers, tour guides, publishers, local historians, etc.), but recently it has been increasingly supported by representatives from the academic and scientific community. This review article is an attempt to find a balance and combine the spheres of public discourse of constructivism and conventional historiography of the socialist city. The author sees great potential in such integration: some are able to go beyond the limits of art history and artistic details alone, paying attention to the importance of reconstructing the historical context, while the latter must learn how to formulate socially significant scientific issues, while remaining within the research frame. The main part of the article details the evolution of research literature on socialist cities, which began with art criticism of the utopia, then moved on to the historical and architectural motif of a rigid centralized mechanism for managing the population through socialist cities. Today, this historiography focuses on descriptions of special everyday life, taking into account the local context and interpretations about the discursive and identifying nature of socialist cities. In conclusion, the author of the article suggests that scientists should not study socialist cities solely through the history of architectural styles, but rather define socialist cities as an analytical category and a discursive framework in which a wide variety of social, political and architectural practices were embedded. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089107865.html This year marks the anniversary of our colleague, Alexander Gofman, a distinguished scholar in the theory and history of sociology, as well as in the fields of culture, fashion, tradition, and several other areas of social science. An ordinary professor at the Higher School of Economics, he is the author of approximately 500 scientific publications. Alexander Gofman has given many insightful interviews in which he discussed his biography, mentors, and professional issues. As the interviewer, I aimed to pose questions that perhaps had not been asked before, as well as those that personally concern me as a sociologist. In this interview, Professor Gofman reflects on his research interests and principles, the fate of sociology, current and engaging topics in the history of sociology, the creation of scholarly texts, sociological education, and the sociology of culture. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089118389.html The article is a review-reflection on the book by Eva Illouz The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations, which continues and develops in a rather pessimistic perspective the ideas presented in the book Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. In the first book, Illouz explains the possibilities and necessity of sociological study of love under its consumer-market rationalization in terms of contractual relations as dominant in the social-emotional organization of contemporary (Western) society. In the second book, Illouz rather declares love as an object of study than makes it such, focusing on negative sociality: the era of no-choices, no-agreements, no-relationships leads to the “end of love” as a new form of no-sociality generated by the interweaving capitalist logic, emotional modernity, sexual freedom, gender inequality and new technologies. The first, main part of the article briefly reconstructs the general logic of the book and thematic emphases of its six chapters: key terms, theoretical-methodological foundations and conceptual provisions of “sociology of negative choice”; relationship between the concepts of freedom and choice in modernism and postmodernism; market model of sexual-emotional supply and demand; types of (un)certainty (emotional, normative, ontological); features of scopic capitalism; classical and new types of hegemonic masculinity; feminism and women’s dual position in the sexual-emotional relations of consumer capitalism; negative and positive social relations; social trust and the project nature of interactions; consequences of negative relations for the institution of marriage. Despite the exceptional usefulness of the book for the (prepared) reader, the second, smaller part of the article summarizes its significant limitations: excessive explicit and implicit evaluativeness, including the exaggeration of the role of negative choice; too broad generalizations on an insufficient empirical and illustrative basis; author’s complicated “relationships” with sociological methodology and terminology. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089120550.html The article reflects on the idea of the «The Rule of Law» (in the continental tradition «Der Rechtsstaat»; in Russia «pravovoe gosudarstvo») within contemporary debates on the meaning of this concept. The discussion is approached through the work of Jeremy Waldron, a New Zealand–American philosopher and legal theorist, in his recent paper «Thoughtfulness and the Rule of Law» (2023). Debates about the rule of law are often polarized between advocates of a “thin” conception, which limits the concept to the formal and procedural features of legal order, and defenders of a “thick” conception, which links it to substantive moral and political values. In addition, new interdisciplinary socio-legal studies interpret the Rule of Law not only as a legal ideal but also as a social practice rooted in institutions, norms, and cultural traditions of particular societies. Waldron considers this interpretation plurality as an inherent characteristic of the concept and, following W. B. Gallie, identifies it as an «essentially contested concept». His own position advances a hybrid approach that combines a critique of «casual legal positivism» with an acknowledgment of the normative value of the procedures underpinning the legal system. For Waldron, the Rule of Law is not merely the limitation of power or the guarantee of legal certainty, but also an expression of respect for human dignity, citizens’ agency, and their capacity for self-application of legal norms. He resists privileging any single political or moral value, insisting instead that law should be understood as a social practice in which legislation, administrative processes, and judicial decisions form a space of thoughtful participation. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089120733.html Review of the book: Vulpius R. (2023) The Birth of the Russian Empire. Concepts and Practices of Political Domination in the 18th Century / Translated in Russian from German by M. Bogdanovich. Moscow: New Literary Review. — 889 p. — (Historia Rossica / Studia Europaea).ISBN: 978-5-4448-2112-1 https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089120977.html Book review: Kalberg S. (2024) Max Weber’s Sociology: From “the Protestant Ethic Thesis”and the American Political Culture to a Sociology of Civilizations. London and New York:Routledge. —– 327 p. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089121162.html Book review: Reckwitz A. (2024) Verlust. A Ground Problem of Modernity. Berlin:Suhrkamp Verlag. — 463 pages. ISBN 9783518588222 https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-3/1089121378.html Review of the book: Fishman L. (2024) Inequality of Equals. The Concept and Phenomenon of Resentiment. Moscow: HSE Publishing House. — 290 p. 1 ill. ISBN: 978-5-7598-4242-2