http://sociologica.hse.ru en-us Copyright 2025 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:59:48 +0300 https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1114660079.html https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1114856765.html The current global situation is increasingly described as the onset of “post-globalization”. The recent growth of de-globalizing trends urges researchers to look for new approaches in studies of global processes. The article argues that promising avenue in this field is the sociological multiple modernities perspective. While the original version of this perspective, worked out by Shmuel Eisenstadt, highlights the civilizational foundations of various types of modern society, other approaches focus on alternative, entangled and successive modernities. At the same time, one can speak of various globalizing trends connected with different versions of modernity. Thus, the Soviet model of modernity has been described as an alternative mode of globalization which competed with the liberal western mode but ultimately failed. It has been shown that the global dynamics of Soviet modernity was an important part of 20th century globalization processes. Contemporary China arguably represents a more successful alternative mode of globalization. According to Johann Arnason, social transformations in China represent a combination of breaks with tradition, underlying continuities and revivals of specific legacies. The article argues that drawing on the theories of multiple modernities allows us to discuss the Chinese case with due attention to its historical sources and current interpretations of China’s previous experience with modernity. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1114857346.html The historic Chinese Empire (221 BCE-1911 CE) has frequently been treated in isolation, as something unique and exceptional. It is not often compared with other historic empires. This essay attempts to do just that. It argues that, for all its peculiarities, the Chinese Empire can fruitfully be compared with other empires, to the benefit of our understanding of empire in general across space and time.  It considers point by point the case for not treating China as an empire, and answers these again point by point. The essay also argues that, in our present condition where the validity and efficacy of the dominant form of the nation-state have been called into question, and where globalization has also faltered and to some extent retreated, the experience of the historic empires might be a valuable resource to draw upon in considering our future possibilities. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1114857546.html The ‘Political West’ describes the combination of political, military and economic power that took shape after 1945 in the Atlantic region. This is a Washington-led alliance created during the first Cold War and shaped by cold war pressures. It is imbued with a logic of conflict designed to preserve the hegemony of the Political West in general and the primacy of the United States in particular. Following the end of the first Cold War, instead of dissolving into its constitutive elements, the Political West radicalised. In the absence of a peer competitor, it claimed to be the unique form of modernity towards which all other states and social systems should converge. This was universalism of a new type, although reminiscent of earlier religious forms (Catholic, Islamic). This is a secular universalism that in its very claims to be the dominant force in international politics eroded its domestic legitimacy and internal coherence. The values of high modernity endured in the Political West during the first Cold War, but after 1989 the radicalisation process accelerated the disintegrative tendencies associated with post-modernity. The more expansive the universalist claims of the Political West, the less coherent it became. This can be described as a slow-motion dissolution, as the social and political order eroded its own foundations. This was accompanied by the emergence and assertion of alternative models of social development and of international order, described in broad terms today as the consolidation of multipolarity and the rise of the Political East and a largely non-aligned Global South. By the second quarter of the twenty-first century the growing void at the heart of the Political West, the defection of the US from its own hegemonic order, and the escalating external challenges signalled the dissolution of the Political West and the emergence of new paradigms of international politics. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1114857913.html In recent years the United States’ political landscape has been profoundly transformed by the rapid rise of the “conservative” MAGA movement. A prominent theme running through the current Republican/MAGA agenda is that of popular sovereignty. Donald Trump’s followers portray him as the embodiment of the People’s will claiming a superior mandate based on his landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election, in which he has secured not only the Electoral College support, but also the majority of the popular vote. Anyone who follows the history of American conservatism will find it unusual that this presumably right-wing movement revolves around the actions of the federal chief executive. No other cause has been historically as important for the anti-establishment right-wing movements in the United States as regional autonomy and self-rule. Such a striking rearrangement of loyalty in favour of the federal authority goes beyond ordinary political fluctuations and requires a more nuanced explanation.            This article hypothesises that what we are currently witnessing in the MAGA rhetoric is not merely a temporary shift of allegiances within the conservative movement towards the federal power, but a historic attempt to reformulate the very meaning of “conservatism” and reshape the United States’ political agenda. The current administration and its sympathisers create much ado around the “cultural” issues, thereby hiding the real assault on the essential features of the constitutional structure and the republican worldview it embodies. This shift favours a view of progressive democratic governance, which has nothing to do with the political tradition imprinted in the Constitution. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1114858413.html In the post-globalization era, global elites face a transformed landscape of resurgent national sovereignty and civilizational rhetoric. This article examines how transnational power-holders—once emblematic of a borderless world – are recalibrating their cultural strategies and legitimacy mechanisms amid these shifts. Drawing on cultural sociology and elite theory (Bourdieu, Bauman, Castells, Gramsci), the analysis integrates non-Western scholarly perspectives. It  reconceptualizes cosmopolitan elite culture under conditions of de-globalization. We argue that global elites are neither passive victims of “de-globalization” nor static cosmopolitans. Instead, they act as cultural brokers who selectively adjust their identities and narratives. Some accentuate patriotic or civilizational themes to align with ascendant state-centric discourses, while others redouble on universalist rhetoric through new transnational alliances. Comparative illustrations from Western countries, Russia, China, and Türkiye  demonstrate that elites are actively adapting to a fragmented world order. These shifts suggest that sociological inquiry needs to move beyond treating globalization as a given context and toward analyzing the cultural dynamics of elite power in a fractured world—one where questions of meaning, identity, and legitimacy have become as pivotal as economic forces. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1114858797.html This study examines residential enclosures – gated communities and closed residential complexes – as spatial technologies of security emerging at the intersection of global biopolitical processes and local cultural contexts. We analyse fences and barriers as active intermediaries that transform space, establish inclusion/exclusion regimes, and shape urban subjectivity. Through Giorgio Agamben's biopolitical framework, we demonstrate how contemporary enclosures operate according to «inclusive exclusion» logic, where security infrastructure paradoxically intensifies rather than eliminates anxiety by constantly incorporating the threat of the excluded «life».While situating these phenomena within global processes of neoliberalisation, privatisation of security, and crisis of state sovereignty, our analysis emphasizes the irreducibility of local contexts. Comparing American gated communities, Polish post-socialist enclosures, and Russian closed residential complexes reveals significant variation. The article puts forward some distinguishing features of the Russian case: the relative invisibility of fences as architectural devices; the possibility of a lower level of citizen responsibility compared to Western models; the connection between enclosures as security techniques and the socialist past, the specificities of economic development, and patterns of state governance of residential space. The Polish example illustrates how systematic housing policies can foster critical civic engagement with enclosures, contrasting with both American and Russian patterns.Our interdisciplinary approach, combining media theory, biopolitical analysis, and urban sociology, reveals how identical architectural forms acquire different meanings and offer different affordances depending on historical trajectories, governance models, and cultural attitudes. As residential enclosures proliferate globally, understanding their complex spatial logics becomes essential for envisioning urban futures that do not reproduce the camp's structure of bare life and permanent emergency. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1115392106.html In the post-globalisation context, the state plays an increasingly prominent role in shaping social realities not only through economic and political strategies but also via cultural policy. This article examines cultural policy as a sociological institution capable of organizing everyday life, behavioural norms, and collective value systems amid conditions of rapid change and uncertainty. It focuses on Vietnam’s nationwide program “All People Unite to Build Cultural Life” (APU2BCL), launched in 2000 to enhance community-level cultural life during processes of industrialisation, urbanisation, and globalisation. Drawing on policy documents, implementation reports, ethnographic observations, and interviews, the analysis demonstrates that the program extends beyond grassroots cultural or sports promotion. It has evolved into a mechanism of social regulation, establishing normative frameworks through criteria such as “cultural family” “cultural residential area” and “cultural organisation”. These categories simultaneously draw on traditional moral values and align with modern governance objectives including safety, order, cohesion, and stability. The article situates this case within broader debates on sustainable development, highlighting how institutionalizing cultural practices contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those related to inclusive communities, cultural participation, and social well-being. Ultimately, the study argues that culture should be understood not merely as heritage or symbolic expression, but as a political and social language through which new forms of collective practice are produced. Vietnam’s experience illustrates how cultural policy operates as a tool of social production, expanding state capacity for soft control and sustaining resilience in increasingly unpredictable environments. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1115392522.html The article considers evolution, institutional foundations, and contemporary dynamics of Brazilian agribusiness within the global food regime. The authors argue that Brazil’s current position in the international agri-food system cannot be explained only by its recent economic development due to the long period of unequal land distribution, state-led modernization, and persistent political disputes. Based on the methodological combination of historical analysis, secondary data on production and exports, and a critical review of relevant research, the article presents four main findings. First, Brazilian agrarian structure consolidated a model of large-scale monoculture, which is based on a closed connection between landholdings concentration and political-economic power. Second, the state played a decisive role in ensuring technical and productive capacities of agribusiness by funding, infrastructural development, credit, and public research, particularly in adapting cultivars to tropical biomes. Third, agribusiness maintains a constant and direct political presence, affecting legislative and executive agendas. Fourth, agribusiness is ambiguously involved in contemporary crises: while some actors deny climate and environmental agendas, others adopt discourses of sustainability in such ways that often reinforce rather than reduce existing inequalities. The authors believe that Brazil represents a form of subordinate integration into the global food regime, both consolidating its export strength and reproducing structural tensions between productivity, inequality, and sustainability. By considering the Brazilian case as a part of debates on institutional change, dependency, and development, the study contributes to broader discussions on possibilities and limitations of the contemporary capitalist agribusiness-led growth. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1115392634.html From the mid-20th century a wide range of philosophical projects emerged that sought to articulate a normative architecture for global humanity—commonly referred to as “theories of global justice”. Yet by the third decade of the 21st century, most of these theories had ceased to correspond to the realities of international politics, drifting instead into utopian constructs. Yet the question remains: to what extent have theories of global justice, as such, lost their relevance? The realities of the world increasingly plunged into a state of disorder demand at least minimal normative requirements to secure basic conditions of safety. This article seeks to revisit the contractarian tradition within theories of justice. Specifically, it engages with the contributions of two key figures: Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, and his twentieth-century intellectual successor, the Canadian philosopher David Gauthier. The analysis explores the extent to which a Hobbesian approach—further developed by Gauthier—can be applied to the formulation of a global theory of justice, examining both its strengths and its weaknesses. The results of the inquiry must be judged unsatisfactory: in the absence of a global sovereign—a Hobbesian requirement—and in the absence of the rational agency presupposed by Gauthier as a condition of contract-making, the construction of a global normative framework proves unattainable. The final part of the article attempts to analyse what transformations in world order might render contractarian theories operational at the global level. Then, in conclusion, the results of the entire work are summarised. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2025-24-4/1115393231.html This article offers a critical examination of the latest work by one of Germany’s foremost political theorists and historians of political thought, Herfried Münkler, World in Turmoil: the Order of Powers in the 21st Century (2024). The review pays particular attention to the conceptual apparatus and theoretical framework developed by Münkler, who draws on two centuries of developments in the social sciences and humanities. This framework is designed to comprehend both the structure and symbolic legitimation of world orders and the dynamics of their succession. Münkler’s analysis centers on two interconnected global processes: the perceived return to an «anarchy of a world of states» and the nascent formation of a new «order of powers» in global affairs. He characterizes the current state of international politics as the collapse of rules-based liberal globalization and the disintegration of the previous unipolar order, which rested on the imperial hegemony of a single power, the United States. Looking to the future, Münkler envisions the formation of a pentarchy — a kind of directorate of five world powers (the United States, China, Russia, the European Union, and India) — that would set the rules of the game in world politics and ensure their observance in accordance with their own national interests and those of their allies. The article argues that, despite the debatable nature of many of the author’s specific analyses and conclusions, his work of the past decade provides a number of crucial analytical and theoretical tools that significantly clarify the ongoing global geopolitical transformations of the contemporary world.