Zhurnal sotsiologii i sotsialnoy antropologii (The Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology)

Theory of social problems in understanding of changing modernity

Elena S. Bogomiagkova — 2025-10-29

The article is an attempt to revise and update the theory of social problems in the context of social transformations at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The current situation in sociology can be characterized as a crisis of the theory of social problems. Despite the successes achieved in the study of separate topics, a significant part of the empirical research either relies on concepts developed in the 20th century or does not use any clear conceptual apparatus at all. However, social reality is changing dramatically: today, along with institutions and interactions, network and flow structures are becoming more widespread, and a hybrid, augmented reality is being formed. As a result, the concepts created to explain the processes that took place in the 19th and 20th centuries are becoming insensitive to the current situation. The purpose of the article is to outline the prospects for its further transformation in the context of the expansion of new types of sociality based on the analysis of the existing configuration of knowledge. As a result, the main types of theorizing that have developed in sociology in relation to the study of social problems were identified and described, and the limitations of existing concepts in explaining current social processes were shown. The following criteria were used for the distinction: 1) understanding of the social order and the underlying type of sociality and 2) a view of the role of a sociologist in social change. The first two types are traditional and rely on objectivist interpretations of social reality, represented by the concept of social disorganization and structural functionalism, and on social constructionism. Accordingly, in these cases, social problems are interpreted in terms of institutions and interactions. The third type of theorizing is poorly represented today in the academic field, but we believe that it is promising in understanding the current situation. It is based on ideas about the complexity of modern reality and the increasingly noticeable role of network and flow structures in it. In addition, based on the developed third approach, it is possible to move to the fourth, integrative one, which allows for an adequate interpretation of the gaps in sociality, including the fundamental gap between the exhausted and augmented modernities. If contemporary sociology of social problems claims to adequately explain current processes and strives to offer non-trivial and working solutions, it must include the latest concepts about sociality in its theoretical arsenal and begin moving from a representational to a performative model of knowledge. Accordingly, established scientific ideas about the role of a sociologist in studying and solving social problems need to be revised.

Regional, sectoral and socio-demographic differentiation in the structure of labor supply on the Russian employment platform Profi

Marcel S. Turakayev — 2025-10-29

This article examines the profiles of platform workers registered on Profi (profi.ru), one of the most popular online services for job search and labor supply in Russia. Platform-based labor almost always takes informal and non-standard forms. The aim of the study is to identify the regional, sectoral, and socio-demographic structure of labor supply on the Russian employment platform Profi. The dataset was obtained through web crawling/downloading from the Profi website. In total, 965,726 unique platform profiles were collected, of which 935,312 belong to users from Russia. The main parameters employed in the analysis include socio-demographic and other personal data of workers, as well as the service categories provided on Profi. Since some parameters could not be automatically extracted from the website, additional enrichment was carried out for such variables as age and total work experience. The analysis of the service meta-categories, as well as clustered service categories obtained via probabilistic latent semantic analysis of keywords from user profile descriptions, revealed that the most common industries (service domains) are repair services, beauty-related services, and tutoring, while the least common are highly specialized fields such as psychology, transportation, fitness, legal services, and others. Furthermore, the study identified the socio-demographic structure of service categories, along with their regional differentiation. The services offered on Profi are most widespread in relatively socio-economically developed regions and cities of Russia, which may be associated with a higher prevalence of practices involving the use of digital platforms for job search and labor supply.

Financial culture of the population: sociological analysis on the example of the Novosibirsk region

Svetlana A. Ilynykh — 2025-10-29

The article analyzes financial culture through the lens of social facts theory, capital theory, and trust theory. Financial culture is conceptualized as a set of attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors in the financial domain, shaped through individuals’ financial interactions within society. Possession of financial culture is considered in terms of economic, cultural, and social capital. Financial knowledge, attitudes, and skills enable individuals to perform financial actions that may generate economic benefits, enhance social capital, and contribute to public goods. The abundance of financial information foregrounds the issue of trust. Distrust toward financial organizations and institutions cannot be reduced solely to a cognitive frame of intellectual rigidity or shortsightedness. Based on these three theoretical perspectives, the article defines the concept of financial culture. Empirical findings are presented from a 2023 study conducted in the Novosibirsk region (N=1500, plus 17 in-depth interviews). The analysis focuses on the structural components of financial culture: knowledge, skills, attitudes, financial behavior, and trust in financial organizations. The results show that residents demonstrate relatively strong knowledge and skills in finance, while financial attitudes remain a problematic area, partly influenced by consumerist ideology. Financial behavior is predominantly characterized by the use of traditional, less risky instruments. The financial organizations most trusted by residents include banks, the state pension fund, and insurance companies.

The creative potential of actors in the implementation of social performance: Jeffrey Alexander's methodological framework

Kirill V. Tkachenko — 2025-10-29

Jeffrey Alexander's theory of social performance is a medium–level theory aimed at interpreting cultural pragmatics and symbolic action through the analysis of social events (performances), obeying Alexander's higher theoretical constructions. This theory can be read in the logic of the performative turn, as a theory that is able to provide an explanation of how social reality is fulfilled. If Alexander concentrates on the interpretation of symbolic action and cultural context within social events (performances), which he interprets as the process of actors conveying the meaning of their socio-cultural situation to the audience, then the problem of the creative potential of performers of social performance realized in specific techniques of its organization remains unclear, for which Peter Snow criticizes him. Another problematic focus of the article is the debate that has begun in the modern cultural and sociological theoretical tradition regarding the role of the "actor" and the "audience" in successful performative performance. The article refers to the use of the methodology of social performance in relation to a specific empirical case of activists in the field of health — picketing, which examines how social performance using the analytical dominants of Alexander's theory; demonstrates by what technical means creativity is realized in the organization of successful performance; The obtained results are interpreted in the context of modern cultural and sociological theoretical debates regarding the role of actors and the audience in successful performative performance.

Bridging the gap: social practices of а regional operator for municipal solid waste

Olga V. Zakharova — 2025-10-29

To date, municipal solid waste disposal and separate waste collection are still problematic in Russia. To contribute to the solution to this problem, the study considers the activities of Tyumen Ecological Association, which is a regional operator for municipal solid waste management in Tyumen Oblast, as a social practice. Our goal is to test the possibilities of analyzing the structure of the social practice of waste management and tracking its dynamics using the automation of data collection and processing. In this case, we understand the practice of waste collection and management with reference to the theoretical framework of the theory of practices — as a system of interconnected elements: materials, competences, meanings. The structure of this practice was identified by analyzing its elements, such as materials, competences, meanings, and dynamics. The analysis included the posts of the regional operator's community in the VKontakte social network. The study used frequency analysis of words, “Word at a Glance” analysis, thematic clustering and evaluation of the dynamics of thematic clusters. As a result, the structure of the social practice of municipal solid waste management of the regional operator was revealed and the dynamics of the 10 most frequent thematic clusters was analyzed. We identified two configurations of practice elements in the activities of the regional operator. The first configuration is related to the standardized activities of waste accumulation, transportation, treatment, and disposal. The second configuration is related to the introduction of elements of separate waste collection. The study has concluded that the two configurations of the regional operator's practice elements described in the paper are still not interrelated. Moreover, special efforts might be needed to integrate separate waste collection into the activities of regional operator. The findings can be used by regional waste management operators, residents' organizations, and volunteer organizations to scale up separate waste collection.

The landscape of poaching in isolated local communities of the Russian Far East

Alexander S. Cherkasov — 2025-10-29

This study aims to identify the characteristics of poaching activities in relation to the degree of spatial isolation of local communities. The key hypothesis posits that poaching plays a more significant role in the economic strategies of highly isolated communities compared to less isolated ones. The empirical basis of the research consists of field data collected through observations and interviews conducted in Primorsky Krai, Kamchatka Krai, and Khabarovsk Krai between 2019 and 2023. The study documents region-specific poaching practices in hunting, fishing, and gathering, assesses their economic returns, and examines the role of poaching in the livelihoods of residents in isolated, ordinary, and turbulent communities. Key triggers that amplify the importance of poaching for resource-rich isolated communities are identified. The findings reveal that isolated territories face a shortage of formal employment opportunities and legal alternatives for resource extraction, with subsistence farming playing a lesser role compared to resource-based activities. The abundance of valuable biological resources, combined with these factors, establishes poaching as a central element of economic strategy for residents of highly isolated communities. In contrast, for less isolated communities, poaching primarily serves as a supplementary or seasonal income source.

Rural sociology in Russia: two centuries of history

Sergey A. Solovchenkov — 2025-10-29

The article, through the prism of ideas and personalities, traces a rather complex history of the formation and development of rural sociology in Russia. With a high degree of convention, this process can be divided into several periods. The pre-scientific period is represented exclusively by the collection of empirical material without its scientific understanding, the main personalities are major statesmen. The pre-revolutionary period is characterized by the first attempts of scientific, but rather philosophical, understanding of sociological data about the Russian countryside. The main merit of development at this stage belongs to public figures, publicists-philosophers. The revolutionary period is characterized by very serious sociological and economic-sociological works of agricultural researchers. The period of oblivion is characterized by the almost complete cessation of scientific research within the framework of rural sociology. The revival period is associated with the artistic and publicistic works of writers and journalists who turned their attention to the social contradictions that existed in the countryside and made an attempt to describe them. The scientific period — the maximum interest in rural topics among sociologists, the creation of the conceptual foundations of domestic rural sociology, the widest possible coverage of scientific research of rural life. In the modern period, there has been a slight decline in interest in rural sociology, the emergence of new, hybrid approaches and theories about the development of modern rural areas in Russia.

Subjective economic well-being within consumer service structures

Sergey Tkach — 2025-10-29

The article considers approaches to understanding significant factors of subjective economic well-being, among which factors of the financial sphere are highlighted — the role of income and access to goods. The theoretical model includes elements of the theories of generation and modernization of S. Eisenstadt, as well as the provisions on the role of credit as a consumer service of A. Tikhonov. Emphasis was placed on consumer services in accordance with the assumptions of E. Chigvintseva on the relationship between inclusion in the service sector and subjective economic well-being. Therefore, the authors make an assumption about the existence of an indirect relationship between financial factors and subjective economic well-being through various consumption structures in the service sector. The object of the study is residents of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, the subject of the study is consumer services of residents. The aim of the study was to identify stable consumption structures and their role in subjective well-being. For the analysis, a decision tree, the Kruskal-Wallis test, the Poisson regression model, and clustering by the k-means method were used. The F-score was used to validate the results, and the Gini score was used to assess the contribution of variables. The clustering was assessed using a silhouette measure. The sample consisted of 1,100 respondents and was representative of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region by gender and age. Residents of both rural and urban areas participated in the survey. Clustering revealed stable consumption patterns that are significantly associated with subjective economic well-being, lending, and socio-demographic indicators, consistent with the theoretical model. It was shown that participation in the service sector drives lending. However, the majority of respondents are virtually excluded from the service sector and, at the same time, are less affected by loans. This group also has lower subjective economic well-being.

Hospitality as a scenario for decolonizing thought: the experience of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Yulia V. Vatolina — 2025-10-29

Traditionally, hospitality as a phenomenon and practice of interaction with ‘others-aliens’ has been the subject of socio-anthropological research. This paper demonstrates that the concept of hospitality can serve as a fairly effective tool for analyzing the interaction of anthropologists with the studied communities. To achieve this goal, the author, first of all, reconstructs hospitality as an ‘ideal type’ in Weber’s understanding. As a result, it is concluded that in its ‘ontological purity’, hospitality is a symbolic framework for meeting ‘aliens’. As a symbolic order, it transforms the subjective positionalities and identities of the participants in the interaction: there is a shift from the ‘they’ instance to the ‘you’ instance, behind which the possibility of ‘communication’ as the generation of the ‘common’ can be seen. In the context of poststructuralist criticism of anthropocentrism and the related subject-object episteme, the structural elements of hospitality begin to be visible and conceptually articulated in socio-cultural anthropology. Using hospitality as a trope, the author identifies two main scenarios presented in it. One of them refers to hospitality as an artifact, which is a product of deconstruction, and suggests an epistemological reduction of the researcher’s position. Based on the manifesto work of the Brazilian anthropologist E. V. de Castro ‘Cannibal Metaphysics: The Frontiers of Post-Structural Anthropology’ the article demonstrates that a more productive scenario for social anthropology is a symbolic exchange based on the matrix of ‘traditional’ hospitality, where the researcher’s concepts act as a ‘symbolic bond’ between different worlds, ‘meeting’ with the concepts of the communities being studied, and a new vision of the world and new knowledge are generated in the ‘in-between’ of their ‘meeting’. According to the author, the concept of hospitality can serve as a guide for anthropologists in their interactions with people from different cultures, and although it is a form of art, E.V. de Castro’s experience provides insights into its implementation in research practices.

Relations and cyborgs: public and private in an urban commune

Artem V. Kotelnikov — 2025-10-29

The article presents ethnographic research of one of about a dozen communes of St. Petersburg, based on cohabitation and common housing by people who are not blood or family related to each other in large apartments (once communal flats or dormitories). I consider the problem of the interrelation between private and public in a situation of uncertainty (transparency) of the boundaries between them, which is characteristic of communal life in the context, the importance of things as actors within this transparent space and dividual agency within it. Studies devoted to this kind of uncertainty either do not discuss the transparency of the boundaries of public and private, explaining the uncertainty in a different way (for example, through transitional spheres or performativity), or only state its existence without clarifying its structure. As an alternative analytical tool, I turn to Marilyn Strathearn's concept of relationships, which identifies two forms of dividual agency relevant to the realities of the commune I am exploring: 1) mutuality and 2) cyborg relations. The former presupposes an agency of actors in which an action is performed with an eye to and from the Other, while within the latter, some actors act as representatives of others. The mutuality relationship in the commune involves intermediaries. More often it is sounds or things. The connection with these intermediaries connects different people's private spaces and the public space of the commune. In turn, cyborgs, which include representatives of ex-residents of the commune — other people, ex-residents’ belongings and rental liens — make it possible for these ex-residents to return to the commune space and, thus, connect the public space outside it and its private sphere. The permeability of a commune's space is determined and structured in different ways by localized forms of dividual agency within it.

Archival materials for the study of P.A. Sorokin’s creative heritage

Nikolay A. Golovin — 2025-10-29

The publication of three issues of a Selected Archival Materials from the legacy of the Russian and American sociologist P.A. Sorokin (1898-1968), published by Pitirim Sorokin International Centre of Social Research at Syktyvkar State University, follows the growing interest of specialists and the public in the humanization of society. Thanks to cooperation with the University of Saskatchewan (Canada), Archives and Special Collections Department publishes little-available materials from the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin 's creative heritage. In the first issue “Pitirim Sorokin’s Drafts: A Collection of Archival Materials” compiled by N.F. Zyuzev (2019), the ten materials presented are grouped thematically: sociological theory, ethics of altruism, book reviews. The materials of the second issue reveal Sorokin's attitude to the political situation and conflicts in the modern world (the period of the US war in Vietnam, 1955-1975). The second issue of the collection draws attention to the historical context of Sorokin's work. It is also notable for the participation of students in the preparation of texts of archival materials as translators under the guidance of experienced specialists. The third issue “Pitirim Sorokin’s Drafts: Journalistic Materials” differs from the previous ones in that most of its materials have already been published by Sorokin, but remain inaccessible to specialists. The materials of the issue allow us to conclude that the search for ways to a humanistic society was intensified immediately after the manuscript of the book Modern Sociological Theories (1928) was ready. All publications add to the knowledge of the structural links in the implementation of P.A. Sorokin's scientific program, dating back to his early scientific works. The prospect of publishing archival materials is increasing in the course of the ‘archival revolution’ ¾ policy of ensuring wide openness and digitization of data contained in the repositories of society's historical memory.

Book Review: Urban Asymmetries: Policies, Practices, and Representations (2024) ed. by E.V. Tykanova. Moscow, Saint Petersburg: FCTAS RAS. — 264 p.

Anna M. Sosnovskaya — 2025-10-29

Book Review: Urban Asymmetries: Policies, Practices, and Representations (2024) ed. by E.V. Tykanova. Moscow, Saint Petersburg: FCTAS RAS. — 264 p.