Ideas and Ideals

Research in the field of the human capital gained frontal character in domestic science. This research takes place in methodology too. In the process of development the calculate-formula of human capital has been steadily complicating since 1960, incorporating new indicators. Even this very complication has become the subject of discussions in the expert community, not to mention the need, justifiability and technological effectiveness of calculation of separate components of “the human development index”. The cross-disciplinary nature of human capital research has become the result of such complication. Sociologists, psychologists, experts in the field of IT developments, and others joined the discussion. The methodological basis of research and expert dialogue also extend respectively. For example, one can hear the opinions about the need to use qualitative methods for research of the human capital.

Multi–paradigm investigations become more and more obvious. While economists-libertarians were fiddling with macroeconomic indicators of education and income and extrapolated the results to a single person as a carrier of special capital, the speculative methodological nature of such procedures still could have remained in the shadow. But the more sophisticated the toy is, the easier it is to break it. It turned out that human capital has a complex structure. And the question about the core of human capital and its structural components depends on the system of axiomatic installations and terminology. That is to say, it depends on the paradigm consideration of the subject. The Marxist paradigm (the alternative to the libertarian one) was prior, historically speaking. The concepts of patrimonial essence of a person and workforce were introduced into scientific use one century prior to pioneers of the human capital research.

In my opinion, the greatest intrigue in a cross-paradigm polylogue is created by a vitalist paradigm. At least, exactly here it is possible to find the answer to the question, most inconvenient for the theory of human capital: if the intensity of educational practices and capitalization of a person are in a direct proportion, then how one can explain a notorious “syndrome of a mediocre pupil”? The article considers the importance of a motivation factor of passionarity in various paradigmal transcriptions.

The article considers assimilation problems in the USSR and the Russian Federation through the prism of interethnic marriages peculiarities in the country. But was that assimilation into the Russian society or the supranational model of the Soviet society? The article considers the concept of “peoples’ friendship”, since it was the basis of interethnic marriages and how the concept was embodied in reality in the USSR. The author considers the role of assimilation processes concerning those Russians, who lived in the Union Republics and often entered into interethnic marriages. The article also analyses and compares the relations of partners in interethnic marriages in contemporary Russia as well as the results of opinion polls. The author also considers the strategies of interrelations of interethnic couples identified by various researchers. She presents the data of the conducted sociological survey among students of Russian universities in several cities. The aim of the survey was to study the acceptance-rejection ratio of interethnic marriage in the context of spontaneous formation of the sociocultural scenario of interethnic relations in the country. The author comes to the conclusion that nowadays in the minds of Russians there are no value dominants that assert the significance of interethnic marriages, as it was in the USSR; that is, there are no ethno-cultural prerequisites for entering into ethnically mixed marriages. However, certain models of actions still remain, which make the interaction of representatives of different nations easier at the everyday level and, thus, they contribute to the formation of ethnically mixed marriages. It means that there are ethno-psychological prerequisites for interethnic marriages. Therefore, is it possible to say that the assimilation processes in Russia have stopped? Though interethnic marriages today are sometimes perceived with anxiety, their share among all marriages in Russia almost has not decreased compared to the RSFSR level. However, interethnic marriages no longer exist in the context of interethnic relations, but in the context of interpersonal relations. The environment of large Russian cities is sometimes characterized by ethnically indifferent social structure almost homogeneous at the behavioral level.

Practice of community organizing is consistently associated with the idea of grassroots democracy. It is assumed that such democratic structures, independent of the state administration, will become instruments of direct participation of people in social and economic development of their living environment. Ideologists and practitioners of community organizing in the United States proceed from the fact that the improvement of urban environment is a political issue, and presence of depressed areas is the result of uneven distribution of resources at each level: federation– state – county – city. Therefore, community organizing involves endowing local communities with political subjectivity, teaching them collective tactics of putting pressure on the state administration in order to force it to listen to demands put forward by the community.

An analysis of key models of community organizing in the United States undertaken in the article shows that this approach does not eliminate the dependence of local civil communities on the state as the main agent of social and economic assistance. Communities remain a “service environment”, which significantly narrows the social base of community organizing. Community organizing methods have proven to be effective in bringing together low-income urban groups. Moreover, in the case of ACORN, it was possible to unite local communities into a single centralized network capable of being a conduit for the “left” agenda of expanding the “trusteeship” obligations of the state towards the poorest stratum of society. However, singling out the low-income strata as the target segment and locking the ideals of the welfare state deprives the community organizing of the opportunity to become a universal model for development of grassroots democracy.

  Electoral culture in modern Russian society is associated with a critical transformation of social and cultural values that form a democratic political consciousness. The focus is on the socio-cultural practice of free will of a person in society – its genesis and forms of manifestation in a society of stateless type. The authors come to the following conclusions: electoral practices were inherent to the archaic people and it is possible to consider the starting point of evolution of electoral culture of mankind from those times; the electoral culture of a stateless society is a mixed type of culture, the basis of which is the coordinated cooperative nature of the subjects acting as equal ones in social status; in a stateless type of society, the indicators of human freedom, personal autonomy of a person are higher than in the state, and the degree of alienation of a person from power and society is much less; self-organization of a stateless society included a number of elements – self-government and self-control, mechanisms of self-regulation and self-testing, which indicate a sufficiently high level of electoral culture in stateless societies, in which a “custom” can be interpreted as a legal rule or a proto-law.

The article deals with the social and socio-political processes taking place in Central Asia. The new understanding of social solidarity in the traditional Eastern society and the emerging transition to the model of national statehood of Uzbekistan based on the principles of interaction with civil society are discussed. The problem is that social solidarity in the modern era of democratic freedoms is built in the context of finding a balance between the need to strengthen the national state and the natural process of development of civil society, but for the Eastern States this “balance” has always had its own specifics. The aim of the study is to analyze the opportunities and barriers of social and socio-political processes based on the appeal to solidarity as a social mechanism that allows effective integration of society. At the same time, there is a political and ideological component of social solidarity, which is often used as a slogan. The authors analyze the factors and conditions of social solidarity development. Social solidarity itself is interpreted as a factor in the development of national statehood. At the same time, Uzbekistan is increasingly becoming the initiator of unification and solidarity of states and societies throughout Central Asia and the East. On the basis of the conducted interview data, the authors present the assessment of social changes by the expert community, and show how the intelligentsia accepts the concept of solidarity. Social solidarity, from the point of view of the intelligentsia, will allow: to reduce social tension in the multicultural/multi-ethnic Uzbek society, with the territorial designation of the borders remaining from the Soviet era, as well as the remaining clan system; it will lead to the growth of civil society institutions: non-profit, non-governmental organizations, and, accordingly, it will reduce the role of power structures. Finally, it will benefit the socio-psychological atmosphere in the society, support positive social attitudes. The authors have come to the conclusion, that there is a new scientific problem related to the search for criteria of social solidarity (or the state of the process), and the need to conduct a survey of public opinion, to understand what different social groups think on this issue.

The article considers the problem of modern terrorism, which has been attracting the attention of researchers for several decades. Despite the worldwide actualization of this issue, the number of terrorist attacks is becoming more and more every day. The failure of counter-terrorism activities rests, first of all, in misunderstanding of the essence of this social phenomenon.The usual estimation of different sorts of actions in terms of “good” or “bad” distracts researchers from understanding the deeper causes of the origin of this phenomenon. The author pays special attention to the fact that terrorism, in its basis, is a complex phenomenon, which includes the elements of other events close to it. The paper provides a comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of terrorism, which allows to identify its various aspects as well as to show the interrelation between them (violence, fear, etc.). The author also draws an analogy between terrorism and such phenomena as terror, war and extremism. This interdisciplinary analysis allowed to expand the understanding of this “violence of the XXI century” without demonizing its main actors. The paper draws special attention to the problem of mutual influence of the mass media system and terrorist organizations. Is it possible for terrorism to exist outside the media? This issue affects a huge layer of modern problems: from the journalism ethics to the legitimacy of restrictions in the use of the Internet. The answers to these questions will help us to look at terrorism not just as a negative phenomenon of modernity, but as a self-regulating social symbolic space existing in the context of globalization.

The nature of Western civilization has been interpreted in many ways in the majority of non-European societies, which faced it. This process was mostly pronounced in British India. The representatives of the new, colonialist-built elites had to reflect upon not only their own and European living principles, but also to discuss the topics concerning their submissive and fairly complicated position in that political system. The paper analyzes the personal views of a famous Bengali writer of the XIX century Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. He was not only a famous writer, but also an extremely successful person in the Bengali society of those times. After getting a perfect education, he achieved the highest point of his career. Then he started sharing his opinions in public, which, considering his social status and Bengali social structure of that time, was fairly venturous. Entering a public epistolary intercourse with one prominent European figure, he began to protect the Hindu religion from the outside attacks and he even questioned the well-known idea of Europe’s intellectual supremacy. With the help of his satiric writers, e.g. «Kamalakanta», he actually poured ridicule not only on the colonial position of his country, but also on the Western system of International Law. Remaining a bearer of Western world view and values, he did not challenge the key achievements of the European world, Bankim Chandra tried to reveal its various problems. Thereby the writer proposed his own way of overcoming one of the most essential colonial state questions – the dilemma between westernization and the drive for their own identity.

The main object of imagological research is perception of the ‘other’ by representations of various cultures. The question is ‘what’ and not ‘who’ represents a culture. The key concept in imagology is that of ‘archetype’, which is fixated through centuries in folklore (fairytales, mythology and epics). It is exactly the archetype which predetermines the images dominant in this or that folk. Imagologists presume that an image is not static and constantly changes. The change in the spiritual condition of a folk, stipulated by certain events, triggers the respective archetypes. A phenotype, just like an image, does not remain unchanged, either; it changes under the influence of natural forces, such as genetics and environment. An image, on the other hand, evolves under the influence of three main characteristics of sapiens: the capability of creative thinking, speech, and creative activity (the capability of creating essential objects). In the self-consciousness of every nation, there are certain elements of nature (landscape types, rivers, mountain peaks, steppes etc.) which represent an integral part of archetype. They occupy a particular place in songs, poems and legends (e.g. Rhine for the Germans, Volga for the Russians or the Carpathian basin for the Hungarians). The individual and collective perception of the ‘other’ is often selective, i.e. when only a certain part of the whole is scrutinized, which naturally results in the appearance of prejudices and stereotypes, even given a careful study of this isolated element. The ‘other’, is, according to imagology, not synonymous to ‘hostile’, it all depends upon the individual characteristics (content) of the ‘other’. Realization of the contours of one’s own and foreign cultures allows better communication with the ‘other’. In his article, the author illustrates the potentially useful nature of imagological applications, in order to clarify the inalienable discrepancy between interests and values in the field of inter-ethnic and inter-national relations.

The problem of normality in psychiatry has not been solved yet. Therefore, a philosophical understanding of the notion of the norm and abnormality becomes particularly important. These two concepts should be discussed together. To solve the problem the author uses the method of analysis of norm and abnormality in psychiatry and fiction. In psychiatry there are only disorders. Their classification was historically developed by means of social construction. The conceptions of normality are different in three kinds of psychiatry. In the state psychiatry it is the absence of social complaints to the person, in commercial psychiatry it is the patient’s mental comfort, in the scientific psychiatry the statistical criterion takes place. Science fiction is a kind of literature where the normality is specially questioned. The author shows that the statistical criterion does not work in defining the norm. We can distinguish the following criteria of normality: 1) normality as a possibility of communication. In the psychiatric situation the communication of the doctor and the patient is also possible. For this, the psychiatrist must carefully and delicately grasp the biased vector of patient’s senses. When the patient turns off, the doctor’s task is to carefully go round and avoid the defense, without breaking it. 2) Normality as a possibility of mutual interaction. For a patient, the interaction with the members of the family is important, as well as with the big society in the process of inclusion. 3) Normality as an adequacy. It is an adequate person who has a non-rigid personal basis, which allows him/her to open himself/herself to a new experience. The psychiatrist must constantly increase the patient’s adequacy with the same accurate ways, as in communication with him. The novelty of the approach is, first of all, to exclude the statistical criterion of the norm and to introduce the criterion of mutual understanding and interaction. The notion of adequacy is also introduced, based on the attitude to the world, openness to it and willingness to interact with it. Fantastic worlds are a model of abnormality, and the subjects of fantastic works are a mental laboratory for understanding and overcoming the mutual abnormality of different cultures and minds.