Ideas and Ideals

Globalization has seriously influenced the system of higher education. As a result the concept of the university role has also changed. Such concepts as “Entrepreneurial Universities” by Clark B., “A Triple Helix” by Etzkowitz H., “The Third Generation University” by Wissema J. came into being. All these concepts change our traditional understanding of the impact universities have on the social and economic development of our society. The term “academic capitalism” appeared at the end of the 1990-ies. Slaughter S. and Leslie L. define it as the market activities of the research and educational institutions as well as the staff aimed at attracting the money from outwards. University becomes the subject of the market economy with all the consequences. Russian universities today mostly have a hierarchical management structure, modeled on a big corporation. In the conditions of academic capitalism, which is not only highly competitive but also dynamic and volatile, the management system must be able to quickly respond to emerging challenges that the bureaucratic structure cannot always meet. The article shows that the network methodology of management decision-making has many advantages, as well as a number of restrictions.

The subject of analysis is the article by I.V. Zhezhko-Braun. It is useful to discuss the history of the Siberian city of science, taking into account the present state of the RAS. The author highlights the uniqueness of this historical phenomenon, where the appearance of certain structures of civil society could be even more important than scientific discoveries. The article is based on unique sources, the resources, used by the author, involved oral narratives, interviews with a number of contemporaries and participants in the events described. For further research it is recommended for the author to use more available sources, primarily documents of the party organs. The author has to deeper present the general context in which these events took place. It is very important to substantiate the application of the term «student movement» to the opposition phenomena in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok.

Justice as a theme and a subject of research is, in fact, a cluster of concepts, which organize a specific multi-actant historical process. It deals with certain forms of human self-understanding and methods of turning less equitable social relations into more equitable ones. One of the basic problems here is to clarify and to explicate existing forms of understanding of Justice, and then to organize a communicative space for an ongoing process of discussions on the national and even transnational level. While doing so the social life might have been reorganized in the mode of strengthening respect to the competing ideas of Justice, which are revealed as the result of those discussions. On the other hand, Truth within social sciences could be understood as a matrix of openness of the world-as-a-whole, i.e. as a sort of collective optics which allows to identify things as things, facts as facts, events as events, and, therefore, generates collective forms of in-the-world orientation, common for a given nation, or a given historical moment, etc. But altogether this produces deep conflicts between scientific knowledge and “folk” estimates of social and historical reality because historical and social “facts” themselves are still not defined.

The article considers the problem of citizen participation in the political process associated with social communication difficulties. An individual is moving away from the social system, due to the obtained negative experiences after the confrontation with the latent component of political participation. The author analyzes the historical characteristics of the personal identity and public opinion ratio. He also highlights the relationship of political participation and family traditions. State pressure on the individual consciousness turns into a hidden form of social loneliness. The more radical a political doctrine is the more negative attitude to social loneliness it demonstrates. Enforcement of social lifestyle, active participation in mutual social activities form settled fear before the State, a group, possessing the right to coercion, the world view regulation, and to the invasion of privacy. Political changes transform the kinds of social participation, values and meanings of social activities. Social distance may be considered as a potential prerequisite of a conflict between an individual and a society. We can speak about a new phenomenon, hidden social loneliness, i.e. a gap between intrinsic beliefs and demonstrated behavior. The feeling of hidden social loneliness transforms a person into an ostentatious performer; it makes a person feel forced publicity. A political system in some cases can hinder the development of social communication.

The article examines the impact of the development of the Internet technologies on the ways of communication and social interaction in a society. The increasing of information flows and the speed of information exchange stimulate people to search for new forms of self-organization. Among these forms, there are some significant ones like virtual communities in social networks. This process intensifies different effects for all users of the network groups. Users in search of a circle of "friends" and personal identification resort to various methods of self-categorization experiencing the affect of different methods of influence and manipulation (both positive and negative). To maintain the balance of interests it is necessary to increase media literacy, mastering critical perception and analysis.

There is a whole area of demographic studies – the chronoecology. It is connected with the cyclical nature of virtually all processes in the evolution of the population. In addition to the vector process (a constant growth of the world's population), which has created a strong concern and this phenomenon has been included into the list of the global environmental problems of mankind; cyclic processes of the population change were also revealed.   The paper considers the cyclical birth-rate index in Fennoscandian countries during the long - term investigations. There is a steady negative trend of the birth-rate index, especially in Sweden. The spectra of periodic components, that form the long-term dynamics of the birth rate, are built. Specific to these countries, 170-, 50-60- and 15-17- year cycles are determined. The author speculates upon the internal causes and possible external pacemakers of these fluctuations. A comparison of the spectra of the periodic constituents of the birth-rate indices in Fennoskandia and Romania, as a more southern country, has been made. For the population cycles of fertility, the time external sensors can be manifested in individual fluctuations of the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) in Scandinavia, as well as the harmonic components of the spectrum of the Nordic index (SCAND), the primary focus of which is situated over Scandinavia. The first oscillation of this global climate index can maintain the stability of the 170-year cycle of birth-rate; and the second one is responsible for the 60- and 40-year rhythms that function in Scandinavian countries, but they are absent in southern Europe (Romania).

The article deals with the economic culture of the Old Believers, known as «chasovennye», who live in North and South America. The interviews and observations, collected during the expeditions to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Canada; as well as previously published works became the material for the generalizations. The first part outlines the nature of the activities and the economic culture of the Old Believers in America, and the second part deals with the Old Believers’ choice of the place of residence and their main activity; finally, the third part reveals the phenomenon of the dialectics of escape from the world and earthly success. A comparative overview of the economic life of a community of Old Believers named “chasovennye” shows the intensity of movements and the voluntariness in choosing the place of residence. In terms of theory, the article shows the dialectical logic of economic and religious choice. Economic success, followed by the loss of traditional ways of life and the language, provoked searching for the new places of residence. Like medieval monasteries and mendicant orders, the Old Believers, who had consciously chosen isolation and escapism, often found themselves in even more advantageous economic conditions, as it can be seen in Alaska and the Canadian Alberta.

The author considers the degradation of peasant labour culture in the Soviet kolkhozes, which still affects the modern village. Peasantry is presented as the community of rural inhabitants occupied with crop growing and cattle breeding who possess socio-cultural legacy of ancestors. The author highlights the idea, that traditional culture of peasant labour in Russia was very high. To prove the fact, the examples from the research work of classical writers of the Russian history, ethnographers’, foreigners’ evidence about Russia and the Russian folklore are given in the article. According to the author the policy of collectivization led to the socio-cultural degradation of the traditional labour culture of peasants. The absence of private property, material and moral interests as well as super-exploitation of peasants by the state, low-paid work, cultural revolution and "equal rights" for everybody were the main factors, which led to degradation. And as the result, such phenomena as low productivity of labour, economic indifference, imitation of labour were formed and all the previously mentioned factors led to moral degradation. The author supports the formulated conclusions with the testimonies of former peasants which have been collected in the new scientific genre "oral history". In the opinion of eyewitnesses of collectivization and the author of the article for the modern village recovery it is necessary to give peasants private property and freedom of creativity.

In the article, Russian regions are the classified in terms of cultural capital  development by cluster analysis method. Inside the allocated clusters, generalized factors are defined by the method of principal components; the effect  of indicators  of  cultural capital on the level of economic activity of the population is measured. The obtained multiple regression equation was used for forecasting the level of economic activity of population in 2016-2018 years.  

The author attempts to explain the changes taking place in different historical periods in the private and public spheres of social life. The content of these transformations is described as social privatization. The direction of social privatization is defined as the movement of the society towards de-politicization, de-socialization and privatization (ochastnivaniye). The author provides the examples of changes, the essence of which is social privatization; he also considers a decrease of civic activity of the population, the emergence of fenced and quasi-public spaces and turning of the state into a private corporation. The author argues that social privatization can act as a mechanism by which individuals and groups are trying to adapt to adverse changes in the social environment. Socially dangerous consequences of social privatization are characterized by the inability and unwillingness of people to hear and see each other, to carry out collective and cooperative activities in the public interest. The book is intended for sociologists, social philosophers, historians, graduate students and students of social theory, sociology of management, sociology, state and law, sociology of the city.