Sotsiologicheskiy Zhurnal = Sociological Journal

Collective Memory, its Structure and its Cultural Antecedents

Mikhail F. Chernysh — 2025-09-27

The article examines the phenomenon of collective memory, the processes of its formation, and the role of different actors in these processes. It is noted that collective memory is an ambivalent phenomenon that combines, on the one hand, individual memories, and, on the other hand, the effects of political and cultural influence carried out by key social actors. A significant contribution to the consolidation of collective memory is made by the products of the language game — language tropes that give rise to metaphors, hyperboles, metonymic formations, and stable memes. Tropes summarize assessments of the past, consolidating them and simultaneously introducing a moral dimension into them. Collective memory is closely related to historical memory, which is purposefully formed through the efforts of institutional actors within the framework of memorization policy, in museum expositions, monuments, history textbooks, and popular media. Memory policy cannot ignore individual experience aggregated by collective memory. In some cases, collective memory creates its own defense mechanisms that help overcome the consequences of social cataclysms. This goal is served by the protective mechanisms of repression, which take traumatic events beyond the memory, or by the mechanisms of projection, which take the events under discussion beyond the responsible behavior of current generations. Collective memory narratives are formatted by psychocomplexes — stable frames that fill past events with meanings and value content. One of the key actor’s influencing collective memory is historical science, communities of professional historians offering their own, usually nuanced, assessments of past events. Identities, including civil and ethnic identities, are formed on the basis of collective memory.

The Concept of a “Creative City”: Adaptation and Development in the Russian Context

Dmitry V. Ivanov — 2025-09-27

The article presents the results of a study that conceptualizes the “creative city” within Russian urban development discourse. It reveals a shift in the semantics of cultural industries, as well as more intense problematization of the social consequences that go with developing the creative economy. Using a combined content analysis approach (bibliometric mapping of keyword co-occurrence and thematic coding), the study examines the concept’s applicability within the Russian academic environment. The analysis of 32 Russian publications (2010–2024, from the journals “Scopus” and “Higher Attestation Commission”) revealed three conceptual axes for applying the “creative city” concept (space, economy, people) and three hierarchical positions within theoretical models (embedded, equivalent, dominant). Their combination identified six metaphors of the “creative city” in Russian literature — ranging from a “showcase for the creative class” to a “collective agent of self-development” — whose evolution demonstrates a shift in the conceptualization of a city from a managed object to an active subject participating in the creative transformation of the environment. The study identified common features in both Russian and English-language discourses: ambivalent perceptions of the “creative class”, neoliberal critique, and a focus on unique local projects rather than universal forms of creativity. However, while international models predominantly emphasize urban economic development and global integration, Russian approaches focus on internal territorial resources and the potential for collective action.

Social Consequences of Geographic Mobility for Constructing a Life Course

Anna V. Andreenkova — 2025-09-27

Geographical mobility has important social consequences, but also seriously impacts individual life trajectories, serving as a channel for social mobility. But any sort of geographic mobility is also related to serious risks. To what extent are people’s hopes and expectations justified, what are the long-term consequences of geographic mobility? To answer these fundamental questions, we use data from a new large-scale study titled “Geomobility of Generations”, conducted by CESSI as part of the project “Life Course, Values, Expectations of the Generation That Grew up in the 1990’s” from the fall of 2023 and through the spring of 2024 based on a national random probability sample of older generations of Russians born before and up to 1973. The main method of analysis is statistical assessment of differences between groups of mobile and non-mobile respondents. The parameters for comparison are presented in the form of a conceptual scheme, including conditions of mobility, factors of mobility and consequences in different spheres. The results showed that geographic mobility as a life strategy cannot be considered an indisputably winning or an indisputably losing one. Some of the long-term consequences of geographic mobility include the impact on self-assessment of health, the scope of social connections and educational intergenerational mobility. The study did not find any connection between geographic mobility and subjective well-being and satisfaction with one’s life path at the final stage of one’s life path. The impact of geographic mobility on one’s financial situation in the long term is also uncertain. Geographic mobility definitely contributes to upward intergenerational educational mobility, but it does not have a significant impact on intergenerational professional mobility or subjective assessment of one’s position on the social ladder.

An Interdisciplinary Experience in the Study of School Shooters’ Written Communication to Identify Markers of Warning Behavior

Anna Yu. Karpova — 2025-09-27

The paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary study that aims to identify markers of warning behavior of school shooters’ based on analyzing their written communication using computer linguistics methods. Characteristic features of school shooters’ texts include the presence of signs of cognitive distortion – “personalization” – as well as such emotions as “anger” and “sadness”. In the texts of shooters, along with asocial and destructive intentions, intentions with a clear positive connotation also occupy a significant place. Provided in the study are the results of comparative analysis of significant markers of warning behavior of school shooters that are intrinsic to their written communication, as well as the results of processing open text data sets that are not directly related to the topic of school shooting, such as: text data from Reddit, Twitter; sets of texts from blogs devoted to criminal topics; collections of BBC news texts, articles from Medium’s website; a collection of essays of psychology students from 1993 to 1996; a collection of works of literature presented on the Gutenberg project, etc. Significant features of the texts and inherent differences are emphasized. Directions are proposed for further research as part of solving the problem of identifying markers of warning behavior, using pre-trained models of natural language analysis.

On current Issues of Ethnosociology: Understanding the Ideological Heritage of L.M. Drobizheva

Yuri V. Popkov — 2025-09-27

The author analyzes the personal contribution of L.M. Drobizheva, one of the founders of ethnosociology, to understanding its contemporary pressing issues, including its projection in the sphere of state national policy. In particular, her ideas are highlighted pertaining to: the need for a clearer definition of the subject of ethnosociology; the discrepancy between the new terminological apparatus borrowed during the post-Soviet period from the West and the traditions of word usage in domestic science, political and everyday practice; polyparadigmality in ethnosociology and the multiplicity of application of methodological tools as a necessary condition for effective research activity; the low status of ethnosociology compared to the currently dominant anthropology; the importance of structuring and more in-depth study of the identification space of Russia; the utopianism of the notion of “depoliticizing ethnicity” in Russia; increasing the responsibility of the authorities when it comes to solving fundamental social problems, forming and maintaining national unity. Based on the results of the analysis, the author concludes that it is necessary to preserve, and in some cases, revive positive domestic scientific traditions in ethnosociology. He considers it appropriate to return to the concepts of “ethnosocial processes”, “consciousness” and “self-awareness” when substantiating and categorizing its basic subject field. Also important is the focus on using different methodological resources that cannot be absolutized or opposed. The development of ethnosociology as a relatively independent scientific direction with special subject definition and the conceptualization of the problems identified can contribute to strengthening the position of this direction in the system of sociological and ethnological knowledge and serve as the best memory of L.M. Drobizheva.

Generations of University Educational Communities: Sociological Interpretation of the Phenomenon

Garold E. Zborovsky — 2025-09-27

The relevance of the sociological understanding of such a phenomenon as “generations of educational communities in universities” stems from the need to create theoretical foundations for generational research in higher education. The general theory of generations needs to be adapted to the specifics of the generational situation in higher education. The problem discussed in this article has to do with the lack of a sociological interpretation of the generations of the primary subjects of higher education — academic, administrative staff, students — at a conceptual level and as a real social phenomenon. The purpose of the article is to develop theoretical and methodological provisions that reveal the essence of the phenomenon of the generation of the university educational community from a sociological perspective. The article presents methodological approaches towards studying generations that are relevant to higher education. The concept of the “generation of the educational community at the university” is interpreted in the context of the classical theory of K. Mannheim and the theory of social community. The main community-forming features of the generation of the university educational community are revealed. The structure and functions of generations of three university educational communities are considered.

Contextual Moderations of Age and Status Inequalities in Access to Healthcare

Nina L. Rusinova — 2025-09-27

The article analyzes the problem of social inequalities in access to healthcare services in different countries of the world, including Russia. In modern research, such a subjective indicator as unmet medical care needs has become widely used in order to measure these inequalities. In particular, it was found that with age this indicator decreases significantly, while in economically vulnerable groups the values increase. Such age and status inequalities manifest to various degrees of intensity in different countries. However the rare attempts to explain such differences between countries using contextual variables have yet not been successful. In order to clarify the situation, this study conducts two-level logistic hierarchical modeling using survey data collected in 26 countries of the world under the International Social Survey Program (ISSP 2021) and statistics characterizing these countries. The results confirm that in some countries there are clear age and status inequalities when it comes to unmet needs for healthcare services, while in others they are more ambiguous, and such differences in how inequalities manifest can be explained by contextual factors that differentiate countries in terms of economic and welfare state development, accessibility and quality of healthcare systems. In developed countries inequalities are more pronounced than in underdeveloped countries. In the former, attention to socially vulnerable groups is a likely reason for the significant improvement in access to healthcare for older age cohorts and the persistence of access restrictions at younger ages. At the same time when analyzing status inequalities it becomes clear that they are more pronounced in developed countries. This confirms the assumption about the greater gain in access to medical services for individuals with high social status in countries with more complete coverage of the population with high-quality medical services. Such differences in inequality are explained by contextual factors — the development of the economy and the welfare state, the availability and quality of healthcare systems. In developed countries, inequalities turned out to be more noticeable than in underdeveloped countries. As such, significant age differences reflect the advantages of older people in access to medical care compared to young people. Clear status inequalities in these countries indicate that with low social status a person has to deal with barriers when it comes to healthcare provision much more often than if they had been a person of higher status. In our country, restrictions in access to healthcare services turned out, according to the data we acquired, to be among the highest in the world.

Methodological Prospects of S.L. Frank’s Social Ontology

Irina A. Shmerlina — 2025-09-27

The article attempts to critically examine S.L. Frank’s social ontology from the perspective of sociological methodological needs. The fundamental differences between Frank’s ontological constructs, presented in the work “The Spiritual Foundations of Society” (1930), and the views developed by the author in the “Essay on the Methodology of Social Sciences” (1922) are revealed. It is shown that Frank’s socio-ontological concept, which was introduced to the history of social and philosophical thought under the guise of “Spiritual Foundations of Society”, combines several independent perspectives, namely, psychological, theistic, philosophical objective-idealistic, systemic, phenomenological, sociological and humanistic. The psychological perspective is based on the idea of the social as a “mental phenomenon”; the theistic perspective asserts the existence of Divine Providence in relation to human social existence; the objective-idealistic (neoplatonic) considers social being as the embodiment of objective ideas dating back to the incomprehensible “all-unity”; the systemic perspective is based on asserting the objective laws that underlie social forms; the phenomenological stems from the idea of the primordial “unity of ‘we’ ” inherent in human nature; the sociological perspective forces to recognize the actual existence of the world of real human interactions and to look for mechanisms for implementing conciliar (sobornost) principles within it; the humanistic perspective affirms the dignity of man, not allowing him to be considered as a “cog” inside social mechanisms. These approaches do not always agree with each other. As a result, in Frank’s social ontology, according to the author of this article, the conceptual relations between the ideal-objective and subject-dependent status of social ideas, the “medium”and decisive role of a person in the realization of his social existence, the initial “unity of ‘we’ ” and the ideal meanings of specific social forms, the grace of Divine Providence and the imperfection of human society remain not fully clarified. Ultimately, the relationship between “conciliarity” and “community” remains unclear. At the same time, Frank’s social ontology contains a number of ideas that are of methodological importance for sociology. These are the idea of objective meanings of social interaction having a “trans-psychic” nature, which is of fundamental importance to his philosophy; the idea of an immanently inherent to human nature sense of “unity of ‘we’ ”, which epistemologically provides him with intuitive, direct access to social reality; the idea of the objective nature of values and the inescapability of the ideal-moral spiritual principle in people’s lives.

Nonlinear Biographical Analysis of B.Z. Doktorov: Organizational and Methodical Techniques

Nadezhda V. Korytnikova — 2025-09-27

The article is dedicated to the organizational and methodological specifics of implementing the authorial historical and scientific project of B.Z. Doctorov, carried out using the methodology of non-linear biographical analysis. The aim of this project is to study the biographies of sociologists in the history of Soviet/Russian sociology and its own history in biographies. The first part of the paper describes stages of recruitment and defines organizational procedures: selection of information sources, processuality in justifying methodological decisions, ways of achieving validity, the logic of processing and storing obtained data. The parameters of the sample population are defined by a narrow circle of the studied set, which includes leading representatives of sociological science. In the second part of the article a number of methodical techniques for conducting interviews are identified: non-formalization of the mental plan of the conversation, flexibility of interaction, intensity of communication mode, mediated by communication technologies. The variety of interview formats made for a frank conversation where the central theme was the scientist’s own life and career. The soft-talk narrative technique does not require supporting facts with documentary references, checking the sequence of events under consideration, or unambiguously characterizing circumstances. The advantages of e-mail as a communication technology used during biographical interviews are emphasized. The information collection procedures indicate the positive influence of B.Z. Doctorov’s personal relationships and professional connections with his informants, and their participation in the self-analysis of the biographical narrative directly during the interview. Due to the large volumes of accumulated biographical materials, their systematization, cataloguing and archiving into an electronic database is becoming a relevant matter, though such a database has yet to be created. It would allow not only to preserve these materials, but also to execute the necessary navigation. The openness of B.Z. Doctorov’s methodological position clarifies the initial premises of his research, makes analytical moves transparent, and outlines the framework of the subject field of interest. The findings are based on the fact that the phenomenological basis in nonlinear biographical analysis predetermined the optimal methods for collecting information, techniques of respondent selection, interview guide blocks, and ways of archiving data.