The aim of the article is to reveal the modern autoethnographic approach to social research. The review of publications edited since the beginning of the 2000's has shown that autoethnography works as a planned, well-structured confession correlating with the outside world. The essentially open and uncompromising representation of each detail in the author’s personal story related to the subject matter, alongside with his/her shift away from neutrality and organized skepticism in respect of the research issue, establish the principles for an (...) autobiographical approach. The article reflects the peculiarities of modern autoethnographic schools, and describes the methods and techniques of autobiographical writing. There are two trends of autoethnography that are distinguished in Western tradition: evocative autoethnography, which is based on queer theory, and analytical autoethnography, traditionally oriented to conceptual apparatus. The first evocative trend is founded on the metaphors of emotional, authentic, and veracious representations of cultural realities through the autobiographical genre. The second trend, analytical autoethnography, is supported by three research prescriptions: the actual membership in the studied community, and avoidance of understatements, including the unspoken, non-prescribed details of ethnographic work; the desire for theoretical understanding of reality; and the rejection of any authentic reflection of the past. Over the past 20–30 years, there has not been any significant autoethnographic project implemented by the Russian research community appealing to the development of independent theoretical descriptive language. The only exception to the rule is Alexeyev’s so-called "dramaturgical sociology", adjacent to the queer ideology of some Western colleagues. The paper represents a detailed analysis of research innovation embedded by Alexeyev, as well as a logical and theoretical overlapping with the works of foreign authors. (shrink)

The concept of political economy developed in the framework of political anthropology is considered. The key aspects of political economy in terms of political entrepreneurs, primitive money, power-property, social contracts are defined. The prospects of using the political economy methodology in the analysis of the Ukrainian political process are outlined. Political anthropology examines the pre-state pre-capitalist polity and economy. And that is why it can be a source of promising analytical tools for the analysis of post-Soviet, Ukrainian in particular, political (...) process characterized by the weakness of the national institutions of the state and oligarchic distortion of the market economy. One of such advanced analytical tool is the concept of political economy. Political economy can be defined in three dimensions. First, it is a set of institutions by which political elites withdraw and convert resources for their own financing. Second, political economy is a field of struggle between political elites - ambitious political entrepreneurs that compete for power and resources and form different proto-state polity. Third, political economy can be defined by specific social contracts that elite conclude with a subservient population about the rules on withdrawal the resources and funding political apparatus. The concept of political economy can serve as a methodology for the analysis of post-Soviet political systems. Within this concept we can organize and analyze a number of fundamental issues of our political and economy. (shrink)

The focus of the paper is a sophism based on the proposition ‘This is Socrates’ found in a short treatise on obligational casus attributed to William Heytesbury. First, the background to the puzzle in Walter Burley’s traditional account of obligations (the responsio antiqua), and the objections and revisions made by Richard Kilvington and Roger Swyneshed, are presented. All six types of obligations described by Burley are outlined, including sit verum, the type used in the sophism. Kilvington and Swyneshed disliked the (...) dynamic nature of the responsio antiqua, and Kilvington proposed a revision to the rules for irrelevant propositions. This allowed him to use a form of reasoning, the “disputational meta-argument”, which is incompatible with Burley’s rules. Heytesbury explicitly rejected Kilvington’s revision and the associated meta-argument. Swyneshed also revised Burley’s account of obligations, formulating the so-called responsio nova, characterised by the apparently surprising thesis that a conjunction can be denied both of whose conjuncts are granted. On closer inspection, however, his account is found to be less radical than first appears. (shrink)

The article analyzes the properties of sensitive questions and, more broadly, of sensitive situations in unstructured interviews. Although direct sensitive questions are not typical for unstructured interviews because they can break the flow of communication, there is a quite large class of questions with contextual communicative perspectives that can be correctly considered as conditional/semi-sensitive. In particular, the questions regarding respect for elderly persons are not sensitive enough for informants to avoid answering them, but at the same time, are sufficiently delicate (...) to make informants employ complex excusatory tactics in their answers. This practice supports the well-known thesis that to overcome the questions’ sensitivity, the most effective tactic is “justifying preambles,” which allows the removal of the moral burden either from the informant, or from the circumstances in general. It should be remembered that, via this kind of research, we do not learn the real causes of rule-breaking as much, but rather a practical representation of the norm from the informant’s point of view, as well as a set of legitimate reasons for not following it. Particular attention should be paid to the informative value of sensitivity. For example, we can measure the level of the repression of social norms in specific areas of social life on the basis of the differences in the answers obtained in different ways. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the theory of social identity. The role the individuals’ intentions play in the processes of social identities construction is considered. The article shows the potential of rational choice theory as an alternative approach to the social identity conceptualization. The lack of existing theories, in the author’s opinion, is in the absence of description and analysis of identity-choosing processes. The prevailing view is that social identity is formed unconsciously and by pressure of structural factors. The paper suggests that (...) sociological rational choice theory can replace psychological theories which pay more attention to the individual level processes. In rational choice theory identity is understood as a matter of choice and a source of pleasure. Thus in rational choice theory, identity is still considered as a social phenomenon. It influences the individual’s behavior, but the reason for this is contained not in coercion of social structures, but in the risk of losing something valuable. Individuals do not want to risk their “source of satisfaction”, and consciously identify themselves with a group trying to maximize the measure of “group conformity”. However, this cannot be considered as an exhaustive explanation which excludes all others. The author believes that it is impossible to synthesize a single consistent theory of identity, because in this case we would have to combine incompatible things. (shrink)

This preface to the translation of Harvey Sacks, Emmanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson’s paper “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation” discusses the conceptual and methodological foundations of conversation analysis. It shows that conversation analysis, which embodies the program of primitive natural social science formulated by Harvey Sachs, offers a revolutionary approach to the study of social phenomena, based on detailed analysis of naturally occurring everyday interactions. While remaining closely related to Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology, conversation analysis shows (...) how careful and detailed can be sociological descriptions that involve the discovery of general mechanisms of the production of single events of conversation or any other social practice. This approach, however, risks losing the original purpose of studying the local concerted work of mutual understanding by the participants in social situations. The accumulation of the descriptions of general mechanisms of interactions’ production and perception brings the tendency of formalization into conversation analysis: analysts tend to collect the instances and properties of already known “interactional techniques.” The article considers the importance of “Simplest Systematics" in terms of the development of original program of conversation analysis, and discusses the peculiarities of translation of conversation analysis’s key terms into Russian. (shrink)

The review analyses the international conference “Christian Monasticism from East to West: Monastic Traditions and Modernity in Europe”, organized in June 2015 by sociologists and theologians from the Universities of Graz, Turin, and Bucharest. The conference initiated a sociological reflection of different monastic traditions, and the role of monasteries in terms of the decline of trust in religious institutions. It raised the question of the dynamics of monasticism as a traditional institution in modern societies, not only in Europe, but also (...) in Asia, Africa, and America. The scholarly discussion paid particular attention to the adaptation and resistance of religious traditions to social changes. Researchers from different countries have demonstrated the innovative potential of monasticism in the economic sphere, the cultural sphere, and the religious sphere. Alongside traditional roles, monasteries have acquired new social roles. The secularization of the concept of “monasticism”, and its use in relation to the phenomenon of “consuming the tradition” apart from a religious context is stressed. The conference continued to develop the theme of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion. The position of a researcher and his or her professional identity, the issues of objectivity, and the idealization of the research subject are analyzed. (shrink)

The second half of the twentieth century was marked by a wave of the so-called “turns” — “linguistic turn”, “narrative turn”, “biographical turn” and “visual turn”, which have led to an obvious shift in research interests and methodological choices in humanities and social sciences. The researchers from various disciplinary fields have admitted that, to understand the logic of different forms of knowledge, we have to examine their “textual” nature; that any research in the social, political, psychological or cultural sphere turns (...) out to be focused on linguistic issues; that social reality is inherently textual and that all social practices are constituted and structured by discourses and intense struggles of different discourses. Sociology did not stand to the side of such methodological changes: at least for two and a half decades the concepts “narrative” and “narrative analysis”, “discourse” and “discourse analysis”, “text”, “context”, “intertext”, etc. have been extremely popular at the theoretical and empirical levels Nonetheless, we still have not received their precise definitions and they are interpreted quite arbitrarily, being based on the conceptual and methodological preferences of the researcher, as well as the goals and objectives of the particular applied or fundamental research project. The article identifies the key themes of the ongoing and, unfortunately, missing methodological discussions in the field of textual analysis that would be quite useful to clarify at least the criteria for the correct naming of different formats of analytical work with textual data. (shrink)

В статті дається аналіз онтологічних засад культури як найвищої цінності буття; відмічається, що культура – це історично певний рівень розвитку суспільства і людини, що виражається в типах і формах організації життя і діяльності людей, а також створених ними матеріальних і духовних цінностей; розкривається сутність глобальних культурних трансформацій, які поставлені на службу суб’єктивній економічній глобалізації; виокремлюються три найбільш стійких і самих розповсюджених типів політичної культури: конформістський; партикулярний; громадянський; як загальноцивілізаційний фактор і транскультурний феномен виокремлюється свобода, яка є соціальним архетипом і колективним (...) несвідомим, націленим на самостановлення людини як цілісної істоти. (shrink)