Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya

A considerable amount of time has passed since the ideas of the social contract were conceptualized and substantiated in the works of thinkers of the Enlightenment. But as the history of the development of these ideas shows, attention to them in the modern era has not only not weakened, but also increased. The article provides a brief analysis of modern theories of the social contract, on the basis of which interpretations of its essence, content are proposed, its structure and its main criteria are determined. On this basis, the state of the social contract in modern Russia is analyzed, the mechanism of interaction of its main subjects is revealed – the state represented by political power and society, which is represented by classes, social communities, public organizations, movements and initiatives. Since any social contract is based on the philosophy of the common destiny of the state and society, a description of its objective foundations and subjective components in the main spheres of society’s life is given – economic, political, social and spiritual-cultural. Based on the proposed ideas and a study of the practice of implementing the social contract, a generalization of the experience of understanding its content is carried out and the author’s interpretation of its essence and structure, as well as the complex path of its functioning in modern Russia, is given.

The article offers an interpretation of the phenomenon of scientific mentoring in higher education from the standpoint of communicative methodology. It is proved that such an interpretation helps to understand the meaning of scientific mentoring and correlate it with other practices of training young researchers (scientific supervisor, scientific school). Scientific mentoring is considered as a hybrid scientific and educational phenomenon reflecting the relationship between science and education in higher education, as well as the communicative relationship between scientific and educational cultures. The communicative interpretation of scientific mentoring is discussed in some aspects: its position in the system of formal and informal scientific communications, in symbolic communications of the academic environment, transmission of meanings and meanings to the younger generation, implicit knowledge, ethical norms and social emotions regulating activities and interaction in the scientific community. The importance of the communicative interpretation of scientific mentoring for the development of the sociology of higher education and the sociology of science, university management practices of science is shown.

The article was prepared for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Elena Iosifovna Kukushkina, whose professional activity since 1967 has been associated with the Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov. The article presents various periods of her work at the philosophical, sociological, and world politics and political science departments. Based on the analysis of books and articles by E. I. Kukushkina, the contribution she made to the study of the history of sociology, the Russian intelligentsia, and the founders of Russian sociological education considered. The image of a talented and sought-after teacher who imparts all her knowledge to students, postgraduates, and doctoral candidates revealed. The author concludes that E. I. Kukushkina’s approach many problems of modern social science was innovative and that a deep study of her scientific legacy is necessary.

This article explores the reasons behind the late development of military sociology in Türkiye and a limited contribution of sociologists within this interdisciplinary field. The distinctive nature of Turkish civil-military relations has largely been studied by political scientists, while sociological analysis of the military’s interaction with society has remained underdeveloped. A historical examination utilizing primary and secondary sources indicates that this lack of interest is due to the closed nature of the military to research, a distorted relationship of sociology with domestic politics and its unfortunate association with communism, and the relative apathy of Turkish sociologists. However, recent initiatives aimed at institutionalizing military sociology in Turkish universities – such as the introduction of graduate courses and postgraduate programs in 2018 – hold promise for the future of this discipline despite ongoing challenges related to restrictions on research permits.

In the scientific literature, there are many options for cultural-historical zoning of Ukraine. But to what extent do regional communities themselves remain committed to their historical and cultural roots, what are their dominant interregional and external orientations? The results of a series of population surveys conducted in 2018 by the Rating sociological group in all regions of Ukraine allow to study these problematic aspects. A comprehensive analysis recorded the dominance of external cultural and historical orientations over internal ones – three-quarters of the regions primarily felt their cultural and historical affinity with neighboring states, of which Belarus, Poland, and Russia stood out. Depending on the force of attraction to them, many zones and subzones of external cultural orientation were recorded within Ukraine. The internal space of Ukraine was characterized by weak interregional cultural and historical connections, which were concentrated within a number of areas-macro-regions. The interconnections of regional communities from different areas almost always represented the mutual orientation of leading socio-cultural regions. But in general, the regions of the west and center have distanced themselves culturally and historically from the Russian-speaking southeast to a much greater extent than it has distanced itself from them. The metropolitan region did not evoke a sense of cultural closeness among most regional communities of the west and south-east and therefore did not fully cope with the function of socio-cultural consolidation of the country. More significant was the role of the Lviv region, which was targeted by the most Ukrainian-centric groups of the population throughout Ukraine.

The article is devoted to the results of a study of the patterns and characteristics of the financial behavior of the working-age population of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The prerequisite for conducting the study was the need to find out what changes in the financial behavior of the population occurred under the influence of COVID and sanctions restrictions. The research presented in the article is based on the results of sociological surveys conducted by the Institute of Social and Economic Researches UFRC RAS on the territory of one of the largest regions of Russia in terms of population – the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2021 and 2024. In the course of the surveys and subsequent processing of their results, both negative and positive factors were identified that affect the possibilities of using citizens financial resources in the economy of the territories. It has been established that among the main negative factors it is necessary to designate the low level of real disposable income of the majority of the population, leading to an increase in their credit burden; the absence of savings in the banking system among the majority of survey participants. Positive factors include the presence of a fairly significant investment potential among a portion of the population in the form of savings in credit institutions, which in the future could be directed towards investment, the development of stock instruments for attracting funds from individuals (individual investment accounts, public bonds, etc.). In the context of intensified inflationary processes, a change in the financial behavior of the population has been revealed towards a transition from a conservative strategy to a more high-risk strategy for investing savings.

The article presents the results of an empirical study conducted in March-May 2023 in Cherepovets, Vologda region. The survey of citizens on the issue of attitudes towards people with mental disorders and/or behavioral disorders is analyzed. The presence of contrasting social dispositions in the public consciousness has been established: a high prevalence of a weak degree of stigmatization with the parallel existence of radical stigmatizing ideas. Thus, the majority (84.0%) of citizens believe that a socially healthy society should show a compassionate and merciful attitude towards people suffering from mental disorders/behavioral disorders. At the same time, one in six (18.0%) considers it necessary to apply the full range of institutional discrimination measures to them, and 71.8% are ready to isolate such people even prior to their offense, while in the city of Cherepovets only 5.2% of all those under dispensary supervision are prone to commit socially dangerous actions.

The article is an analytical discussion of the theoretical and methodological concepts presented in the book: Chernysh M. F. «Instrument of mass survey: logic and practice of construction» (2024). The logic of reasoning is based on the analysis of the validity of the author’s correlation of three levels of sociology: macro-theoretical (civilizational), middle-level theory (institutional), and empirical and methodological (applied research) as three conditionally autonomous interdependent parts of the organically unified process of sociological epistemology. In the book, in an analytical and critical style, with extensive use of materials from foreign and Russian experimental verifications of the validity of theoretical paradigms, formal-logical concepts and methodological techniques, the state of methodology is assessed, and the level of correctness of methodological techniques of applied sociological research is summarized. The breadth of the book’s coverage of logical and cognitive problems of sociology is a fruitful basis for constructive scientific discussions in the field of sociology theory and useful methodological experience for improving the quality of applied sociological research.