Announcement of issue No. 3 of the journal “Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing” (2024)

The following articles will be published in issue No. 3 of the journal:

Olena Zlobina

Tendencies in the change of national-civic identity during the war: a narrative analysis

There is at present a consensus in sociological discourse about the formation in Ukrainian society of a consolidated national identity in which the civic and ethnic elements are inseparable. Studies of changes in national-civic identity under conditions of hybrid and full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war record an increase in the number of those who identify themselves as citizens of Ukraine. It is not clear, however, how these changes came about and what is happening to those who held such an identity earlier. The aim of this article is to record changes in national-civic self-identification under the influence of the war at the personal level. The empirical material consists of fragments of 38 in-depth interviews conducted in March–April and September–October 2023 with forced migrants. Some informants were still abroad at the time of the interview and some had returned home. From the narratives of how the war changed their lives, a number of episodes were singled out describing the changes that took place in their awareness and experience of national-civic identity. Changes were recorded in such components of social identification as: self-categorisation; evaluation; importance; attachment and interdependence; social embeddedness; behavioural participation.

Volodymyr Hnatiuk

A continuous system of collecting data on migrants: a critical review

The study examines the continuous system as one of the two most widespread contemporary forms of collecting data on migrants. It establishes that it is a set of instruments through which migration data are collected on changes in the registration of a previous place of residence within a country or on immigration records, including data on the total number of people entering or leaving a state and the type of visa issued to them. The strengths of the continuous system are noted: it can generate information on a regular basis and be useful to the authorities at national level in managing migration challenges and forecasting various processes. The factors leading to this form of data collection being abandoned today are identified. It is stressed that, given contemporary challenges, this form will continue to be used, continuously recording data on displaced persons but not claiming primacy in systematising information about global migration flows.

Oleksandr Holikov, Sofiia Nolbat

The space of Ukrainians' perception of holidays: towards the possibilities of conceptualisation

The article studies the perceptual space in which holidays function in Ukrainian society. The authors draw on the materials of KIIS's long-running omnibus survey in order to analyse, by the method of multidimensional scaling, the differentiation of distances and relations between particular religious, secular and state holidays in Ukrainian society. The article offers the authors' own conception of the space of perception, built on a whole series of concepts of social perception. The hypotheses advanced about the potential axes structuring this space rest on the work of such sociologists and anthropologists as the members of the Collège de Sociologie (G. Bataille, R. Caillois), of classical sociology (É. Durkheim) and of the theory of carnival (M. Bakhtin). At the conceptual level the authors take into account the dialectic, inherent in holidays, of the unity and struggle of the individual and the collective, the sacred and the profane, the rational and the irrational, the public and the intimate, and so on. Within their analysis the authors identify and describe axes that are stable and reproduced in every year of the KIIS omnibus survey, designating them as “rational modernity — irrational archaism” and “publicness — privacy”. A number of prospects for further research on this subject are proposed on the basis of the authors' work set out in the article.

Olena Ivanenko

Digitalisation as a new reality under conditions of social instability

The article deals with the phenomenon of digitalisation as a new reality of today's economic life and everyday existence, and with its active spread and expansion. The emphasis on the conception of developing a digital economy and society long before the COVID-19 pandemic and the full-scale war (for the period 2018–2020), and the subsequent approval of the National Economic Strategy to 2030, defined Ukraine's place in the global context and set out the incentives for the further development of digitalisation with a view to achieving a competitive position for our country in the world. The article also deals with the advantages and potential risks of digitalisation in every sphere (cyber threats, unemployment, digital inequality, the consequences of the development of artificial intelligence and so on). Emphasising both the positives and the negatives is relevant and important for strategic forecasting and planning with a view to defeating the enemy on the battlefield and to the country's subsequent reconstruction and the strengthening of its competitiveness internationally.

Mykola Bulatevych

Discursive and institutional standards of justice in the modern world-system

The article outlines in general terms the nature of standards of justice in the modern world-system. Standards of justice are considered in the context of the propositions and methodological guideposts of I. Wallerstein's theory of the modern world-system. Some propositions of J. Alexander's theory of civil society are also used, which made it possible to supplement and specify this subject somewhat. Using J. Alexander's conceptual and categorial apparatus, for instance, discursive and institutional standards of justice were distinguished. The article examines the causes and features of the establishment of standards of justice and the role they played in securing the development of the modern world-system. It notes that in particular countries of the periphery and semi-periphery, tendencies towards a revision of standards of justice and their replacement by alternative constructions of meaning can be observed today.

Liudmyla Kozhekina, Taras Samchuk, Antonina Tsykalo

Ukraine's culture and creative industries — features of adaptation to war conditions (based on research by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation)

Given that the problems of Ukraine's cultural sphere under war conditions are usually studied in the context of the consumption of cultural products, the authors stress the value of turning to studies of the state of culture from the standpoint of those who create it. Using the authors' own instrument and on the basis of empirical research, the article analyses the features of the adaptation of Ukrainian cultural organisations and figures to working under conditions of armed aggression by Russia. It identifies the key factors in the successful adaptation of organisations in the culture and creative industries to war conditions. At present the notional survival strategy of cultural figures and institutions can be described as cost saving alongside the preservation of activity, the creation of new products and services and active measures to attract additional sources of funding. The authors conclude that adaptation does not always take active forms and is not necessarily connected with positive transformations within an organisation. The findings show that cultural institutions need support from the state, but the specifics of what they ask for differ depending on their legal form. Groups with high and low levels of adaptedness were identified, which calls for the development of programmes of additional support for vulnerable organisations and cultural figures.

Maksym Yenin, Myroslava Kukhta, Tetiana Prykhodko

The social needs and problems of forced migrants from Ukraine on the path to social adaptation and integration into the receiving society (on the example of Germany)

The article reviews the existing theoretical approaches to studying the adaptation and integration of migrants and identifies the key factors that facilitate or complicate these processes in receiving societies. The authors identify markers of adaptedness and integratedness, emphasising the importance of drawing on foreign experience to develop a more effective migration policy. Adaptation is a process in which migrants change their habits, behaviour and values in order to function as effectively as possible in a new social and cultural context. The level of migrants' adaptedness, in the authors' view, can be determined through the level of satisfaction of their needs. Integration, alongside adaptation, means inclusion in a new society with the possibility of realising one's personal potential in work, education and civic activity and of establishing communication and comfortable coexistence with the local population. This presupposes not only migrants' adaptation to a new society but also mutual effort on the part of the receiving community to create conditions in which migrants can fully realise their potential while preserving their own cultural characteristics. On the basis of primary and secondary sociological data, the article analyses the social needs and problems of migrants from Ukraine (on the example of Germany). It identifies the profile of the migrants and the factors behind leaving Ukraine and choosing Germany as the receiving country (on the basis of “push–pull” theory).

Volodymyr Shelukhin

From Manichaeism to politics: the ideological instrumentalisation of Mykhailo Drahomanov's social anthropology by the Ukrainian left

In the history of Ukrainian sociology, analysis of Mykhailo Drahomanov's legacy (1841–1895) has focused above all on his social and political works or on his early methodological ones. Yet if we speak of Drahomanov's long-term and internationally significant contribution to knowledge in the social sciences and humanities, it lies in his works at the intersection of folklore studies and social anthropology, which come into sociologists' field of view far more rarely. An important component of these works was Drahomanov's long-standing interest in dualist heresies and in the views of social reality they transmitted as eternally split between truth and falsehood. This interest, which guided the scholar's research for twenty years, had far-reaching consequences for the politicisation of the Ukrainian national movement at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The author argues that Drahomanov's works in folklore studies and social anthropology, which attracted the attention of such researchers of gnosticism and dualism as C. G. Jung and of contemporary anthropologists, led him to the conviction that the traditional popular worldview tends towards a dualist view of the world, Bogomil and Manichaean in origin. The study's conclusions lay the groundwork for movement in several possible directions: studies of the left-wing press to identify specific strategies for using the dualist myth in propaganda; providing a broader historical and cultural context for contemporary studies of populism in Ukraine; and a general reconsideration of the role of particular components of Drahomanov's legacy in the contemporary history of Ukrainian sociology.

Andrii Gorbachyk, Yaroslav Kostenko

Using Paradata for Imputation of Missing Values in Sociological Survey Data: Results of Statistical Modeling (Case of Croatia and Slovakia)

Missing values are a common issue in quantitative social researches. One of the ways to handle missing data is by data imputation. This article outlines the challenges of traditional data imputation methods, which often introduce biases, and presents an advanced approach that features integration of paradata—auxiliary information collected during surveys—into the imputation process, using the European Social Survey (ESS) as its dataset. It is proposed that the usage of paradata could enhance predictive models used for imputation. It discusses the practical applications of data imputation, particularly through the lens of sensitive topics such as LGBT issues in socially conservative countries, where missingness could be heavily skewed due to social inacceptability of certain answers. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach towards imputation, the research employs the approach of using the 'ideal dataset', which is a subset of the original dataset with no missing vales, and then introduces artificial missing values that are not MCAR (Missing Completely at Random) to simulate the real case of missing data. Having artificial missingness allows for evaluation of the imputation procedure by comparing it with the original dataset. The study uses a novel approach towards creation of realistic missing data patterns through clustering based on response patterns. The research uses advanced statistical methods to handle missing data, and incorporates paradata from the survey process to improve the accuracy of predictive models. By comparing statistical metrics such as RMSE, MAE, and R-squared, the article evaluates the effectiveness of these methods in mimicking the original dataset's variability.

Andrii Gorbachyk, Yaroslav Kostenko

Using paradata for the imputation of missing values in sociological survey data: results of statistical experiments (the cases of Croatia and Slovakia)

Missing data are a common problem in quantitative sociological research. One way of addressing it is data imputation. The article describes the problems of traditional imputation methods, which often distort the data, and presents an innovative approach that integrates paradata — auxiliary information collected during surveys — into the imputation process, using the results of the European Social Survey (ESS) as its dataset. The article suggests that the use of paradata can improve the quality of the predictive models applied in imputation. It discusses the practical applications of data imputation, especially in respect of sensitive topics such as LGBT issues in socially conservative countries, where the share of missing data may be considerable because of the social acceptability of particular answers. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach to imputation, the study uses the approach of an “ideal dataset”, a subset of the original dataset with no missing values, and then introduces artificial missing values that are not completely at random (MCAR) in order to simulate the real case of missing data. Having artificially generated missing data makes it possible to evaluate the imputation procedure by comparing it with the original dataset. The study uses an innovative approach to creating realistic patterns of missing data through clustering based on patterns of respondent non-response. It applies advanced statistical methods for working with missing data and integrates paradata to increase the accuracy of predictive models. By comparing statistical metrics such as RMSE, MAE and R2, the authors evaluate the effectiveness of these methods in reproducing the variability of the original dataset.

Yurii Pryvalov, Anna Vovk

The role of the transformation of the maternal imago in the psychotherapeutic process

In contemporary psychology the theme of human attachments is part of the question of social relations between people and of their regulation in education, upbringing and psychotherapy. The formation of a type of attachment is rooted in systems of family communication characterised by family rules, personal boundaries and direct communication. Individual and family psychotherapy offers many effective instruments for developing family systems and compensating for the negative consequences of their influence on the person. The family system allows every family member to consolidate the foundations of a narcissistic identity and to become the subject of their own history and a social subject. Every child is born mentally within an already existing family psychic apparatus supported by a sociocultural matrix. Culture contains and supports the syncretic background of the psyche and sustains the process of psychic structuring.

Sociological commentary

Raisa Shulha

Irony and self-irony as markers of cultural identity