Issue No. 4, 2023 of the journal “Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing” is in preparation

Announcement of No. 4, 2023 of «Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing»

The following articles and materials will be published in issue No. 4 of the journal:

Nataliia Kostenko

Identities in the “posthuman” condition: the locality of war and the global world

“Posthuman” is regarded today as one of the most important notions in contemporary political philosophy, cultural studies, the theory of literature and the arts, the sociology of the body and of identity and so on, one that holds in focus an extensive discourse on understanding the «posthuman condition» (R. Braidotti, N. Gane, N. K. Hayles, F. Fukuyama and others). This notion is by no means necessarily confined to the image of the «cyborg» as an ironic political fiction that deftly reinvents social reality and everyday life in the context of the blurring of the boundaries of nature and culture, or to a metaphor that remains symbolically significant thanks to the ethical impulse and social commitment of its author (D. Haraway). And it is precisely these transitional states, these flows crossing borders, described either metaphorically or instrumentally, that become the objects of strategies of control, not without the activation of the informatics of domination and the ignoring of local knowledge in a war context — knowledge capable of accepting the status of a partial explanation without insisting on a total justification of its statements, conclusions and prospects.

Viktor Stepanenko, Olena Zlobina, Yevhen Golovakha, Serhii Dembitskyi, Liubov Naidonova

Stress caused by war and the resources of social and psychological resilience: a review of theoretical conceptualisations

The article presents a review, an analysis and an attempt at the methodological adaptation of the relevant work of world social-psychological research on the problems and realities of the states of stress of the Russian-Ukrainian war. It concerns in particular the role and functions of mediating resources in overcoming and buffering the states of stress caused by war and in adaptation and the formation of social psychological resilience. The specifics of stress during war are analysed. Within the sociological approach to studying stress and the resources for overcoming it, L. Pearlin's Stress Process Model is characterised. The main theoretical conceptualisations of S. Hobfoll's resource approach to stress are outlined and analysed, in particular the key resource theories, integrated resource models and the conservation of resources theory. Resource mechanisms and the mediating function of resources in adaptation and in coping with stress are studied. In the sociological perspective of further research on the states of stress of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the special role of social relations as a psychological resource and social capital that help to buffer stress is noted.

Olha Ivashchenko

On war and society in Ukraine's academic periodicals under conditions of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation (2022–2023)

The article offers an abstract review of the most substantial thematic publications in Ukraine's social-science periodicals in view of the salience of the social problems caused by the Russian Federation's full-scale invasion of Ukraine — in particular the forced external and internal migration of Ukraine's citizens and the questions connected with that problem (demographic and gender analysis of displaced persons, forecasts and the social consequences of the largest migration in the whole post-Soviet period in comparative perspective). For the first time, particular attention is given to the phenomenology of war in sociological and philosophical discourse, as well as to the state and development of Ukrainian sociology in the war and post-war periods, taking account of the salience of the search for relevant theoretical and methodological approaches, as the articles by the country's sociologists and philosophers in such academic periodicals as «Ukrainskyi sotsium», «Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing», «Demography and Social Economy», «Political Studies», «Filosofska dumka» and «Hrani» testify.

Maksym Parashchevin

Religion as a factor of systemic change in society: features of the current state

The article analyses religion's ability to influence social processes, which is declining as a result of the processes of secularisation. At the same time there are enough examples from various countries where the religious factor proves significant for the realisation of social change, for its directions and its scale. Religious agents have, in particular, taken part in processes of democratisation (but have also supported conservative and authoritarian turns) and have fostered certain changes in the values and norms of broad masses of the population. Such influence has been exercised mainly by religious organisations and associations. The author notes that in secularised societies the possibilities of influence by religious actors are fairly limited both in terms of agency (the successful cases are combinations of the activity of secular and religious subjects) and in terms of scale (religious subjects create local effects of change, changes in particular spheres or segments of society) and take effect over an extended period. A state's turning to religious organisations to help realise certain plans of social transformation is justified, but only on condition that the corresponding policy is pursued with caution and that such cooperation is used as part of a long-term strategy.

Liubov Bevzenko

Agents of social change in the institutional field of medicine

The aim of the article is to study agentic activity directed at change in the medical institutional field under conditions of high social instability. The author offers her own view of the processes of social change, conceptualised as the process of change in the social order. The latter, in turn, is regarded as the sum of all the practices of social interaction actually present in a society. The key point in this conception is the proposition that there are two fundamentally different mechanisms of social change — the organisational and the self-organisational. It is stressed that high social instability increases the weight of the self-organisational component of change, which may recede into the background in relatively stable periods. Applying this theoretical frame to the processes in the institutional field of medicine, we obtain a model of the corresponding changes in which both the organisational (the formal rules of the game, laws, government decrees) and the self-organisational (the informal, spontaneously formed rules of everyday interaction in this institutional field) components prove equally important.

Ivan Sokolovskyi

Ukraine's labour market a year and a half into the full-scale war: non-standard employment and digitalisation

The article describes the results of a study of the prevalence of non-standard employment in Ukraine and of the link between non-standard employment and digitalisation in Ukraine. The COVID-19 pandemic and the full-scale military invasion have radically affected the labour market and the spread of non-standard employment. A year and a half after the beginning of the full-scale war the share of those not working has shrunk, and some researchers and specialists have already begun to speak of a “staffing famine” in particular spheres and sectors. Yet despite the revival of the labour market, the work of only 30% of Ukrainians can be identified as standard employment. Moreover, a de facto return to the standard format of employment is not observed. Another factor fostering the spread of non-standard forms of employment is digitalisation. The further spread of internet use and digitalisation (information-analytical solutions and platforms) may become one of the drivers of non-standard employment, which will be transformed into a familiar social and labour reality.

Maksym Kasianchuk

Non-linear changes in public opinion regarding LGBT people in Estonia and Ukraine

Over the past few decades the position of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) has improved substantially and attitudes towards these disadvantaged social groups have become more favourable, yet discrimination against LGBT people, hate speech and hate crimes remain widespread. On the basis of a body of data from repeated representative international and national studies obtained between 1991 and 2023, the article analyses changes in public opinion regarding LGBT people in two post-Soviet countries. It shows that despite the numerous differences between Estonian and Ukrainian society, their differing legislative frameworks and other factors, the dynamics of attitudes towards LGBT issues in both countries have much in common (an initial period of stably low public support for LGBT people gives way to its rapid growth, which in turn passes into a period of stably high support), and that the process of change in public opinion over time can be described by a logistic equation. The character of the changes in public opinion described in the article is characteristic of most of the data examined, and the length of the initial period of stably low support (on average 11 years for Estonia and about 20 years for Ukraine) is comparable with the interval separating two generations. The mathematical model applied gives grounds to forecast that the maximum of public support for LGBT people may be reached in Estonia at the end of the 2020s and in Ukraine at the beginning of the 2030s.

Oral history of sociology
A dialogue between sociologists of two generations

At the end of September 2023 the Chief Research Fellow of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Professor, Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine Mykola Oleksandrovych Shulha turned 80. The editors congratulate him!

On this occasion we invited him to look back on his path to sociology and within it in a dialogue with his son as a representative of the younger generation of sociologists — Doctor of Sociological Sciences Oleksandr Mykolaiovych Shulha.