Agenty sotsialnykh zmin u suspilstvi nestiikoi instytutsiinosti (Аґенти соціальних змін у суспільстві нестійкої інституційності, “Agents of Social Changes in a Society of Unstable Institutionality”)

The monograph is a comprehensive study of how agents of social change act in a society of unstable institutionality. The research is aimed at producing a picture of the functioning of agents of social change adequate to the present state of development of Ukrainian society. On the basis of the quantitative and qualitative empirical research carried out, it describes the configurations of the key agents of change at the present stage of the development of Ukrainian society — agents acting in the institutional fields of state power, religion, education, medicine, science, journalism and the digitalisation of Ukrainian society. It examines the factors that determine the specific character of the interaction of different social agents, and the particular ways in which collective and individual agency is formed and realised under conditions of unstable institutionality. Addressed to researchers, lecturers, students, representatives of civic organisations, civil servants and politicians.

Agents of social change in a society of unstable institutionality

Contents

Introduction

(O. Zlobina) .......................................................................................... 7

Chapter 1. Theoretical coordinates and the conceptual framework of the study

1.1. The problem of the subjects of social transformation at the intersection of the theories of institutionalisation, agency and social change (O. Zlobina) ........... 11

1.2. Reconstructing the conceptual space for defining agents and agency (M. Shulga)............................................................... 20

1.3 Agents of social change in a society in crisis: conceptualisation within the complexity paradigm (L. Bevzenko) .......................... 33

Chapter 2. The institutions of state power as agents of social change (M. Shulga)

2.1. Institutions of power in periods of stable and unstable functioning ... 51

2.2. The influence of the institutions of state power on social change in crisis conditions....................................................... 58

Chapter 3. Agency in the institutional field of medicine (L. Bevzenko)

3.1. Types of the principal institutional rules in the medical field ................ 75

3.2. Agency on the formal plane of the institutional field: the reforms of U. Suprun...................................................................................... 79

3.3. Agency on the informal plane of the institutional field: L. Lytvynova's "Svoi" ("Our Own") foundation........................................................................ 84

Chapter 4. Changes in the field of education and their agents (S. Shevchenko)

4.1. The problem situation and the methodological framework of the study ............. 94

4.2. Secondary education: vectors of transformation............................................ 98

4.2.1. Private secondary education ........................................................... 98

4.2.2. Teacher education and the subsequent employment of teachers ............ 100

4.2.3. Online education ........................................................................... 101

4.2.4. The New Ukrainian School (NUS) ............................................... 103

4.2.5. The school as a safe environment. Countering bullying ............... 108

4.3. The school in the period of the pandemic and of quarantine restrictions – the growth of irrationality....................................................................... 114

4.4. The school in the period of the war ......................................................................... 124

4.5. Prospects of further change in the institutional field of education.......... 127

Chapter 5. Agency in the institutional field of science

(N. Sobolieva)

5.1. Science as a social institution of innovation and an agent of change .................... 130

5.2. The agentic potential of Ukrainian science under conditions of its reform....139

Chapter 6. Religious organisations as agents of social change in Ukraine (M. Parashchevin)

6.1. Religion and social change: the historical-sociological context ........... 156

6.2. Religious organisations as agents of change in Ukrainian society ..... 168

6.3. From the present to the future: prospects for the development of the agency of religious organisations...................... 201

Chapter 7. Agents of the digitalisation of Ukrainian society (N. Boiko)

7.1. The changing role of agents at different stages of the digitalisation of society.....205

7.2. Social and civic activity on the internet.............................. 212

Chapter 8. The agency of the mass media in the new contexts of the contemporary media landscape (S. Solodko)

8.1. Media actors in the new conditions of the media space .................................... 220

8.2. The interaction of media actors in conditions of war ............................................ 232

Chapter 9. Collective and personal agency

9.1. The subjects of civic practices as agents of social change

(O. Reznik) ...................................................... 245

9.2. Volunteering under conditions of institutional and structural change: genesis and agentic influences (O. Zlobina, L. Bevzenko) ................................. 255

9.3. Activists vs institutions: social activism as a source of the realisation of personal agency (O. Zlobina) ................. 269

9.4. Trends in the development of social activism in Ukraine: a frame analysis of narratives

(O. Zlobina) ........................................................ 278

9.5. Attitudes towards agents of change: at the intersection of the views of the population and of activists

(O. Zlobina) ........................................................ 289

9.6. Social activism: trajectories of individual participation

(O. Zlobina) ................................................................................................. 297

Afterword (O. Zlobina) ........................................................................... 305

List of references ....................................................................... 307