2004. Vol. 5. No. 3

Mafia is the most popular topic in the cinema and literature. The paper covers the historical and cultural background of mafia and its cultural and organizational forms. Particularly it tells about Italian and American mafias. The research is based on the sociological assumptions

The paper provides unusual approach towards the sociology of rational choice. The author discusses the possibility to apply the theory for the explanation of economic problems not the sociological ones. It means that the author takes the economic instruments considering sociological aspects and applies to solve the economic theory problems. This statement let us assume that it is possible to divide clearly the economic issues from sociological ones but it was shown that this difference is rather washed out in reality.  

The goal of the paper is to give the critical review of the studies devoted to the interaction between culture and economics. Most of us do not prejudice the sociological hypothesis that economic relations have particular impact on ideas, world-view and symbols.  Much more rarely we hear that the opposite is also true: different cultural aspects shape economic institutions and processes this means that this line is more promising for economic sociology and interdisciplinary dialogues. That is why the author firstly considers the cultural influence on economy and only then the impact of economy on the culture. The paragraph on consumption is given in the text.

The aim of this paper is to find out whether neglecting of the ethnical diversity leads to the distortion of the real stratification of Russian society. Firstly the author solves the problem of the interaction of the ethnology and sociology in their analytical procedures and terminology. After that the stratification analysis of defined groups is given. The difficulty here is that main sociological theories were worked out by the western scientists with regard to their societies. The short review of the ethnical entrepreneurship in Europe and the USA allows us to define the frame for the Russian practices. The last two parts of the paper are devoted to the consideration of the Russian literature and to the design the own theory of ethnicity and stratification correlation.  At the same time the author continuously addresses to the problem of importing the accumulated western knowledge to the analysis of Russian reality. 

The purpose of the paper is the analysis of conceptual scheme that is used in network approach. Initially the paper describes the variety of the definitions for the term “network” that combines the wide range of economic and non-economic processes. The main attention is given to the specificity of the sociological approach. Later the key characteristics of the network structures and their types are defined. Further on the author provides his own view on the network nature and their formation mechanism.  The author tries to distinguish the peculiarities of the network and institutional structures and the main principles of the network functions. Finally the short description of the empirical results is given which demonstrates the analysis of concrete phenomena form the network approach view. With help of such analysis the author tries to identify the main advantages and disadvantages of the network approach as an independent instrument for the analysis.