2020. Vol. 21. No. 5 |
Editor’s Foreword (Vadim Radaev)
P. 7–11 |
New Texts
Stephen Wegren,
Irina Trotsuk
Is Industrial Agriculture Sustainable During Climate Change and Ecological Threats?
P. 12–38 |
Russia has experienced food revolutions in production, distribution, and consumption since 2000. These revolutions have transformed the food system, but systemic changes are not complete — a sustainable agricultural system is not likely in Russia anytime soon; the effects of climate change are likely to worsen and force further revolutionary change to Russia’s food system, which in the short-term could cause food insecurity. The state retains its key role in regulating the food system, primarily due to considering food security a factor of national security, has been achieved. The Russian statist discourse on food security, which has intensified under the Western sanctions and pandemic restrictions, ignores the challenges that the global agro-industrial sector faces at the same time being the source of anthropogenic changes. Moreover, this discourse rarely takes into account environmental challenges for the Russian agro-industrial sector. The article shows the relationship between climate/ecological changes and the dominant industrial agriculture not in the form of alarmist statements, but by describing the social-economic-ecological context, in which the research questions about current and future restrictions and consequences of industrial agriculture should be asked. The article presents examples of sustainable agriculture in Russia, identifies obstacles to moving away from industrial agriculture, and considers possible scenarios for the transition to sustainable agriculture. |
New Translations
Mariana Mazzucato
The Value of Everything. Making and Taking in the Global Economy (an excerpt)
P. 39–57 |
According Prof. Mazzucato, to understand economic growth it is necessary to return to issues relating to what wealth means and where value comes from. The aim of this book is to reinvigorate the debate on value, which traditionally was—and should still be—at the core of economic thinking. Prof. Mazzucato points to the fact that in economics, various types of economic activities related to value extraction (or even value destruction) are camouflaged as or pretend to represent value creation. This results in a huge increase in social inequality and a significant decrease in investments in the real economy. Understanding the negative consequences of value extraction requires clarification of what is really taken. Which social, economic, and organizational conditions are necessary for value production? |
Beyond Borders
Lyudmila Panova,
Anastasia Panova
Access to Modern Medical Technologies in Russia and Europe
P. 58–93 |
The authors discuss the results of a comparative analysis of the access to medical technologies in Russia and the countries of the European Union. The study included the most popular diagnostic technologies: computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and positron emission tomography (PET). The key indicators of access to this kind of equipment are its distribution—the number of units per share of the population—and the frequency of use of existing installations by patients. The research information base consisted of Russian and European statistics for the period from the 1980s to the present. |
New Books
Stanislav Pashkov
“Difficult Money”: The Question for the Next Revision of the Nature of Money
Book review: Bandelj, N., Wherry, F. F., Zelizer, V. A. (eds). (2017). Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works, Princeton: Princeton University Press. 288 p P. 94–103 |
This book, edited by N. Bandelj, F. Wherry, and V. Zelizer, comprises a series of articles united in a collective monograph; it opens the reader to a multilateral view of the nature of money as a system of meanings and signs, and clarifies the mechanisms of the formation and functioning of financial flows and institutions. Trends associated with the active dissemination of new forms of money that are not tied to a specific financial system, as well as the expanding practice of the consumption of goods and services related to issues of morality and ethics, are becoming relevant. The authors were tasked with revising the conceptual framework for the study of money, and the main goal was to show the principles of the functioning of money in the financial system and, to a greater extent, in the system of social relations. In the book, the conceptual framework is examined in five sections, each of which provides sociological, cultural, anthropological, and historical perspectives. The authors of 14 chapters illustrate the connection of their theses with the approach of Viviana Zelizer, as outlined in a number of her famous works, and the analysis of money itself is based on the subject of the fungibility of mediums, functions, and meanings (earmarking) of monetary units, the understanding of financial accounting by people themselves (mental accounting), and the influence of the state on this process. This review aims to define the logic of the presentation of the material in the book in order to better understand the theoretical and empirical principles set forth in the chapters. |
Conferences
XXII April International conference on the development of the economy and society, Higher School of Economics, April 13–23, 2021
P. 110–111 |
Supplements (in English)
Aneta Duda
The Phenomenon of Downshifting in Central and Eastern European Countries: Case Studies from Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia
P. 112–137 |
The article introduces discussions of sociocultural post-material practices that are connected with downshifting and with efforts to thrive in the shadow of dominating forms in contemporary societies. The author extends her conceptual framework beyond ecology, sociology, and the politics of sustainable lifestyles and draws from Anthony Giddens’s “reflexive project of the self.” The introduced notion of “experiencing downshift” is understood as the reflexiveexperience by those individuals, who reshape their lives to reflect its “authentic” meaning, which is connected to the resignation from high material living standards. The article offers the concept of identity as central rather than peripheral to downshifting research. |
Joanna Wyrwa,
Jerzy Kaźmierczyk
Conceptualizing Job Satisfaction and Its Determinants: A Systematic Literature Review
P. 138–167 |
Job satisfaction is considered an important aspect of employee behavior. This article focuses on a critical analysis of the accompanying literature to determine the various factors that shape job satisfaction and to gauge their relative signifi-cance in conditioning employee behavior. The conceptualizations of job satisfac-tion in the existing literature are multitudinous, reflecting the breadth of critical perspectives on the subject. A systematic literature review, therefore, consisted of: (a) isolating databases and a set of publications; (b) selecting publications and developing a database; and (c) conducting bibliometric analysis, content analy-sis, and testing the relevance of results to further research. The review included publications from the years 2000–2018 and covered psychology, sociology, eco-nomics, and management science. Analysis of previous theoretical publications and empirical studies reveals that they are not without their cognitive and meth-odological limitations. Even at the level of definition, despite numerous criti-cal attempts to clarify exactly what constitutes job satisfaction, an unambiguous and clear-cut conception has yet to surface. Equally, critical consensus is lack-ing among researchers over what contributes to job satisfaction, and divergent research approaches have been adopted as a result. Indeed, despite the rising popularity of job satisfaction studies, some of these factors have yet to be ex-plored fully, while some research has yielded contradictory results regarding the strength of the influence of certain factors on job satisfaction. This paper fills this gap and, through a systematic analysis of the literature, indicates the direction in which current research is headed. |
Irina Kolegova
Why do the Rich Consume More Discreetly? A Theory of the Aspirational Class
Book Review:Currid-Halkett, E. (2017). The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 254 p. P. 168–176 |
This paper is a review of The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspira-tional Class, written by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett and published in 2017. Prof. Currid-Halkett leads the Public Policy Department at the University of Southern California. Her research interests tend to focus on the arts, culture, the consumer economy, and the role of culture in geographic and class divides. |