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Electronic No. 77-8029.

On the web since fall 2000

Journal of Economic Sociology is indexed by Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) from Web of Science™ Core Collection

Funded by the National Research University Higher School of Economics since 2007.

2022. Vol. 23. No. 3

Full text of the journal

Editor’s Foreword (Vadim Radaev)
P. 7–10

New Texts

Elena Gladun, Soili Nysten-Haarala, Svetlana Tulaeva, Olga Zakharova
Indigenous Economy in the Arctic Regions: Traditions, Market, State (On the Example of the Transformation of the Economic Activity of the IndigenousPeoples in Russia, Finland, and the USA)
P. 11–41

The article describes the interaction of the economy and culture, in the frameworks of Indigenous economic development. It implies strong embeddedness of the economic activities of Indigenous peoples in their social and cultural life. The Indigenous economy is based on traditional nature management and it is closely linked to their knowledge of nature, folklore, language, social norms and expectations. At the same time, the active inclusion of Indigenous communities into market relations leads to significant social and economic transformations of their lives. This implies the question of how to preserve the unique Indigenous culture in the market context. The paper considers three different scenarios for the development of the Indigenous economy in the Arctic regions using the examples of Russia, Finland and the United States. In Russia, the state plays a significant role by providing paternalistic care to the Indigenous population and focusing on the preservation of traditional culture; Finland is dominated by a market scenario for the development of Indigenous traditional economies and governmental support for indigenous culture and welfare; and the United States represents an intermediate case in which market incentives and paternalism are combined. The article also examines how the chosen scenario affected the social and cultural aspects of the life of the Indigenous people. The latter are associated with a new attitude to nature, the development of new cultural patterns, and the emergence of new culturally colored types of economic activity. The study is based on qualitative methodology. The main research methods were semi-structured interviews, observations, and analysis of documents.

Vasiliy Anikin
Social Structure in new Russia: Evidence from Bayesian Latent Class Analysis
P. 42–91

The study presents the results of the multidimensional approach to the social stratification of contemporary Russian society. The proposed model employs the Weberian concept of life chances which has been operationalized on the map of 24 binary items measuring the positive and negative privileges of individuals and their households in four major domains of life, economic stability and security, industrial relations, human development, and economic consumption and leisure. Drawing from the Monitoring data conducted by the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2015 and 2019, we proposed the posterior model of vertically integrated five socioeconomic classes. These are as follows (2015 and 2018): disadvantaged (lower) non-economic class (23 and 21,8%, correspondingly), disadvantaged (lower) economic class (19,4% and 17,3%), two semi-privileged classes—lower middle class (29,4% и 34,1%) and true middle class (15,8% и 13,4%)—and advantaged (upper middle) class (12,4% and 13,4%). The obtained results reassess the popular view that there are no big classes in industrially advanced societies and highlight the importance of the noneconomic forces of multidimensional stratification of the Russian society in the posttransition era. The results also showed that the disadvantaged economic class demonstrates the highest degree of protest voting. The upper middle class turned out to be the most politically loyal, which saliently contradicts the prevailing stereotypes about the patterns of the political behavior of citizens in the new Russia.

New Translations

Aaron Benanav
Automation and the Future of Work (excerpt)
P. 92–108

Thinking over what people will do in the automized future, researchers come to the conclusion: we will meet mass technologically-based unemployment, and we will be able to cope with it only by accepting universal basic income as major social groups will lose an opportunity to earn enough money for living. In this book the author critiques the new automation discourse, rejecting the hypothesis that overwhelming technological changes result in destroying jobs. In reality, changes in labor productivity are slowing not speeding up. Coupling with the decline in economic growth, the creation of new jobs is also down. Namely, this fact, and not technological innovations, is responsible for squeezing the demand for labor.
In this book, the author opposes the new wave of automation discourse, and suggests his version of history of the global economy and labor development in the last 50 years. The author further believes that the majority of employed people will stop being tolerant of the chronicle decline in demand for labor and resulting economic inequality, which will turn the world towards a more humanized future.
The Journal of Economic Sociology publishes the first chapter “Discourse of Automation” in which the author systematizes arguments of the new automation discourse in order to provide his explanations for the declining demand for labor in the next chapters.

Beyond Borders

Leila Natsun, Olga Kalachikova
Contribution of Assisted Reproductive Technologies to the Reproductionof the Russian Population and Social Aspects of their Application
P. 109–128

Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are perceived in modern society as one of the ways to increase the birth rate of the population. Despite the fact that they do demonstrate a noticeable increase in the effectiveness of increasing the share of successful cycles leading to pregnancy and childbirth, their contribution to the total number of births in Russia remains modest — only 2% (as of 2018). The role of ART is determined to a greater extent by their social significance: the development of this area provides an opportunity for the birth of children to those married couples who have problems with reproductive health. The present study shows what factors hinder the population's access to ART, and provides an assessment of the proportion of families that make up the potential for expanding the scale of coverage of the population with these services. The key factor determining the willingness to turn to assisted reproductive technologies is the presence of unrealized reproductive plans in the family. Based on the data of a representative sociological survey, it was found that respondents who demonstrated a willingness to resort to ART for the birth of children had a significant gap between the planned and actual number of children in the family. Such families were mostly prosperous, and showed a willingness to take risks associated with ART (for example, associated with a higher probability of having twins). In the final part of the work, conclusions are formulated regarding the prospects for expanding the use of ART in the regions of Russia. It is shown that the most significant barriers that limit this growth are the relatively cautious perception on the part of the population and payment for some concomitant procedure by the patients.

Vitaliy Lekhtsier, Yulia Shekunova
Geneticization from the Point of View of Geneticists: Practices, and Prospectsof Personalized and Predictive Molecular Genetic Testing in Russia
P. 129–159

The article offers the results of a qualitative empirical sociological analysis of medical geneticists on their assessment of the problems, opportunities, and prospects of predictive genetic testing in Russia as a relatively new branch of healthcare. The gradual introduction of a new genetic biopredictive technology into everyday life is regarded in the article as a phenomenon of geneticization or genomization. The analysis takes into account three main categories of medical geneticists: physician geneticists (who deal with patients), laboratory geneticists, and academic geneticists working in medical universities. The analysis revealed, firstly, those positions within the professional community of medical geneticists that can be called consensual. For example, concerning the problematic nature of the methodology for calculating risks associated with the development of multifactorial diseases, or with regard to the high cost of testing now and its inevitable reduction with biotechnological progress; about the reluctance of people in Russia to take preventive care of their health, and about the special prospects and demand for the oncology and pharmacogenetics industries. Other points of consensus include the clinical benefit of the results of predisposition testing for multifactorial diseases, the prospects for the development of the industry as a whole, etc. Between the poles of consensus and dissensus lie different views of professionals on the possibilities and prospects of predictive genetic testing practices.
The results of the empirical research presented in the article are grounded in a historical and theoretical review of the scientific literature on the problem of the article. Initial conclusions are drawn as part of the study of social science (mostly Western) geneticization and its social consequences. The relevance of the conducted research is especially evident in the background of a large deficit of empirical studies of geneticization practices in Russia.

New Books

Irina Ivleva
Economic and Sociocultural Aspects of Transnational Migration to Russia
Book Review: Abashin S., Brednikova O. (eds) (2021) «Zhit’ v dvukh mirakh»:pereosmyslyaya transnatsionalizm i translokal’nost’ [“Living in Two Worlds”:Rethinking Transnationalism and Translocality], Moscow: NLO Publishing House.520 p. (in Russian)
P. 160–172

This compendium presents the transnational approach to migration in action. The book contains articles on the movements of migrants, predominantly from Central Asian countries to Russia and back. Therefore, there is a compilation of data to support the heuristic potential of the concept of transnationalism, taking into account both homelands and host societies. The authors of the publications rely primarily on qualitative research, which is not very common, and it allows a reader to ‘hear’ the voices of the migrants. Simultaneously, some statistics are also given. The book deals with a wide range of objects and topics - transnational models of existence of migrants, the role and the movement of goods in the migration context (exchange of gifts, presents and souvenirs; the migrant car), the role of remittances, migration infrastructure, the use of mobile communications, etc. The apparent focus of the book is on how social and cultural factors impact transnationalism in addition to economic factors. Most of the articles in one way or another deal with the analysis of the interaction of these factors. The authors introduced references to some economic-sociological and economic-anthropological concepts for a better contextualization of the transnational migration processes. The major critical remarks in the review touch upon the issue of duplication of some provisions of the theory of transnationalism, ignoring links with other concepts of migration, and unwillingness to take into account the discussion on the topic previously developed in Russian academia. Also, although the issue of racism and discrimination is mentioned in passing, it would be desirable for future research to explain how transnationalism influences the (non)spread of racism. This collection may be of interest to both specialists and researchers of migration processes, and a wide range of readers.

 
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