2024. Vol. 25. No. 5

His forthcoming work, “Social Problems of Industrial Civilization,” published by the Gaidar Institute, includes a section dedicated to political challenges. During his tenure as a professor of industrial studies at Harvard University while working on “Social Problems of Industrial Civilization,” Mayo’s contributions to industrial sociology significantly influenced the development of this field. The book interprets critical issues of the industrial era through Mayo’s perspectives on the role of social sciences in addressing these challenges. A central theme is the facilitation of group cooperation within key industrial sectors. The author synthesizes insights gained from industrial research and proposes preliminary conclusions regarding the crucial role of interpersonal relationships in industry.
The Journal of Economic Sociology features the first chapter titled “The Dark Side of Progress,” wherein Professor Mayo critically examines the imbalance present in systemic research. This imbalance is characterized by an overemphasis on technical and material aspects, neglecting the human and social dimensions in favor of unsystematic evaluations.

The article examines the relationship between value orientations and job search strategies of the unemployed in St. Petersburg. The authors rely on the existential understanding of attitudes as constructed by people’s actions, pushing them to form certain value orientations. Orientations influence people’s vision of the state of the labor market and their chances in it. The empirical database included questionnaires from 1,857 people registered as unemployed with the St. Petersburg Employment Service. The main tool of analysis was cluster analysis using the K-means method. The resulting clusters were assessed using the silhouette measure and the DavisBaldwin index. The statistical significance of differences between clusters was determined using the KruskalWallis test. Three stable clusters were identified: pessimists with a predominant orientation of reliance on others (29.2% of respondents), optimists with a predominant reliance on themselves (29.7% of respondents), and optimists with moderate orientationsrelying on themselves and others (41% of respondents). It is shown that the prevalence of value orientations of optimism (the first cluster), as well as value orientations of pessimism (the second cluster), makes people less active in using support measures in the labor market and also reduces their willingness to undergo retraining. The prevalence of value attitudes of optimism in combination with reliance on themselves, at the same time, contributes to greater cooperation with employment centers. Also, respondents are more interested in assistance in employment than in professional retraining. The results obtained make a significant contribution to the discussion about the prospects of the existential approach in labor market research, and the conclusions can form the basis for individualized programs to help job seekers that take into account the value orientations of citizens.

This article attempts a comparative analysis of the socio-economic attitudes of the Orthodox and Protestants of the city of Sevastopol. The problem of the study is the difficulty in understanding how, in modern socio-economic conditions, the patterns of behavior prescribed by the church are fulfilled in practice. The main purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the attitude of believers toward socio-economic attitudes (such as attitudes towards wealth, vocation, and equality) dictated by the concepts of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Evangelical Christian Baptist movement. The research is based on the formal sociology of G. Simmel, as well as on modern sociological and religious studies. Evangelical Christian Baptist communities were chosen as the most widespread denomination of Protestantism in the city of Sevastopol. 33 structured interviews were conducted with representatives of two faiths: Orthodox and Protestants (Evangelical Christians-Baptists). The study identified the main socio-economic attitudes of Orthodox and Baptists, which were correlated with the cultural characteristics of Russian society and with the socioeconomic concepts of both churches. The facts in the history of Orthodoxy and the Baptist branch of Protestantism that influenced the adoption of certain doctrinal and socio-theological positions were also described. In addition, the analysis of materials concerning the specifics of the modern life of Evangelical Christians-Baptists and Orthodox Christians has been carried out.

The article is devoted to the potential of organizational theory in memory studies. The existing approaches to the study of themes at the intersection of historical memory and organizations are noted. Firstly, this is the institutional approach in memory studies, which is characterized by a thorough description of individual cases but a lack of comparison, as well as a narrow understanding of what can be considered an institution of memory. Secondly, there are organizational memory studies (OMS), which are aimed primarily at studying the formation and reproduction of the history of specific organizations and which lack attention to the theoretical findings of memory studies. The main weakness of the described methodological solutions is their weak theoretical and disciplinary permeability, which leads to parallel research work in areas that are little interested in each other.
An alternative methodological move may be the application of the sociology of organizations to studies of museums, archives, educational institutions, and other mnemonic actors. The article examines three key areas of organizational sociology: new institutionalism (focusing on isomorphism, decoupling, and organizational discretion), resource dependence theory, and organizational ecology. The approaches described are illustrated by examples from empirical studies on collective memory, as well as cases relevant to social and historical research. It is noted that organizational theory can be used to analyze commemorative practices, (re)production of identity, and relations with the state. It helps explain variations in practices across institutions, links established organizational traditions with their actions in the present, and typologizes organizations on new grounds.

The article develops a discussion about the dysfunctionality of the institution of complaints in the housing and communal services sector in Russia, which began in 2022–2023 with a series of articles by D. B. Litvintsev and O. E. Bessonova, published in the “Journal of Economic Sociology.” This work is mainly based on a discussion of the speech of A. D. Abdulaev with a thematic report at a seminar of the Higher School of Economics in March 2024. The article touches on such issues as the need to expand a strictly institutional approach to an integrative one, the limitations of quantitative methods in the study of the institution of complaints, the problem of institutional anomalies in the functioning of the institution of complaints, and also discusses the phenomenon of red tape. Particular attention is paid to the problem of analyzing electronic complaints filed through various Internet portals and the inability to fully get rid of institutional abuses through formalization and moderation of complaints filed. As a new aspect of the discussion, it is proposed to consider housing complaints as a special type of complaint (by analogy with housing activism as a special type of social activism). To do this, the author of this article turns to the extensive experience of the UK, which has a centralized channel for filing housing complaints—the Housing Ombudsman Service, which operates in accordance with the Complaint Handling Code and conducts annual public reporting on its activities, publishing results and ratings in the public domain on its official website. In conclusion, the need to develop a positive culture of complaints in the housing and communal services sector in Russia is noted, which requires further research and the development of appropriate recommendations.

This review introduces economic sociologists to Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry by Angela Jones, the first comprehensive study of the virtual market for sexual services. Jones’s book delves into the social impacts of the digital transformation within the sex industry, where online platforms create new employment opportunities for students, homemakers, individuals with health limitations, and other workers, often displaced from traditional labor markets. The review emphasizes three key aspects of Jones’s analysis that are particularly relevant for economic sociologists. The first is the normalization of sex work’s commercialization. The labor market crisis has rendered sex work a viable and socially inclusive form of employment, enabling participants to overcome alienation and find meaning in their work, where pleasure itself becomes a driving motivation. Jones’s work highlights the role of pleasure not only in the realm of sexuality but also as a factor in occupational and social spheres. The second focus is the transformation of norms and pathologies within sexuality, influenced by economic, social, and political dynamics. Jones argues that platform and emotional capitalism not only meet repressed physical and emotional needs but also actively shape new social expectations, reshaping the prevailing model of subjectivity in society. The third aspect is biopolitics and bodily autonomy. Digital platforms increasingly regulate intimate areas of life, extending their influence over personal autonomy and individual agency.
The review underscores the provocative insights and empirical findings of Jones’s study, encouraging readers to engage with the book. Such engagement allows one to view the work not only as a distinctive contribution to contemporary American sociology but also as an opportunity to consider political, social, and cultural frameworks used to legitimize previously tabooed spheres through market forces.

The development of entrepreneurship is a crucial tool for achieving economic growth and enhancing the investment appeal of regions. Many small and medium-sized Russian cities display varied tendencies in economic development, which can be explained by both objective differences in their entrepreneurial ecosystems and how these ecosystems are portrayed in media narratives. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the media representation of entrepreneurial ecosystems in two Russian cities, Petrozavodsk and Pskov. It examines the manifestation and interaction of different types of entrepreneurial ecosystem attributes within these media narratives. The choice of cities for analysis aligns with the objectives of the research project by the ICSER “Leontief Centre”: “Genius Loci and Zeitgeist,” under which this study was conducted. Using corpus-assisted discourse analysis and thematic modeling with LDA, this research examines word frequencies and modeled topics—both common and unique to each locality—and analyzes topic co-occurrence in each city’s discourse. The findings highlight differences and similarities in the media representation of entrepreneurial ecosystems, noting the prevalence of material attributes in both discourses, while also identifying unique interactions among different types of attributes in Petrozavodsk and Pskov. These insights offer a foundation for understanding factors that shape entrepreneurial activities in these regions and suggest directions for future research to empirically examine the relationship between these attributes and local entrepreneurial activity indicators.