2025. Vol. 26. No. 3

Remote employment has undergone a process of cognitive and social normalization, evolving from an emergency pandemic circumstance into an element of everyday reality and a convenient, flexible work format. The main objective of this study is to assess the impact of remote employment on various aspects of men’s lives by calculating integral tonality indices that characterize positive, neutral, or negative changes in key life domains. The empirical base draws on data from a survey of men conducted in 2023 using an online questionnaire distributed through internal electronic services of large enterprises. The sample included respondents from six federal districts (N = 314). Participants were men aged 18 to 60 years with experience in remote employment. The methodology and approach are similar to a study conducted in 2022 that examined the impact of remote employment on various aspects of women’s lives (N = 589). The results indicate that the remote work format has a positive effect on most parameters of men’s work, family-parental, and personal life. The highest positive values of the integral index were observed in men’s assessments of changes in the areas of “rest and communication with friends,” “cultural and social life,” “education and development of children.” Fathers of children under 14 years old were significantly more likely to give positive evaluations of the remote work format, which was also perceived more favorably by younger men under 35. A comparison of men’s and women’s assessments revealed that women tend to assess the impact of remote work more critically. While women view the transition to remote work as an opportunity to devote more time to organizing everyday life, men more often see it as an opportunity to increase time for rest and social communication.

In quantitative terms, the social sciences are experiencing unprecedented growth today. However, contrary to the enthusiasm expressed by most specialists, Professor Andreski draws attention to the fact that the flow of publications in the social sciences actually reveals a deficit of new ideas. The current agenda is dominated by vague verbosity, endless repetitions of banalities, and disguised propaganda. According to the British sociologist, the average quality of publications has declined. The book Social Sciences as Sorcery is largely aimed not only at providing evidence to support the author’s diagnosis of the social sciences but also at finding explanations and solutions for the current state of affairs. Professor Andreski argues that this shift toward the sterility of research on human life arises from the dominant cultural, political, and economic trends of our time. Nevertheless, he describes his view of the prospects for the social sciences as one of “desperate optimism”—“desperate” because he does not see how our civilization could survive without significant progress in understanding humanity and society.
The journal “Economic Sociology” publishes the second chapter of the book “The Sorcerer’s Dilemma”, in which the author examines some of the key intellectual difficulties in the study of society and culture.

Differentiation by wealth—the value of accumulated property owned—is one of the dimensions of socio-economic inequality alongside income. Inequality indicators are calculated using data on the market value of property, which allows for both the determination of total wealth and the calculation of differentiation coefficients. It is common practice to collect such data through household surveys, although these inherently contain errors typical of survey data. This article presents the first stage of a study—an assessment of the quality of data on housing wealth from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) and the All-Russian Household Survey on Consumer Finances. It also identifies the conditions under which respondents are most likely to provide answers about the value of their housing.
The emphasis is on analyzing the level and factors affecting the availability of responses to questions about the value of residential real estate, which is included among the data accuracy indicators recommended by the OECD for survey data on wealth. The response rate to the question about the market price of one’s own occupied housing in the latest waves of the RLMS is 72–75%, while in the All-Russian Household Survey on Consumer Finances it is 82–87%. Respondents are more likely to provide information about occupied housing than about additional properties. In these respects, Russian respondents differ little from those in comparable international surveys. Among the factors influencing whether respondents provide answers about the market price of their housing, the most significant are financial competence and “financial secrecy”—the willingness to disclose financial information to interviewers. The likelihood of non-response increases among older respondents living in metropolitan regions, large “millionaire” cities, or conversely, in rural areas. Excluding these observations from analysis would lead to underestimation of both expensive metropolitan housing and cheaper rural housing. Judging by the dynamics of response rates over the past 20 years, Russians have become better oriented regarding developments in the housing market.

Modern Russian society is experiencing a conservative shift that affirms a traditional model of masculinity as the dominant paradigm. Simultaneously, ongoing modernization has given rise to a unique creative sector of the economy, which is structurally organized under conditions distinct from those of industrial sectors. Although the creative economy began to develop in Russia with the onset of market reforms, its rapid growth is particularly evident today. We posit that the economic foundations underlying the functioning of this sector establish specific rules for engaging with gender identity, which are expressed through empirical gender practices that construct an alternative model of masculinity, referred to here as “adaptive.” Based on 22 interviews analyzed using grounded theory methodology, we identified key gender practices—responsibility for well-being, creativity management, communication strategies, and the integration of personal and professional life—that have shaped the social positions of the creative class within the creative economy. Considering current trends, the share of the creative economy in the GDP of developed countries is increasingly significant, and the products generated within this sector establish new consumption strategies and transmit the values of the creative class. Our exploratory research aims not only to elucidate the economic foundations of masculinity construction but also to shed light on local gender orders in Russia. These local gender orders may sharply contrast with both the dominant normative gender models in public discourse and the broader trajectory of gender order transformation.

The authors examine the origin, development and nature of money as a special measuring sign system. Historical examples show that the value of first commodity money and goods themselves was determined by weight or volume, with commodity money used as a standard for these measures. The paper provides a comparative analysis of commodity (evolutionary) theories and institutional theories regarding the origin of money as “units of account” and “medium of exchange.” Modern fiat money acquired purchasing power as representatives (substitutes) of real commodity money. However, with the abolition of the gold standard in the second half of the twentieth century, fiat money became conventional, symbolic, and unbacked signs whose value is based on trust in the issuer and on exchange value determined by supply and demand. The article argues that the transition to fiat money led to the deficiency of a stable standard for measuring value and increased the role of emotional factors in valuation (measurement). It is shown that in the modern economy, in addition to supply and demand, popularity as “generalized symbolic medium” becomes a significant factor in the determining value. It has become both a new social measure of economic value and an intangible asset that can be “traded” and “exchanged” for other assets. Traditional measures of value, such as intrinsic value or the value of money determined by the government, are accompanied by “perceived value.” In this regard, the research proposes the concept of irrational or emotional prerequisites for the emergence of certain types of commodity money. The article also reveals the importance of time as a medium of exchange and a value measurement system. The article proposes further development of commodity currency circulation (for example, energy currency) and argues for the need to return to commodity-backed currencies in order to maintain economic stability and create a competitive advantage for the ruble as a possible global reserve currency.

One of the common views on American higher education is its perception as a “great equalizer”: it is believed that American universities provide access to broad economic opportunities even for class-disadvantaged students. But what if, in fact, equality in the starting salary of American graduates is not due to university studies, but... simple luck? The book by Jesse Streib, Professor of Sociology at Duke University, “The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay after College” presents an unconventional view of the problem of class inequality. Based on the materials of 172 interviews with graduates of one of the southern universities, employers, hiring specialists, as well as observing career events at the university, Streib introduces the reader to the hidden equalization system of the United States operating in the labor market of medium-sized enterprises — luckocracy. Luckocracy is based on two mechanisms: class-neutral criteria for the selection of applicants, as well as the changeable and opaque nature of information about the “rules of the game” in the market. In a luckocracy, accumulated capital and class origin turn out to be insignificant – applicants operate in a situation of radical uncertainty, in which it is impossible to use available resources to develop optimal employment strategies.
This review examines in detail the features of luckocracy functioning. The emphasis is placed on the fruitfulness of the sociological conceptualization of luck, which makes it possible to consider it not as an “accident”, but as an effect of social relations. It is argued that the concept of luckocracy presented by Streib runs counter to the classical theses of economic sociology on the importance of social connections for obtaining market advantages.

School consolidation is often viewed as a strategy for improving educational quality while staying within budget constraints. This paper investigates the impact of school consolidation on student academic achievement in the context of high-resource urban schools, contributing to the ongoing discourse on the interaction between school size and students’ socioeconomic status (SES). Using a quasi-experimental approach, the study analyzes data from 6,473 Moscow schools and their consolidations between 2013 and 2019.
The findings reveal a U-shaped relationship between school size and student performance on the Basic State Examination: the highest achievement is observed in both the smallest and largest schools. The overall effect of consolidation on exam performance is slightly negative, suggesting that further consolidation may not significantly benefit schools with already sufficient resources. The timing of consolidation is critical — earlier consolidations are associated with lower student achievement compared to those implemented later. A negative shock in academic performance is also observed in the year immediately following consolidation; however, no delayed positive effects are detected within the observation period.
These results contribute to the policy debate on the effectiveness of school consolidation and highlight the importance of considering school size, SES, and implementation timing when assessing their influence on student outcomes. Further research is recommended to examine consolidation’s effects on elective subjects and to assess its long-term consequences.