2026. Vol. 27. No. 2

In the contemporary world, food waste at the consumer (household) level poses a large-scale environmental, economic, social, and ethical problem. Its alleviation aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 12.3). Based on data from three representative surveys in Russia (2020, 2022, and 2024; N = 2,000 respondents each), the paper examines changes in the level of consumer engagement in both throwing food away and various food rescue practices. Since preventing food waste accumulation is considered the most effective way of combating this problem, the paper explores consumer behavior at various stages of (non)ethical handling of foodstuffs (purchasing, usage, and disposal) from this perspective. Four types of consumers have been described (“consistently ethical”, “inconsistently ethical”, “stable non-throwers away”, and “consistent throwers away”) and heterogeneity of both throwers and non-throwers away have been revealed. It has been shown that inconsistent engagement in ethical consumption at different stages can either weaken the positive contribution of this phenomenon to the promotion of sustainable development goals (erosion of ethical consumers with “inconsistently ethical” ones) or replenish (and even reinforce it) it owing to the “catching up” incorporation of “stable non-throwers away” at a later stage.
Links between the likelihood of joining different consumer groups and a number of value-action, socio-demographic, and status characteristics—as well as engagement in various food-saving practices—have been evaluated using regression analysis. A conclusion has been justified concerning the peripheral role of careful food handling within the family of ethical consumption practices. It also confirms that enhancing its role is a multifaceted goal requiring joint efforts by actors at various levels and types to create conditions that facilitate consumer trade-offs between personal benefits (health, enjoying food) and significant social identities, on one hand, and engagement in reducing food waste, on the other.

In the book The Livelihood of Man—unfinished and unpublished during the author’s lifetime but first published in 1977 under the editorship of H. W. Pearson—Karl Polanyi continues to develop ideas that he previously outlined in his monumental work The Great Transformation (1944). In The Great Transformation, Polanyi emphasized that to gain a more realistic understanding of the economy's role in human society, it is necessary to rethink universal economic history based on broader conceptual foundations. The author also places the problem of man’s livelihood at the center of this book, reinterpreting it on three levels. At the theoretical level, he examines concepts of trade, money, and market institutions, which are proposed for application to to any type of society. At the historical level, specific examples are provided that bring theoretical generalizations to life through comparison or contrast. At the political level, the author seeks answers from history to pressing moral and practical problems of the 20th century.
The Journal of Economic Sociology publishes an introduction in which Polanyi explains the book’s key idea. It is being prepared for publication in Russian by the Gaidar Institute Publishing House.

The article analyzes the structure, content, and dynamics of the normative pattern of urban labor motivation as presented in the Soviet press at various levels. It aims to identify changes in media mobilization rhetoric from 1946 to 1956. Through qualitative and quantitative methods of analyzing press materials, the study reveals the dynamics of the topic's quantitative expression, its specifics in the media (shaped by the period's socio-economic realities and the state’s mobilization strategy). The research draws on materials from 13 Soviet publications: the magazine Smena; central newspapers Pravda and Trud; regional newspapers Uralsky Rabochy, Velikolukskaya Pravda, Vostochno-Sibirskaya Pravda, Sovetskaya Sibir, and Krasny Sever; city newspapers Tagilskiy rabohiy and Pod znamenem Ltnina; and factory newspapers Magnitogorsk Metal, Kirovets, and Metallurg. Content analysis (frequency sampling) was applied manually to 2,898 issues. It is revealed that in the second half of the 1940s, lexemes framing labor motivation as duty and the Motherland's well-being dominated the media, reflecting preserved wartime militarized rhetoric for labor mobilization. In the 1950s, lexemes emphasizing benefits to the people and communism construction gained prominence as approved work motivations, with a less intense mobilization focus and more emphasis on citizens' long-term prospects. Utilitarian motives like personal income and well-being were absent as endorsed urban labor strategies. These media patterns mirrored the Soviet social standard, postwar modernization dynamics, and socio-economic realities from 1946 to 1956.

The article analyzes the relationship between illegal activity, civic engagement, and labor, with theoretical conclusions supported by empirical data analysis. Social sciences offer established views on this relationship. Domestic studies predominantly show a positive relationship between these categories, while foreign research— such as works by D. Graeber, T. Veblen, and S. Bridgen—indicates it is mediated by social traditions of labor as an educational practice, ranging from strictly negative to positive. For adolescents, V. Zelizer notes labor as a marginal practice unlinked to law-abidingness. Domestic consensus may stem from the Soviet Marxist school, which integrates Marx's early and late ideas, fostering a tradition of labor rehabilitation for law-conflicting adolescents. The study's relevance lies in explaining Russian sociology's theoretical consensus and empirically testing its underlying model. The authors draw on a synthesis of Russian scholars (K. Chermit, B. Rakhmatulina, T. Bagulina, L. Andrianova, L. Minaeva) and D. Greber's ideas on how social traditions condition links between civic activity, labor, and law-abidingness. The analysis demonstrates that socio-civic activity positively impacts adolescents' shared labor attitudes and professional practices when thematically related to military-patriotic activities. These results refine debates on law-abidingness and labor, informing programs for labor rehabilitation of law-inconflictin adolescents.

Contemporary research and academic debate in behavioral economics emerged in response to criticism of economics from related disciplines such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and political science, which accuse economics of lacking realism and excessive formalism. Like many other social science fields, behavioral economics research is primarily aimed at addressing key challenges in modern economics, including modeling socioeconomic processes, identifying their essence and interdependence, and understanding human behavior. Behavioral economics primarily focuses on issues such as the rationality of behavior and decision-making under uncertainty, risk forecasting methods, the theory and empirical evidence of social interactions, expectations and social norms, the evolution of preferences and behavior in behavioral games, and theoretical aspects of economic research methodology. In this article, the author examines these issues using contemporary research presented at the annual conference of the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), held in Trento, Italy, in 2025. Currently, this conference is the largest global discussion platform in the field of behavioral and experimental economics. Its prominence stems from behavioral economics' flexible tools— laboratory experiments—which increasingly explain many economic phenomena and processes. The article also considers promising research in the context of its potential interdisciplinary and cross-cultural applications.

The review is dedicated to the book by Vadim Radaev, Doctor of Economics and First Vice-Rector of the HSE University, Watching Movies, Understanding Life, first published in 2023 and republished in 2024 and 2025. This book results from a unique project at HSE University's Faculty of Social Sciences, running for over 20 years. This pioneering experience was among the first of its kind in Russia and has since been adopted by many universities. Despite the fact that the materials of the film seminars are publicly available on the HSE University website, the author compiled brief essays summarizing the course and content of the discussions.
The review presents a legal scholar’s perspective on the social issues and challenges reflected in the 23 essays of the book’s third edition. The review does not analyze all essays but focuses on those the author deems relevant to the educational process at HSE University's Faculty of Law. The article examines purely legal issues raised in the films and discussed by sociologists (for example, the role of the jury system in modern society), as well as the applicability of sociological concepts (such as generation theory) to legal science challenges. It demonstrates that many legal categories—such as legal consciousness, legal culture, and legal nihilism—hold great potential for sociological study. The book also discusses the impact of digital technologies on law and society in its three final essays.

Recently, anthropogenic climate change as a result of human activity during the Industrial Revolution, linked to accelerated fossil fuel combustion, greenhouse gas emissions, land-use change, and deforestation, has reached its peak and has been termed a climate crisis. From a social science perspective, the climate crisis is not only, and not so much, a geophysical phenomenon as a socioeconomic and political failure, an inevitable product of structural capitalist modernity. The latest book of Jens Beckert, Professor of Sociology and Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne ‘How We Sold Our Future: The Failure to Fight Climate Change’ offers a systematic analysis of why modern societies are unable to respond adequately to the climate crisis. The author provides a structural diagnosis of systemic impasse and climate inaction, explaining why the pressure of the economic growth paradigm within capitalism is too strong to allow for a timely response to the climate crisis. Through the lens of ‘capitalist modernity’, Beckert demonstrates how the fusion of economic institutions (profit orientation, competition, credit), political structures (the state, multi-level governance, lobbying), and cultural patterns (individualism, belief in progress, nature as a resource) blocks necessary transformations. He systematically shows how the logic of short-term gain shapes the behavior of key actors: oil corporations employing the ‘politics of uncertainty’ and the ‘politics of expectations’; states trapped in electoral cycles and dependent on business; and consumers whose identities are embedded in a culture of limitless consumption. Particular attention is devoted to critiquing the paradigm of ‘green growth’, which Beckert argues is a dangerous illusion that leaves the structures of capitalist modernity unchanged. In developing climate policy measures, the author adopts a stance of ‘considered realism’, placing hope in grassroots civic initiatives and the pursuit of politically feasible policies that account for the interests of the state, the economy, and society. The book makes a significant contribution to economic sociology by offering a conceptual framework for understanding the climate crisis as a failure not only of the market, but also of the state and culture.