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In our modern world electoral sociology, which is under constant scrutiny by the general public, as well as members of the media, in many ways shapes the image of sociology as a scientific discipline. Today sociology is often represented by media reports about the results of public opinion polls on the subject of politics and electoral affairs. Meanwhile a certain other trend is apparent: the high expectations imposed on electoral studies, as well as on their verifiability and efficiency, encourage the further development of sociological research and sociology in general. Scientific studies on electoral processes are defined by the convergence of various schools and paradigms of research, which implies an overlapping of different approaches and methods. This article presents the stages of electoral sociology's development, from "straw polls" to contemporary theories of electoral behavior (the straw poll stage, electoral sociology in the 1930's and 1940's, ecological analysis in electoral sociology, the behavioral approach, the sociological theory on electoral behavior, the socio-psychological theory of electoral behavior, the theory of instrumental rationality), which in modern electoral sociology are known as "post-Gallup" theories. The author reveals the main characteristics of each stage of modern electoral sociology's development, while highlighting its achievements and value, and giving a comprehensive analysis of modern theories of electoral behavior, with regards to issues located on the line between political sociology and sociology of law. Among these issues special consideration is given to elections as a political phenomenon, the political culture and political attitudes of the electorate, features of voting systems, political mechanisms and electoral technologies.

Critical discourse analysis was used as a methodological and theoretical framework for studying materials. As a result, we have identified three dichotomies in the criticism of European values: (1) religion vs secularism, (2) collectivism (sobornost') vs individualism, (3) collective morality vs liberal moral pluralism. Within the period of 2006-2012, the Orthodox discourse has been appropriated in domestic agenda

This article analyzes multi-shift schooling and its effect on the quality of education in the city of Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. Highlighted are the features, advantages and shortcomings of multi-shift schooling, achievements of middle-school pupils, satisfaction of parents and pupils with the quality and accessibility of education. Also evaluated are opinions on multi-shift schooling. After the downfall of socialism and a transition towards a free market, multiple migratory flows from provinces to the country's capital city have led to a specific increase of the population, and as a result of government policy to admit all 6-year old children into schools, as well as an increased strain on account of transitioning from a 10-year education system to a new 12-year one, schools have encountered a lack of funds, as well as a shortage of teachers and equipment. In an attempt to solve these issues, some schools have increased the amount of pupils attending one class to 45 or more, while also instituting a third shift, which has become common practice among many of Ulaanbaatar's middle-schools. Within the framework of a 2016 research project, the Mongolian State University's department of sociology and social work has conducted research and evaluated the multi-shift schooling system, while utilizing various research methods (survey, interview, observation, content analysis). Under the guise of a study called "Multiple shifts in Ulaanbaatar's secondary schools and the quality of education", conducted in 2016-2017, scientific approaches were used such as structural functionalism, phenomenology and exchange theory in order to analyze qualitative and quantitative data. A multi-shift schooling system, especially one with three shifts, creates some serious problems. Based on our research, the main parties concerned (teachers, parents and pupils) for the most part see it as detrimental to the quality of education, and as a liability when it comes to pupils' opportunity to enroll into the highest tier universities, given that those who go to schools working three shifts receive 20% less learning hours compared to schools working two shifts. Three shifts were introduced mainly in schools attended by children from vulnerable social groups. Such a practice creates social discrimination and violates children's rights to an equal and quality education. 17.9% of respondents who took part in our study receive an income of less than 185,000 tugriks a month (which is less than 80 USD), while 5.4% have no income at all. A three shift system of schooling has a negative effect on health and safety in the school environment, with an increase in the disease rate among children and the number of absences.

A data-sociology approach is introduced by analyzing results obtained by the Russian voluntary networking community «Dissernet». As is the case with data-journalism, data-sociology is based on the publically accessible (open source) data and takes advantage of modern information processing technologies. The results obtained in the framework of this study help to reconstruct a socio-landscape and to reveal problematic areas where any sort of fraud is highly welcomed. As a matter of fact, the same areas are highly problematic for society as a whole. Data collected by the «Dissernet» allow practical conclusions to be drawn about the work of various professional groups of people, e.g. expert committies in science and higher education (Dissertation Committies), editorial boards of scientiic journals, as well as governmental bodies at regional and federal level.

The purpose of this article is to identify the reasons which limit the conceptualization of the concept of chiefdom, and to find analytical means to overcome it. The author notes that at the present time sociology has developed criteria which facilitate the understanding of chiefdom as a type of social organization and historical stage in the development of society. However, the process of developing an unambiguous interpretation of the concept of chiefdom has not yet been completed. The article suggests that this is a consequence of two main limitations. The first of these lies outside the field of science and is associated with the diversity of the morphology of chiefdoms, with them having accumulated signs of "higher" and "lower" forms of social organization, and with chiefdom being characterized by ambiguity of data. The second limitation is brought forth by science itself, which happened to attach different conceptual grids to various types of chiefdom and had been unable to solve the problem of polysemia of the concepts which underlie the methodological analysis of archaic societies. The author focuses on the problem of "semantic twins" of chiefdom, the existence of which is due to the established tradition of word usage. The problem of identifying such "twins" is solved based on analyzing the social institutions and structures of ancient societies, while relying on the results of archaeological and anthropological studies, texts of literary artifacts. As a result, the author argues that in many cases the barbaric "kingdom" of Western Europe, Asia and Africa, the Eastern European "principalities" and the "empires" of Central Asia and Central America should be called chiefdoms. It is concluded that managing conceptual space allows for expanding the subject field of analysis, enriching the analytical tools of research and as a result discovering new facets of chiefdom as a form of social organization.

This article is an overview of P.A. Sorokin's participation in the processes of developing sociology as a science in Russia during his studies at the Department of Sociology at the Psychoneurological Institute, at the Faculty of Law at the St. Petersburg University, in preparation for thesis presentation during the First World War and in the early years of the Soviet regime. Particular attention is paid to his publications, participation in organizing the functioning of the first Russian sociological society named after M.M. Kovalevsky, Department of Sociology at the Petrograd University and in the empirical research conducted by the Sociological Institute.

This article is a review of the academic works of American sociologist James Bossard. During his life he wrote a vast number of articles and books on family, marriage, childhood and parenting, using a variety of methods for collecting and analyzing information. Despite his active academic and social life, James Bossard is very little known in the Russian-speaking environment. James Bossard creates his own set of approaches towards studying family, which should cover all significant aspects of the latter. Said set is based on approaches that can be divided into three main categories, which will be discussed in the review: family rituals, family heterogeneity and family as a field for change. Meanwhile he also described other issues: happiness and unhappiness in the family, the differences between large and small families, the role of children in the family, rites of passage, the impact of war on families. James Bossard is also worthy of interest as a productive researcher with unconventional approaches to working with material, as well as a peculiar sign of the time. The main goal of the author of this review is to draw attention to this sociologist's legacy, since many of his works are also relevant in modern Russia.

The author poses the problem of the status of sociology of the body as an independent sub-discipline, putting forward the hypothesis that today this moniker only unites the spectrum of those sociological directions that are engaged in the study of separate theoretical and applied issues related to corporeality. This review allows for securing the trend towards fragmenting sociology of the body as a field of study and strengthening its status as a rubric for research, rather than a full-fledged area of sociology. In order to clarify the subject of sociology of the body and its correlation with other disciplines which study embodiment, three classifications of theories used in body studies are analyzed — philosophical, anthropological and sociological. Unlike other researchers, the author of this article considers the opposition of structuralism and interpretativism to be the most appropriate for designating opposing research programs in the sociological classification of body theories.

The author aims to show that the forecasts of some theorists, philosophers and sociologists about the secularization and inevitable disappearance and marginalization of religion in the process of modernization of society, did not come true. Religion as a social institution has survived and has indicated its return to society and its importance not only for the individual but also for the collective consciousness and action. Deterministic frameworks of the processes of religious changes toward desecularization of society are the result of important changes in society itself: on the one hand the religious traditions acquire political significance and importance in the society, while on the other side they deprivatize faith and behavior of individuals, which can be considered as representing the crucial elements of the process of desecularization of society. These examples compelled the authors like David Martin and Peter Berger to review their theories about secularization of society during 1960s and 1970s, by presenting new ideas about desecularization of society or by limiting the theory of secularization to Western Europe countries only.

The article discusses the problems of interdisciplinary interactions in Russian sociology. The author sees the main problem of sociology and, respectively, of interdisciplinary interactions within it in the fact that there is no consensus on the disciplinary identity of sociology in the professional community of sociologists. It serves as a sort of roof for interdisciplinary interactions and each type of interdisciplinary synthesis, including the controversial ones, while its own disciplinary interests are often not recognized or even ignored. The author points to the likely causes of the current state of affairs. As one way of changing it, he offers a critical analysis of sociological knowledge from the standpoint of the sociology of knowledge.

This article reviews the ideas and motives of modern terrorism, discloses the concept of destructive human behavior, the analysis of the socio-cultural situation at the beginning of the XXI century and revealed disturbing factors intensify nationalist and religious terrorism as the most dangerous form of terrorism.

Purpose: To summarize, organize, and clarify the available scientific literature, theoretical approaches to the phenomenon of social identity with the sociopsychological and sociological positions. Methodology: a theoretical analysis of scientific sources. Scope of the results: Identified in the theoretical analysis of the sociopsychological interpretation of the phenomenon of social identity: its structure, and specific types of manifestations, may be useful in explaining the many problems in the life of the individual groups and teams, in general, the social environment, which traditionally are in the field of view sociology.

The article reveals the essence of the problem of the origin of man from the point of view of science and religion. We consider a variety of theories to explain the religious idea of the creation of man by God, the philosophical concepts that attempt to rationally, without the help of God, the absolute mind or alien, to explain the origin of man.