Suchergebnisse

Der Beitrag dokumentiert die Diskussion auf der "Author Meets Critic"-Veranstaltung zu John Urrys "Sociology Beyond Societies" auf dem 32. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie (2004). Zunächst erläutert Urry den Grundgedanken seines Ansatzes, der auf eine Aufhebung der Trennung zwischen Naturwissenschaften und Gesellschaftswissenschaften hinausläuft. Unter dem Leitbild "Komplexität" wird die Analyse physischer und sozialer Welten integriert. Dabei werden auch Elemente von Hardt/Negris "Empire und Multitude"-Konzept aufgegriffen. Der Begriff der Globalen Komplexität steht auch im Mittelpunkt der Kommentare von Junge und Schwengel zu Urrys Buch. (ICE)

Structural changes in demand and supply sectors within the Ukrainian labor market in late 1990s caused a phenomenon of reconsideration of an usual career of wage or salaried worker as the only one possible and acceptable. In search of work with satisfactory reward almost 10% of Ukrainians turned to self-employ ment — a new working activity with neither state nor research experience of dealing with. These people are neither considered as unemployed nor as entrepreneurs by themselves. The author is engaged in a problem of self-employment as a new labor market perspective, trying to fill the methodological gap within the Ukrainian social and economic sciences by means of conceptualization of self-employment and entrepreneurship. The author has presented a clarification of the pointed central concepts, their theoretical and empirical meanings based on a profound categorical analysis. The most appropriate, from the sociological point of view, definition of selfemployment suggested by author after generalization of Ukrainian, Russian, and foreign scientific resources would be important for consideration in further statistical and sociological survey of self-employment and its socio-economic interpretations.

The article presents the main results of the survey (1992–2003) on interethnic orientations of Ukrainian population measured according to the social distance scale by Bogardus adapted in Ukraine by the article's author in 1990. The obtained data made it possible to reveal a number of phenomena ("over-caution", "Eastern Slavic isolation", "redoubled border control", "high jump", "unanimous isolation"), and paradoxes of the mass interethnic self-consciousness of population (paradox of the "national identification", the "good attitude" paradox). New results confirmed the growing orientations (in the mass consciousness) to the larger ethnic distance, which promotes development of national and governmental isolation. The author paid much attention to a story about the methods (the social distance scale) development and their approbation in Ukraine.

The article presents theoretical and methodical grounds for identification of the subject of public opinion. The author finds out that functional features of public opinion determine the features of subjects too. These features tell about the subject range, structure, how it is organized, how it exerts influence on human behavior and activity of the social institutions which have the status of public opinion object.

The author discusses a sociological understanding of the social institution notion. Analysis of corresponding ideas by E. Durkheim, M. Weber, G. Mead, and T. Parsons reveals various meanings that were con sidered to be scientific milestones. According to classical traditions, institutions are regarded as complex mechanisms for regulation of not uniform inner social orders. Modern institutional approach to social research deals with existing institutional complexes, transform ing institutional conditions and institutional actions by individuals and groups.

From political practitioners' point of view the pre-election campaign publicity is a complicated political phenomenon and at the same time the process built upon the rules of political communication that fulfills a number of consistent functions during campaign. Among these functions are: political party, new election bloc or separate candidate's name identification; election bloc and can didate's im age building; election platform identification, issue development and exploitation; campaign messages symbolization and advertising as well as others. The author came to the conclusion that these types of factors in most cases motivate voter choices in elections in Ukraine.

"Disintegration of the USSR, formation of the new independent states onto the post-Soviet space became a significant event in contemporary history and human biographies. Majority of these states have begun market and democracy reforms, which pushed dramatic system transformation of their societies. It was expected, that reforms would provide the economy growth, increase of welfare and life chances of citizens unlimited by the centralized economy and authoritarian state. However already from the mid 1990th sharp social polarization (Gini coefficient was multiplied almost in 2 times, except for Belarus and Georgia), decline of life chances for most citizens, considerable reducing of life expectancy (above all things, capable of working men) showed up in these countries. The daily life of the people living in the former USSR has been transformed, with the certainties of everyday life being eroded as the bureaucratic redistributive order has taken on the guise of the market. In parallel, vertical social integration has been undermined alongside a significant increase in social inequalities; at the same time increase of social integration within strata has been showed up. What vectors of social inequalities are most strong? And what reasons of these phenomena are? In spite of the wide-spread opinion that age, gender and ethnicity are the independent factors of increasing of inequality; the author argues significant dependence of these factors on the objective class positions. Investigation of objective medium shows the expressly structured allocation of resources and life chances belonging to 'new' and 'old' social classes. On a base of survey data on Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan, the paper concludes with some tentative projections concerning future social inequality development in these societies, in which relations of power, appropriation of property, social capital and high-quality education entail deep distinction in life chances of people. The author underlines that post-Soviet societies now mirror elements of traditional class societies with acquisition classes being not numerous, and in which a significant proportion of the population is social excluded. The paper is based on a data source of the EU-founded project on living conditions, lifestyle and health (LLH, with project leading by Ch. Haerpfer) as a multi-level survey conducted in 8 post-Soviet states during 2000-2002 years." (author's abstract)

"The use of the concept 'underclass' has been the subject of considerable debate among scholars of urban poverty. Many question the meaning of the term and its value as a social category, and react critically to the way the term has been appropriated by those intellectuals and journalists whose ideological views and orientations strongly influence their perceptions of the urban poor (Hughes 1989; Aponte 1990; Katz 1993; Gans 1995; O'Connor 2001). However, in their critical commentary the scholars of urban poverty do not address, in theoretical terms, the scientific import of the concept 'underclass;' that is, its role in the description, explanation and prediction of social behavior. Rather they object to the way the term is used to label a subgroup of the urban poor whose cultural traits are thought to be different from those of the larger society. In this paper, the author considers whether a theoretically defined concept of underclass - as opposed to the nonsystematic and atheoretical usages - can be helpful in social scientific discourse. But first, by way of background, let him examine briefly the various ways the term 'underclass' has been used in published writings down through the years." (excerpt)