Opposition to State Strategy of Health Care Optimization: the Mechanism of Social Mobilization

The Health Care system of Russia and Moscow in particular has been under optimization during several years. This process resulted in “the opposition movement” which became prominent after the large-scale actions in Moscow in late autumn 2014. This study is focused on the determination of the specifics of social protest and explanation of collective mobilization in order to resist the State strategy of healthcare reform in Moscow. The conceptual framework of the study is the pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thevenot. The purpose of this work is to reconstruct the mechanism of collective mobilization in order to resist the State strategy of reforming the system. The chosen approach will help to trace the logics of the protest movement, the way of how the civil logic manifests itself in the protest and what values ​​guide people into the movement and whether they exist. The answers to these questions are significant in the context of the debate among Russian researchers on atomization and solidarity, determination of the consequences of social mobilization in 2011-2012 and the explanation of collective action in the changed conditions. The empirical base of the master's dissertation includes focused interviews with participants of protest actions on healthcare problems in Moscow (short street interviews during the action, in-depth interviews), visual analysis of the protesters' slogans, content analysis of media reports on health care reform.