Relationships within Russian families are being transformed. While most people in the country still think that mutual support between the different generations within a family are necessary, these traditions of ‘family service’ are receding into the past. Russia is becoming more oriented to Western cultural values, including the priority of individual interests, reported Cecile Lefevre, Irina Korchagina and Lidya Prokofieva at the HSE XV April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development.
If laws exist at the state level that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, then the impact of individual values creating a negative attitude towards homosexuality falls. People are inclined to adapt their behavior to conventional norms. A group of European researchers came to this conclusion over the course of an international study, the results of which Peter Schmidt presented at the XV April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development of the Higher School of Economics.
Sociologists have conducted research on what professions Russian parents would like their children to do in the future. The results follow the changing dynamics of the job market in recent years and show that humanities-based occupations are no longer seen as desirable.
Christopher S. Swader is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Sociology and a Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research at the HSE in Moscow. He also serves as Program Director for the new International Master’s Program in Comparative Social Research. Professor Swader sat down with HSE News Portal Editor Marina Selina to discuss his recently published book — The Capitalist Personality: Face-to-Face Sociality and Economic Change in the Post-Communist World.
An aggressive low-achiever can be the most popular kid even in a class that’s highly motivated simply because teenagers admire his rugged machismo, while top-of-the-class pupils tend to be popular when their classmates study hard too. Daniil Alexandrov, Head of the Research Laboratory for Sociology in Education and Science at HSE St Petersburg and his colleagues, Chief Research Fellow Valeriya Ivanyushina and Junior Research Fellow Vera Titkova found this and more in their research.
Family and school are losing their influence over children’s upbringing, and the gap is being filled by mass media. Researchers Katerina Polivanova, Elena Sazonova, and Marta Shakarova have examined how contemporary culture is influencing children.
HSE Assistant Professor of Sociology Ruben Flores, PhD talked to the HSE news portal about his presentations at the ASA and ESA sociology conferences this summer, about forthcoming sociology seminars at HSE and about why living in Moscow is interesting for sociologists.
The annual conference of the American Sociological Association was in New York this year. Among the 6,000 specialists discussing the current state of social sciences and society were 18 academics from the HSE.
Religion, social welfare, and the quantity of orphanages are the most important factors influencing the number of orphans in Russian provinces. ‘Regional Differences in the Number of Orphans in Today's Russia’ is a report authored by Sergei Vinkov.
On October 10th, 2012, Professor Ronald Inglehart, Academic Supervisor of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, spoke at the Open Seminar meeting at the HSE Saint Petersburg Faculty of Sociology. In his lecture he spoke about why Karl Marx’s forecasts will never come true and how culture alters the modernization process.
