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At the turn of the 21st century, sociology as a science has become an object of criticism both from inside and outside the discipline. At the same time, the late-20th and early 21st centuries endorse an unprecedented splash of technological development, specifically the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies. The paper tries to show a relation between these two tendencies. For the authors, two questions are in the spotlight: (1) how have evaluations of the professional sociologists on what is happening to the discipline changed over the last 20 years? and (2) how could these evaluations be related to the research questions that the development of AI technologies brings to social sciences? In the first part of the paper, the authors examine and compare the participants' positions in the discussion about the future of sociology organized by the journal Contemporary Sociology in 2000. The second part of the paper examines two articles published in 2019 where it was proclaimed “the end of sociology.” The paper discusses why the debates about the crisis of sociology have shifted towards radical criticism during these years and how new arguments refine and supplement the previous discussions. In conclusion, the authors propose one way out of the crisis in sociology. They suggest the radical renewal of sociological science into a-typical and anti-disciplinary social analytics with the central orientation into “artificial sociality” inquiries.

Received 3 September 2021. Accepted 24 March 2022. Published online 11 April 2022. Epidemiological situations, such as the pandemic of COVID-19, pose a clear and significant problem for the states in their efforts to construct and to control their population. The widespread introduction of a lockdown as a regulatory method during the current pandemic could be associated with the need to preserve an understandable, quantifiable, and predictable management object. This paper considers, analyses, and compares two deviant cases of COVID-19 pandemic responses: South Korea and Sweden. In South Korea, the pandemic regulations were dominated by large-scale testing and contact tracing, while lockdown policies have played a supplementary role. Sweden’s attempt to develop population immunity by introducing less stringent measures that its neighbours has attracted much attention worldwide. The authors conduct desk research and analyse secondary data on pandemic regulations and their effects in these two countries in 2020. Similarities and differences between Swedish and South Korean cases are formulated regarding trust inside and between the states. The research was supported by the grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project No. 20-04-60033).

Acknowledgements. The study was conducted in the framework of the research project supported by RFBR grant No. 20-04-60033.

This paper, in the form of ‘reflections on the book’, presents analysis of the Russian translation of the monograph by George Gallup and Saul F. Rae titled “The Pulse of Democracy. The Public Opinion Poll and How It Works”. It is organized in the form of an evaluation of several questions concerning studying the phenomenon of public opinion. The authors show how the monograph was reviewed by professionals during several decades in the 20th century, and what sort of value it might bear in the digital era. Their objective is to formulate basic ideas that might bring the monograph back to sociologists’ attention in a time of ‘artificial sociality”.

The paper examines how and to what extent the Soviet higher education system transformed after the collapse of theussr. It offers a research-based analysis of the external and internal factors of transformation in six post-Soviet countries: three “Slavic” states (Belarus, Russia, Ukraine), and three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania). The paper characterizes a bounded number of types of organizations of higher education in each country. Using the set-theoretic multi-value qualitative comparative analysis (mvQCA), the authors identify several causal chains that led to the transformation of the Soviet comprehensive university into a ‘post-Soviet research university’ or ‘general education organization’. This paper compares the drivers of organizational diversity in Soviet and post-Soviet education, and traces country-specific features of the organizational transformation of universities in six post-Soviet countries.

The paper aims to discuss the materials and outcomes of recently conducted research dealing with an analysis of the similarities and differences in current sociological theories exploring social inter-connection phenomena. The authors translate the term “obschenie”employed in Russian literature as “social intercourse”. Four basic theoretical constructions are under scrutiny, those being Anne Rawls’ interaction order theory, Randall Collins’ interaction ritual chains theory, Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of social performance, and Jonathan Turner’s theory of interpersonal behavior. The paper’s point of departure is an idea that there is a line ascending from the sociological theory of human interactions to the tradition represented in social science by Durkheim and Goffman. The discussion opens with an attempt to depict and classify the realities of “social intercourse” occurrences, followed with an assessment of its basic characteristics. Having displayed analytical and conceptual problems that the phenomenon “social intercourse” generates for sociological theory, the paper turns to a comparative analysis of the four noted theoretical interpretations of interaction in society. The outcomes of such an analysis drive authors to present and explore the research dilemmas that configure current theoretical sociological analysis of “social intercourse”. The closing part of the paper delineates the relations between the sociology of “social intercourse” with the sociology of everyday life and the sociology of emotions.

The paper addresses the issues and challenges scientific communication is facing in current scholarly practices both within a specific scientific community and public at large. First, the paper presents methodological groundings for studying communication of results as a particular mechanism of operating with discourse. Such methodological framework focuses on the process of ‘black-boxing’ of scientific results. Further, the authors illustrate a way such results go from a hypothesis to a scholarly output, and call for actions. On the basis of the Online Surveys organized and conducted by the American-Russian Research Laboratory at St Petersburg State University (www.tandem.spbu.ru) for a specific field research in 2017-2018, the authors demonstrate gradual detextualization and generalization of results, which are inherent to the specific way of scientific persuasion. Finally, the authors outline the paths of the current transformation of scientific knowledge production and dissemination which calls for further research problematization. KEYWORDS: scientific communication, black-boxing, generalization, knowledge distribution, online surveys

The goal of this series of conferences is to reunite researchers and academics in a creative environment, to propose ways of thinking by nurturing the engagement of the global intellectual elite into conversations meant to tackle the new challenges faced by the mankind. It is a conversation which attempts to go beyond the existing paradigms of thinking.

Current sociology doesn’t have a settled view on what to do with a phenomenon that in the literature has been titled as “artificial intelligence” (AI). Sociological textbooks, handbooks, encyclopedias, and sociology classes’ syllabi typically either don’t have entries about AI at all or talk about it haphazardly with a stress on AI’s social effects and without discerning the underlying logic that moves the prodigy on. This paper is an invitation to a professional conversation about what and how social sciences can/should study “artificial intelligence”. It is based on a discussion of the preliminary results of an on-going three-year research project that has been launched at the ISA Congress in Toronto. The paper examines AI in relation with ‘artificial sociality’. It argues that research on AI-based technologies is flourishing mainly outside established disciplinary boundaries. Thus, social sciences have to look for new theoretical and methodological frameworks to approach AI and ‘artificial sociality’.

The paper argues that a materialistic understanding of history as Marx’s sociological research program has effectively been implemented in the comparative analysis of bourgeois societies. Both qualitative/case-oriented and quantitative/variable-oriented strategies of comparison were employed by Marx in his scholarship. The authors see the crucial dimension of the classical status of Marx in his engagement with historical comparisons – an analytical tendency he shares with Weber and, to some extent, Durkheim. A short historical exposition tracing the early reception of Marx in sociology continues with the most important contemporary criticisms of Marx’s comparative-historical analysis, focusing on the issues of Asiatic mode of production, the nature of European feudalism and the problem of capitalist rationality.

The simplest answer to the question of what a racial democracy would look like is that it would be a society in which racial differences at the level of identity carried with them no race-specific inequalities. The value of the idea of racial democracy is that, by serving as an ideal type, it simultaneously provides a tool of analysis to assess whether or not the racial barriers to equal citizenship have been overcome and a political goal. More specifically, the idea of racial democracy is intended as a concrete concept that can be used to assess the state of democracy in the nation. Those who have been historically disenfranchised and more recently ignored by policy makers and the public alike function as miner’s canaries. They test the atmosphere of the civil sphere to see if democracy can survive. One of its virtues is that it can provide a comparative frame of reference, allowing us to assess the extent to which identity politics remain tied to redistributive politics, and thus measuring the distance we still have to travel to achieve a just, multicultural, and egalitarian social order.

Comparative migration is an actively developing research area that is situated at the intersection of various disciplines and national research traditions. The demand for a comparative historical analysis of migration processes is determined by the variety of reasons: intensification of human mobility in the modern world, changes in understanding of citizenship. The collapse of the USSR generated new visions and new perspectives in migration studies. The political and ethnic borders coupled with regional variety and complex migration processes make up the post-Soviet region as one of the most challenging for comparative migration studies. Moreover, despite the availability of various traditions of migration analysis in Russia, this region remains theoretically and empirically undiscovered in terms of comparative research. The materials presented in this special issue serve to fill in this gap. The objective of an Introductory piece to the special issue of the Public Opinion Monitor (MOM) Journal that is one of the first attempts in Russian literature to present comparative migration studies dealing with the post-Soviet societies has two foci. The first is to present the idea of comparative migration studies as it is developed in the West and to make a point of proposing such a tradition to Russian social sciences. The second is to help the reader to look at and take her/his bearings in the materials and studies presented in the volume. Three particular features of the volume have to be underlined. First, in terms of theoretical and methodological foundations materials are oriented toward American rather than European tradition of comparative migration studies. Second, ethnic (national) and racial facets as they are fostered in current migration studies in the West are also debated in the volume. Third, the issue includes publications discussing transnational migration — a relatively new phenomenon under review in Russian literature. Finally, this Special Issue of the «MOM» was envisaged as an invitation to further research and as a lead-in to the detailed discussions about comparative migration studies rather than a compendium of truths and finalized answers on the subject.

The chapter attempts to articulate a possibility for integrating a number of perspectives in studying higher education as a scholarly subject in current social science. We begin with the reasons for such an undertaking and its relevance. We then develop several basic definitions in order to establish a common conceptual basis for discussion. The final section presents new institutionalism as one of the ways to integrate several approaches in understanding higher education. This chapter is rather theoretical and methodological in its outlook. We develop the basic approach that, in many respects, is still a work in progress. We take in this approach a set of arguments that open up new research agenda rather than settled a perception to be accepted uncritically.