2021. N 16

Sociology of Health

Political and economic determinants of anti-vaccination conflict in the Industrial England

The article presents the historical and sociological analysis of the vaccination conflict that arose in the second half of the 19th century in industrial England. It has become the result of confrontation between social groups that resisted the implementation of the law on compulsory vaccination, and the government of England. The reconstruction of historical events related to the spread of vaccination in the country and the details of social context made it possible to present the vaccination conflict as a harvest of political and economic pressure exerted on target social groups — representatives of the lower middle class and workers. Position of these groups in social structure of industrial English society and specific of existing social context formed the background for consolidating efforts in opposing the state social policy. The implementation of political decisions taken in the context of an almost total smallpox incidence was accompanied by discrimination and stigmatization of the most vulnerable population segments, deepening status stratification and, at the same time, the status self-determination of marginalized people who were ready to struggle with higher social groups not only for their own medical choice freedom, but also for its place in the social structure of society.

 

Features of a sociological interview with older people with dementia. Trauma experience

The article presents an analysis of interviews of informants with a diagnosis of "dementia" in a comparative context with informants who are wards of a boarding school who do not have such a disease. The main attention is paid to the peculiarities of the researcher's work with interview data, which, unlike most interviews, are difficult to analyze, they contain semantic failures and contradictions. The usual methods of sociological interpretation are ineffective in such cases, and the researcher needs a fundamentally different approach to the perception and analysis of the material in order to break through unusual reflections and temporary collisions and get closer to understanding the informant. In the article, the author refers to the concept of trauma in order to understand and describe how the experience of experienced and experienced trauma of elderly people with dementia is refracted in the present tense and also in the article, the author answers the question of how such material can be used for sociological interpretation.

 

Methods of data analysis

Problems of semantic reconstruction of a theoretical text in sociology

The article analyzes the reasons for the ambiguity of the reader's understanding of the text of sociological theory, including: violation of the identity of the wordings of theoretical concepts, the absence of an explicit indication of the context for theoretical statements, implicit presentation of semantic connections between individual statements. The analysis is based on the tradition of semantic reconstruction of non-numerical evidence of informants, carried out by a sociologist in a qualitative study, and is carried out on the example of Arnason's article, which considers the problem of the controversy of theoretical concepts in the study of civilizations. The nature of the ambiguity of the semantic interaction between the author and the reader of sociological theory is explained based on the concept of dual knowledge by Polanyi. We argue the necessity of the structural presentation by the author of the semantic connections of the theory at the stage of its creation. Today, such connections are put implicitly in text by its author under creation and remain tacit to the reader when reading it. The article proposes analytical coding as a tool for the structural expression of sociological theory under its creation. This approach combines in a single instrumental procedure the coding techniques of qualitative research and the functionality of ontological methods for knowledge management. Thus, the social scientist gains conceptualization functionalities that are not available when applying the traditional textual presentation of the theory. Among them there are: management of ambiguous sociological definitions; tracking the contextual dependencies of verbal statements; checking the coherence of natural language statements evolved during theorizing; organization of teamwork of researchers from different subject areas.

 

Sociology of Culture

The socio-cultural significance of Zinovy Yakovlevich Korogodsky's creative heritage in the modern public perceptions

The article is dedicated to the outstanding Soviet and Russian theater director and teacher, «the humanist of the twentieth century» national artist of Russia, Professor Z. Ya. Korogodsky. The materials of the study of the social significance of his creative heritage are presented. His life path and place in the national culture are described according to the author's understands (one of his students). The results of the sociological research (survey) are presented and commented on how modern people evaluate Korogodsky's work. It is concluded that further work with his creative heritage is important. It needs to be studied in detail and informed of the public, and this is a possible «Korogodsky renaissance» in our time.

 

Essays and Sketches

Ironic notes on the current situation in sociology

The article notes as an irreversible fact: the vocabulary and topics of modern sociology have become postmodern. This paradigm shift needs to be evaluated. It is known that the language of assessment should not coincide with the language of the criticized phenomenon. Therefore, the author chose the "ironic style" for his story. The main objects of "irony": 1) the "universal" crumbled into fragments of the "local" — on the example of the concept of "pluralism of civilizations"; 2) "factocentrism", when the very fact of the existence of things justifies their existence; 3) "Otherness" has supplanted the concept of "norms". And so on. Conclusion: modern society needs an “ontology for society”, where ontology is understood as a model of authentic, true (but not arbitrary) existence of things.

 

In Memoriam