The Researchers of the Lab Performed at the VI Conference in Memory of Kryshtanovsky in Moscow
On February 1 -3, 2012 several researchers of the Lab participated in the VI conference in memory of A. Kryshtanovsky "Contemporary Sociology to Modern Russia".
On February 1-3, 2012 in Moscow the VI conference in memory of A. Kryshtanovsky "Contemporary Sociology to Modern Russia" was held. Several researchers of the Laboratory: Daniel Alexandrov, Eduard Ponarin, Svetlana Savelieva , Daria Khodorenko , Veronica Kostenko, Irina Khvan, Alexey Gorgadze.
The conference is mostly methodological; it is organized by the Department of Sociology of HSE and Russian Society of Sociologists and held annually since 2006. This year seven members of the Laboratory went to the conference (compared with only two last year), not only professors and experienced researchers, but also bachelor students who are working at the Laboratory. Participation in the conference was particularly important for them as for the students it was the first experience of speaking to the sociological community. All the reports are the result of collective work of Lab’s team of researchers.
Report by Daniel Alexander and Inessa Tarusina "Methods of Analyzing Leaders’ Interaction in Local Communities" was presented at the section "Methodological Innovations and Experiments in Contemporary Social Science" (directed by O. Oberemko). The objective of the research was to identify methods which represent the leaders of local communities and links between them. It allows discovering the importance of individuals and social institutions in the community, for example, the influence of employers, schools and other institutions on the lives of local communities. Practically in all the settlements that were surveyed schools, houses of culture, and community services tend to be the most important for interactions of locals. These institutions together form the physical and social infrastructure of the settlement. Thus, structural analysis of local communities reveals the leaders and interactions between them.
Svetlana Savelieva presented a joint report with Maria Petrova. Svetlana spoke on tracking and social selection in educational markets in the section "Sociology of Markets" (directed by V.V. Radaev): "The educational market is working as a system of competitive relations in which parents and students are consumers, as well as schools are providers. We have paid attention at the school market in Russia. It has been described that the educational reforms of the 2000s stimulated the development of a competitive environment, thus exacerbating inequality and segmentation of the market of educational services. In such conditions market is significantly determined by parental demand. It was proven that the local educational markets are added to the social and ethnic segregation with different demand and supply. Pattern is found: when a large market of educational services is available to the various schools, the segmentation is formed between the schools and there is no segmentation between classes within schools, but if the market of educational services is severely limited, there is a need for tracking and sorting students in the classes. "
Daria Khodorenko presented the results of a collective project of studying the quality of schools. She told about the problem of designing a questionnaire for students and teachers aimed to measure the characteristics of the social organization of schools: academic culture, a sense of belonging, collective efficacy, satisfaction with school life.
Daniel Alexandrov and Eduard Ponarin participated in the round table "International Aspects of Social Studies of Russia: Setting the Agenda" (moderator A. Bessudnov), dedicated to the internationalization of Russian science. As Eduard Ponarin told, the discussants concluded that young sociologists are appearing in Russia; some of them publish their articles in leading international journals, but we still do not have enough young scholars in our field. In this regard, a number of measures (particularly, institutional) must be taken to improve the situation. For example, it was proposed that HSE should establish a new international English-language peer-reviewed journal.
Veronica Kostenko performed at the section "Practical Implications of Qualitative Research Methodology in Life Strategies Studies" with a report on the method of collective video interviews in the study of ideal and actual views on the future of migrant children. The report presents information collected during the preparation of the project "Parallel Petersburg." Interviews were collected not individually, but in the presence and participation of the entire class. The process was theatrized by using make-up, light, microphones and video cameras. This provided interesting narratives, but there are some difficulties in processing this information, because it is unclear whether students tell the truth in this situation or not.
Irina Hwan and Alexey Gorgadze, bachelor students of HSE, presented a report on ethnic communities in social networks in the section "Network Analysis of Communication and Information Processes" (directed by G.V. Gradoselskaya). It was their first experience of participating in the "adult" conference. Their study was about ethnic communities in the social network "Facebook". They presented the results of a collective project (Mary Margaryan, Egine Sukiasyan, Veronica Kostenko, Marina Ostapenko, and Kyril Sukharev). Their performance consisted of three parts: educational migration, ethnic student community and network analysis of the ethnic groups. Alexey and Irina demonstrated the logics of research and talked about plans for the future development of the project.
At the conference many interesting reports were provided, some of them are particularly important for Laboratory, because it develops those topics on which our research team is working. Participants were invited to write articles on the subject of their reports which will be published in the annual proceedings of the conference. Now researchers are working on the preparation of articles and texts for publication.
by Veronica Kostenko