This study aims to highlight the changes in fertility patterns of Russians which occurred after the USSR’s dissolution or disintegration, taking a long historical perspective. After that disruption, ...thirty cohorts were born and raised who never lived under the Soviet system. Fifteen more cohorts (those who were born between 1975 and 1990) remember that system only as a part of childhood, but their adult life started after the iron curtain had fallen and a flood of new ideas and practices spilled into all spheres of life.
At the same time, the increased concern among the Russian elite about the declining population and low birth rates led to the adoption of a pronatalist family policy based on monetarist approaches reinforced by conservative-traditionalist ideology.
Our main research question asks: To what extent did state social and family policies in Russia, which are based on the ideology of traditionalism and conservatism, derail or slow down the modernization of the quantitative and structural parameters of fertility patterns within the Second Demographic Transition context?
Our analysis is based on indicators from period and cohort fertility tables, specific for age and parity. Extrapolations are used for Russia’s female cohorts born 1971-1994 to arrive at expected ultimate fertility outcomes.
Our evidence, obtained from the comprehensive analysis of fertility tables, reveals that the transformation of the Russian fertility model continues to be in line with the Second Demographic Transition common to developed countries, and that two decades of active pronatalist policy in the context of strengthening the conservative family ideology did not stop the modernization of fertility patterns.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Demographic Developments in Eastern and Western Europe Before and After the Transformation of Socialist Countries”.
In almost all cultures, intriguingly, care has both positive and negative connotations as in taking care of something or somebody and, at the same time, carrying the burden of something or somebody. ...This article claims that this contradictory use of care is a result of the historical development of the meaning of care and that this is a hindrance to understand the meaning of care in our lives. In the course of its historical development, care has been understood as a means to an end; either as care for the self or for others, or as a transition to a higher end. Only in the phenomenological-existential rehabilitation of care in the twentieth century, it has been examined beyond this instrumental conception and placed at the center of who we are. To explain these claims, the article has two sections: the first section offers a historical outline of some of the main theories of care that have been developed; the second section explains the novelty of Heidegger's and Arendt's theories of care. The latter section aims to demonstrate the necessity of understanding care as the source of our existence, and why care cannot be postponed.
This article puts contemporary debates about the relationship between immigration policy and the welfare state in historical perspective. Relying on new historical data, the article examines the ...relationship between immigration policy and social policy in Western Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the modern welfare state emerged. Germany already had comparably strict immigration policies when the German Empire introduced the world’s first national social insurances in the 1880s. Denmark, another early social-policy adopter, also pursued restrictive immigration policies early on. Almost all other countries in Western Europe started out with more liberal immigration policies than Germany’s and Denmark’s, but then adopted more restrictive immigration policies and more generous social policies concurrently. There are two exceptions, Belgium and Italy, which are discussed in the article.
The basic facts of China’s economic development have called into question Western transition economic theory, most famously presented in the works of János Kornai. On the other hand, the three most ...representative approaches to explaining China’s development experience have variously emphasized the resource endowment structure, or the property rights system, or the incentive mechanism behind the behavior of local governments, as the key to China’s economic development. Although they focus on different dimensions of China’s economic practices, they ultimately converge on the logic of marketism as the explanation. The “social science of practice” approach proposed by Philip Huang is distinguished from these orthodox theories in that, first, it attends to the rise of the huge informal economy in China and reveals the historical roots of contemporary social inequality. This approach has three closely related characteristics: theoretical formulations based on analyses of paradoxical phenomena, a broad historical perspective on current problems, and the idea of substantive justice. The main significance of this approach lies not only in its insightful and practice-focused understanding of the key realities that have been ignored by mainstream theories, but, more importantly, in its multiple inspirations for constructing a social science theory that incorporates Chinese subjectivity.
In the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) the right of States to control migration is firmly established despite strong indications that the effects of migration control are not ...racially neutral. In this article we attempt to understand how it is possible that the doctrine of sovereign migration control is not considered to breach the prohibition of racial discrimination. We argue that the ECtHR’s approach to migration and racial discrimination fits a pattern in the historical development of migration law whereby the right to travel, and the power of States to restrict this right, have been consistently defined in such a way as to protect the interests of the predominantly white population of today's global North. Hence, the ease with which the racialised impact of migration control is accepted as normal and compatible with the prohibition of racial discrimination is consistent with migration law's long history as part of colonial and postcolonial relations.
In 1907 – 1923 in Kharkov a non-periodical collection of works of the so-called "Kharkov school" – the followers of A.A. Potebnja and A.N. Veselovskiy – was published. Its title was "Questions of ...Theory and Psychology of Creativity". This article deals with the works included in this collection and in one way or another connected with the theory of poetic creativity. I show that some ideas of the researchers of the "Kharkov school" are still relevant for the philosophy of poetic creativity and philosophy of education and analyze the relevance of D.N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky’s, A. Gornfeld’s, T. Raynov’s and P. Engelmeier’s works for the contemporary philosophy.
These works are examined from the point of view of their modern character and relevance for the philosophy of poetic creativity, as well as usefulness for the philosophy of education. D.N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky analyzes the lyrical feeling that arises in the reader- interpreter reading a poetic work. We emphasize the importance of lyrical feeling in teaching as well. Gornfeld addresses the ideas of Potebnja recognizing any artistic work as symbolic and allegorical, as well as postulating an infinite number of possible interpretations of each artwork. This fact is also important for the education process. T. Raynov writes a chapter called “Lyrics of Scientific and Philosophical Creativity,” which also studies factors important for the philosophy of education. He analyses the factors influencing the way an individual conceives the problem being solved and solved, which may well be a teaching one. Finally, Engelmeyer intends to establish his science of creativity - Evrology. We also show that a reflection on teaching can be developed in parallel with his arguments about creativity.
This article analyses the development of the sociology of culture in Czechia. Its focus is on the sociology of the arts and cultural sociology, which, it is argued, are connected through the notion ...of the relative autonomy of cultural structures. While the Czech sociology of culture may have been rendered less dynamic by the lack of a critical mass of sociologists specialising in this area and by the country’s frequent political upheavals and its isolation from the international circulation of ideas, it has experienced moments of considerable vitality. Three periods in the development of the field are identified here, each of them marked by a movement toward a stronger and more sociologically adequate conceptualisation of cultural autonomy: (1) from the diffuse culturalism of the field’s founding figures to the functionalist theory of the interwar sociologist Inocenc Arnošt Bláha, whose view of the relationship between art and society was influenced by the work of the Prague School of Structuralism; (2) from the cultural reductionism of Marxist-Leninist theory after 1948 to the eclectic sociology of culture and the arts of the late socialist period; (3) from the demise of this transitional form of a sociology of culture in the 1990s to the increasingly internationalised but also heterogeneous landscape of the 2010s, which is constituted by a semi-institutionalised centre of cultural sociology at Brno and small groups or individuals in Prague and other academic locales. The thread of continuity in an otherwise discontinuous historical development is found in the recurrent motif of the relative autonomy of culture which the Czech sociology of culture absorbed through its exposure to art and literary theory.
This article presents an overview of the emergence of online news sites, which has radically altered news provision and media consumption patterns in Morocco. This sector has rapidly become a ...strategic site. Firstly, its precedence over print media and national television networks does not only stem from the high traffic figures of news websites. Along with certain social platforms, these websites are the only vehicules for 24/7 news in a country which currently has just one such news channel and where, in spite of the ‘liberalisation’ of media, national networks provide very institutionalised news programs based on the activities of the state official institutions and of the monarchy. Secondly, certain domestic Arabic-language news websites have become the main platform for the voicing of political dissent. Based on 31 interviews, the article briefly describes the historical development of the online press, since the ‘February 20th Movement’ of 2011. This case study provides a good example of the new challenges surrounding the control of information: an issue long shaped by the limitation of news provision to duly authorised political and journalistic organisations and by limited ‘demand’ resulting from widespread illiteracy. This article describes how the Moroccan establishment react to the explosive growth of online news media by creating new mechanisms to control it.
This paper focuses on school choice and diversity in the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) in historical context. Drawing on primary and secondary documentary sources it assesses ...continuity, change and divergence, before addressing existing diversity and school choice, and academic outcomes. The 1944 Education Act and associated legislation established, in each country, a system of state-funded church and state schools, comprising, academically selective (grammar) and non-selective secondary schools, with test scores determining whether the child was allocated to a selective or non-selective school. The paper argues that there has been broad continuity in Northern Ireland, whilst from 1965 England, Wales and Scotland diverged when school systems were reorganized - to a greater or lesser extent - along comprehensive lines. From the 1980s, parental "choice" (and diversity) policies were implemented in all countries, albeit differently. It is argued that existing school diversity across the UK is associated with distinctive histories and political ideas, and with varying levels and types of school selectivity and social segregation. Furthermore, the institutional rules regarding who is prioritized for a school place in the event of oversubscription - particularly in the case of selective and religious schools - can constrain parental choice as they enable schools to "select in" and "select out" certain students. Whilst improving educational standards was a key goal for the Conservative government when it introduced market-oriented reforms in England, evidence points to improved academic outcomes being related to changes in assessment policy.
By analysing racist moments, this article engages with debates about the existence of racism in Mexico and how whiteness, as an expression of such racism, operates. It draws on empirical research ...that explores Mexican women's understandings of mestizaje (mixed-race discourses) and experiences of racism. It assesses how racism is lived, its distributed intensity, within the specific racist logics that organize everyday social life. I build upon arguments that Latin American racist logics emerge from the lived experience of mestizaje and its historical development as a political ideology and a complex configuration of national identity. Mestizaje enables whiteness to be experienced as both normalized and ambiguous, not consistently attached to the (potentially) whiter body, but as a site of legitimacy and privilege.
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