The Laboratory staff held a section within the framework of the Grushin Sociological Conference dedicated to the memory of Professor, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Philosophy Valentina Iarskaia-Smirnova
Last week the XIV Grushin Sociological Conference “Metamorphoses of Society and the Research Industry: New Challenges” took place, within the framework of which on April 12 our laboratory held the section “Space and Time of Social Change”.
The event was dedicated to the memory of Professor Yuri Gagarin State Technical University, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Philosophy Valentina Iarskaia-Smirnova (08/18/1935-11/12/2023), who until the last days of her life headed the Scientific and Educational Regional Center for Monitoring Research of SSTU (SERCMR).
The section was organized jointly by the IL SIR HSE, VCIOM, SERCMR and CYS HSE and became a platform for the exchange of opinions and presentation of research results of seventeen researchers from the largest research companies and universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Yekaterinburg and other scientific centers. In total, about 50 people from different regions of the country took part in the section. Speakers and listeners sincerely and very warmly recalled their own experience of working with Valentina Nikolaevna, noting her significant contribution to the scientific understanding of the theory, methodology and practice of social care in line with the concepts of temporalism, space and time of social change, social and cultural memory.
The section was opened by the head of the IL SIR, Professor Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, who noted the urgency of the crisis and the changing spatial contours of social experience - those perspectives that were discovered and developed by Valentina Iarskaia-Smirnova, her students and colleagues. These perspectives are focused on the search for methodologies for understanding the spatiotemporal aspects of social change, analysis of social processes developing in the context of modern crises and nonlinear transformations, loaded with memories and experiences of the past and ideas about the future. The first word in the work of the section was taken by the General Director of the publishing house “Social Services”, President of the IPO “Association of Social Service Workers”, Professor Andrei Panov, who spoke about the importance of the research conducted by Valentina Nikolaevna, outlined the directions for further projects in the field of sociology of social work, since “Social work must develop appropriate technologies, and all this will work to strengthen the social health of our state, our society.”
Andrey Panov invited participants to publish in the Domestic Journal of Social Work, which he heads. According to him, it is necessary to study and present to the public the life path of such bright scientists who were at the origins of professional development and developed the specialty “Social work” in our country.
«Borderland», «intuition», «subjectivity», «stability», «differences X Y Z», «sports spaces»- these concepts, at first glance distant from each other, during the expert presentations and subsequent discussion were united under the auspices of the categories of time and space, chronotope, social temporality. Which sociologist working with survey techniques has not dreamed of an ideal respondent who can remember his ideas and aspirations years later. The general director of «Mikhailov and Partners. Analytics» Lyudmila Goryunova. spoke in her report about the three-component memory model and the methodology for working with memory and intuition. This methodology, the fruit of the speaker’s many years of work, is an interdisciplinary concept and a technique for fine-tuning the tools created on its basis. Like Ariadne's thread, the new method allows you to look into the labyrinths of memories.
What is a synchronous-diachronic cross-section of ideas about time? Elena Omelchenko, Yana Krupets and Nadezhda Nartova from the CYS HSE shared the results of research into the intergenerational transformation of Russian youth. Young people of different generations (X, Y, Z) are experiencing changes in their perception of time (from focusing on the future to focusing on the present), in life goals (from achievements to self-development and enjoyment of life), in the understanding of citizenship (from public professional activism to horizontal network participation, citizenship of small affairs within one’s private circle), in relation to health (from an instrumental attitude to attention to oneself, one’s physical and mental health, to routinized care and monitoring).
In her report, the chief researcher of the IL SIR, Maria Kozlova, in collaboration with colleagues Tatyana Ryabichenko and Ekaterina Tkacheva, focused on the value dimension of time, embodied in intergenerational differences. As their research showed, the values of young people are associated with idealistic ideas about what is «European.»Generational differences reveal similar values, but less pronounced «abroad.»Young people include a preponderance of the values of benevolence and caring for others, while for the older generation these values are characterized by «friend»and «good person».
The original speech of VCIOM analyst Alexey Ruchin was based on an analysis of data from public opinion polls. The speaker presented the temporal horizons of planning and perception of the past by different generations: «How do people perceive the best years of their lives? Here is an even more vivid picture of intergenerational differences. Some live in the future, others live in memories. And, of course, when we look at current changes, we understand that some compare this with some expectations, while others compare it with their past events».
Irina Petukhova from the FCTAS RAS (St. Petersburg), in a joint report with Irina Grigorieva, emphasized the need to revise official age limits and drew attention to the trajectory of delayed aging. In particular, the phenomenon of delayed aging is manifested in the expansion of employment beyond the boundaries of retirement age and the expansion of interests beyond the family and grandchildren
Temporality in the section was discussed in the framework of the social chronotope, where social connectedness, plurality and mobility of the boundaries of reference time in different locations, and the perception of memory as a discursive tool in talking about the present are actualized.
Daria Radchenko from STEPS ISS RPANEPA gave a report on the cities of the «borderland»and memories of better times: «Referential time is multiple, mobile. And at the same time, this memory of the golden age is not an end in itself. This is a tool for thinking about the present and the demands of citizens for their city.»Another embodiment of the chronotope is the concept of heterotopia of public spaces, which was addressed by Professor Natalia Lovtsova from MCU, drawing attention to the problems of urban management and the right to the city at different levels, including in the format of student research projects: «Participation and work with heterotopia - this is our actionist project, when our students concluded that communities can fill the space... This is the second year I’ve been observing how the created courtyard sports community is already living without my students.
The fact that the traditional concepts of cohesion, social service and charity in the field of social care «played out»in the perspective of spatiality and temporality was the merit of the speakers from the University of Nizhny Novgorod. Professor Sergey Sudin, in collaboration with Professor Zara Saralieva, discovered «subjectivity»in social work through the optics of individual-spatial continuity and dual nature, the possibility of refracting research views through this optics
Social subjectivity, as shown in the report of Sergei Sudin and Zaretkhan Saralieva, is characterized by individual-spatial continuity and dual nature, generated by individual efforts and external structural factors
Social work is characterized by a crisis of temporality, the experience of crisis moments and a new social reality. Sociologists of SERCMR associate professors of the department of «Philosophy, Sociology, Cultural Studies»of Yuri Gagarin State Technical University Nikolay Bozhok, Natalya Sorokina, Angela Chernetskaya presented a report on the space of social work in the context of the impact of the pandemic crisis and after it. Based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews with specialists from state and non-state social organizations, the results of an analysis of the characteristics of societal response and changes in professional experience in the aspect of crisis temporality were presented. The work was carried out within the framework of project No. 18-18-00321 «Social urbanism as accessibility of the urban environment in the parameters of temporal inequality and concepts of social policy (using the example of Russian provincial cities)»with the support of the Russian Science Foundation
Professor Natalya Veselkova, a well-known researcher of social time from the Department of Applied Sociology of UrFU (Ekaterinburg), shared her memories of her meetings with Valentina Nikolaevna, who at one time friendly and professionally supported the implementation of her scientific project
Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, Bulat Gilfanov (IL SIR, The Journal of Social Policy Research) and Nikita Topkov (IL SIR) presented The Journal of Social Policy Research during the section and during breaks
The moderators of the section were graduates of the Saratov scientific school V.N. Iarskoi-Smirnova, professor at the Civil Defence Academy Emercom of Russia Galina Karpova and professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Elmira Naberushkina.
The disputants - leading research fellows of the IL SIR professors Victoria Antonova and Roman Abramov - summed up the results and generalized the trends in the study of social changes in the discursive frame of space-time. The section showed that in real life society is as nonlinear and diverse as possible, and time and temporality for representatives of a certain social group, community, organization acquire their own features, which are associated with a special feeling and understanding of the changes taking place, superimposed on memories of events and their personal interpretation in context of space and time.
Among the participants in the section, the IL SIR HSE staff members Maria Kozlova, Ekaterina Tkacheva and Tatyana Ryabichenko, and the CYS HSE staff members Elena Omelchenko, Yana Krupets and Nadezhda Nartova presented their reports.
The program and materials of the section can be found here. The video recording of the first part of the section can be found here, the second part is here. Photos are available at the link.
We thank all the organizers and participants of the conference!
And we hope for further fruitful cooperation!
