The article examines the sociology of religion as one of the spheres of sociological cognition, as well as those approaches to the definition of religion that predetermined the specifics of the development and self-identification of the sociology of religion in the system of scientific knowledge. The author compares various ideas about religion that exist in everyday consciousness, definitions of religion in the system of theology and its scientific interpretations. At the same time, it is emphasized that recently the efforts of scientists have begun to focus on finding a new, more balanced and universal approach to the definition of religion, although any attempt to give a final definition of religion is doomed to be limited and debatable.
The heterogeneity of the tools and approaches used by the sociology of religion has created a serious problem of its place in the structure of sociological knowledge. The sociology of religion is most often identified either with religious sociology or with an autonomous branch in the horizontal structure of sociology. These two scientific identities of the sociology of religion appear both blurred and limited. Without denying the value of generally accepted directions for the sociological analysis of religion, the author reveals a lot of diverse and heterogeneous directions, within which both classics of sociological science who studied religion and modern sociologists worked. As a result, the sociology of religion is simply an arbitrary set of topics, including the analysis of fundamental works of a predominantly socio-philosophical nature, replete with religious terms that are incomprehensible to a reader unfamiliar with at least the basics of religious studies, especially to a student, seriously complicates the understanding of the essence and methodology of the sociological analysis of religion. For this purpose, the article differentiates and structures the subject Jeld of sociological analysis of religion, highlights its most promising fields of research.
The author argues that it is appropriate to talk about the sociological analysis of religion, which has developed and continues to develop within the framework of two major, but equivalent directions. The first focuses on the sociological knowledge of religion in line with the general modern sociological theory, in a broad social context, as one of the subsystems of the general, societal system, organically interconnected with its other subsystems — cultural, social, political, etc. A special place within this direction is occupied by the analysis of religion as a social phenomenon and social institution, social functions and dysfunctions of the latter, including the intensive process of politicization of religion. The second is based on an internal analysis of religion and various religious doctrines, primarily from the point of view of those social relations that are formed within their framework. The perspective focus of the second direction is the social functions of various religions, their influence on the moral values and worldview of individuals and social groups, the peculiarities of manifestation in people’s daily lives, the peculiarities of the formation and functioning of new religious movements, including totalitarian religious cults and sects.

The article deals with the features of sociological analysis of religion in Russia during the imperial period of its history. The national sociological tradition of studying religion as a socio-cultural phenomenon and a social institution, which was developed during this period, had its own unique and peculiar appearance and was just begun to revive again in post-Soviet Russia, contrasts with the tradition that took place in the West. In this context, the appeal to unfortunately undeservedly forgotten works of classics of Russian religious and socio-political though is very promising area of modern sociological research.

When studying this problem, the author emphasizes the study of the works of representatives of three ideological areas of Russian religious and socio-political thought: conservatism, liberalism and socialism, as well as the peculiarities of the historical development of Russian society and the state and those events that had a significant impact on the formation and development of scientific understanding of religion in Russia. Among such features, the author, in particular, refers to the formation of an “antisystem” (systemic integrity of people who take a dim view of their homeland, hate their own nation, its values and culture, history, traditional religious, political and social systems) among the Russian intelligentsia, bureaucracy and part of the elite of Russian society, under a certain influence of Westernism, as a consequence of the spiritual schism of the 18th century, which occurred in the educated strata and elite of Russian society.

When studying the features of understanding religious issues by representatives of Russian liberalism, the author of the article analyzes the views of representatives of both radical and moderate (classical) liberalism: M.M. Kovalevsky, N.I. Kareev, P.N. Milyukov, V.S. Solovyov, B.N. Chicherin, P.B. Struve. He notes that the understanding of this issue was carried out by these authors from a “Westernist” position. Liberal thinkers generally negatively assessed the religious situation, as well as state-confessional relations in imperial Russia. They proposed a number of reforms in this area and, in particular, spoke of the need to separate the church from the state.

The text is a part of the project for the historical reconstruction of the Soviet regional sociology of religion in the late Soviet Middle Volga region. The process of the development of the discipline is studied primarily from the point of view of the interaction of the state-party apparatus and various groups of the scientific community. This approach is dominant in the study of the revival of sociology in the USSR. The weak side of the issue is its historiography that remains the problem at the regional level. The research is based mainly on the set of sociological data, on documents discovered by the author in historical archives, on the works of domestic and foreign researchers, and author’s expert interview. The author’s point of view is that, first of all, the development of the regional sociology of religion was influenced by the state-party order created by the need for scientific support of the Soviet atheistic campaigns. There was also a significant public demand for the services of the sociology of religion. The flip side of the CPSU’s enthusiasm for sociology turned out to be ideological diktat over scientific activity. The ideological and corporate interests of various groups engaged in the ideological service of party politics hindered the institutionalization in the region of both sociological science in general and the sociology of religion as its particular discipline. The article describes various barriers to the institutionalization of regional sociological science at the union, regional and intra-university levels. Political fluctuations have negatively affected the development of discipline. Since the early 1970s in most republics and regions of the Middle Volga region, it is going through a stagnation period.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the sociological work of famous researchers — Ann Oakley, Donna Haraway, Shulamit Firestone and Judith Butler, who worked within the framework of the feminist paradigm in sociology, which interprets social phenomena and processes from a femininocentric point of view. The work of these women sociologists has become a kind of intellectual manifesto — a written statement of the scientific principles of the feminist trend in sociology, based on the belief in the constant discrimination of women in all spheres of social life.
Ie author analyzes the works of a bright representative of the liberal-reformist trend in feminism, Ann Oakley, whose scientific work is divided into four areas: “sex and gender”, “domestic work and family life”, “childbirth and medicine” and “sociology proper”. Exactly E. Oakley is considered the ancestor of the concept of “gender” in sociology. She divorced the concepts of “gender” (gender) as an unshakable biological attribute and as a cultural determinant that determines the conceptualization of “masculinity” and “femininity”.
The article pays enough attention to one of the founders of cyberfeminism — a trend in modern feminist thought associated with the study of cyberspace, the Internet and information technology — Donna Jean Haraway, whose greatest fame was brought by the “cyborg theory”. A cyborg is a being whose borderline position at the intersection of the boundaries between nature and culture, body and mind, sex and gender, fact and fiction, serves as an argument for denying biological sex as a determinant of gender inequality in culture and society.
A significant place in the article is occupied by the figure of Shulamit Firestone, one of the founders of radical feminism. Her works, based on the fusion of ideas borrowed from Marxism, feminism and psychoanalysis, carried out a subtle scientific analysis that allowed linking the structures of gender inequality and economic stratification, as well as environmental degradation and the policy of scientific knowledge. In a style that later became a hallmark of feminist works of the 1970s, Sh. Firestone showed clear and internal links between the generally accepted expression of heterosexuality, “forced femininity” and the institutionalization of gender inequality.
At the end of the article, the author turns to the work of Judith Butler, a representative of poststructuralism, a specialist in the Jeld of phenomenology and theory of gender, who opposes the existentialist vision of the problems of personality and being, culture and general human physiology, the interdependence between gender and sexual relations.
In general, the works of modern theorists of sociology and at the same time feminist sociologists have set new fields of sociological search, these feminist sociologists call for the construction of a new model of society, up to the establishment of a “new gender order” at the macro and micro levels of social life.

Based on the results of an empirical study, the article analyzes some features of the socialization of Russian youth in modern society. The authors focus on the perception of the state by the youth, the problems facing it, as well as the analysis of the effectiveness of the project activities of the younger generation. The article concludes about the stereotyping of the Russian state, about the existence of rigid cognitive structures in the minds of the younger generation that limit its innovative potential. The authors believe that modern Russian youth is not ready to actualize and solve the global problems facing Russia. Equally important is the conclusion about the imitative nature of the system of development of project competencies of young people. This leads to a shortage of innovative leaders, technological and social entrepreneurs, and effective project managers.

This article is devoted to the theoretical and methodological problems of conceptualizing a new branch of sociological knowledge — digital sociology. The transfer of various aspects of human life to the virtual space (to social networks and new media) has created a number of challenges for the classical social sciences that have never been faced before. The main one is the assessment of the impact of social processes taking place in virtual space on the reality around us. Today, the phenomena emerging on the Internet are invading our “physical” world with increasing intensity, the so-called “real virtuality” is being formed. At the same time, an important aspect is the reverse effect on the virtual world of the processes taking place in social reality.
The response to the virtualization of social life was the emergence of a new branch of sociological science — digital sociology. Having originated in the mid-2000s, it is actively developing: the problem Jeld is being clarified, its subject is being concretized, and the methodological toolkit is expanding. At the same time, there are also problems, “bottlenecks” that require comprehension and scientific overcoming.
Within the framework of this scientific article, the processes of virtualization of public life, the essence and features of an electronic social network account are considered, the author’s definition of digital sociology is formed, the methodological toolkit is characterized, and the advantages and challenges of digital sociology are identified.

Introduction of digital technologies in all spheres of life is a factor that radically change the social interactions and mechanisms of social control. This rising trend, that turn the various digital technologies into main form of realization of “the social” is complex and contradictory. We are confronted more and more with multiplicity of social control with simultaneous unification of its procedures, determined by digital technologies. The functions of social control are transferred from human actors to machines and algorithms. The social control is automated. Under the cover of objectivity and neutrality such automatization contains political, economical and ideological imperatives. The machine has human core, yet difficult to discern. Implementation of algorithmic forms of governance, based on Big Data, significantly increases the scope of population monitoring and shifts the “power logic” to control and construction of opinions, creation of the demands, mobilizing action in accordance with the prescribed standards of conduct. COVID-19 Pandemic enhanced the activities of national States to take advantage of digital control over the population. In fact, during few months of quarantine measures in most countries unprecedented in its global reach and universal in their technical solutions instruments of control over the population have been deployed. In doing so the digital social control generates very specific forms of social asymmetry. There remains an open question: who has access to information, generated by the machines of control. For the development of modern smart cities and digitalization of social practices relevant and correct data are needed. Сompromise between citizens’ rights to privacy and rapid development of new smart technologies is inevitable. Personal data collected not only by the State but also by private corporations, especially by owners of digital platforms. Rights to obtain and use data need to be regulated and rules set for their commercial application. COVID-19 Pandemic, accelerating implementation of digital social control, reduced “public sensitivity” to violation of private borders for the sake of security. The need for a rapid response to COVID-19 changes the rules of the game as to how сitizens, organizations and authorities in different countries deal with personal data and actualizes the question, where the balance lies between confidentiality of personal data and public health and/or security.

The process of socialization continues throughout person’s life, but at different stages of development, individuals give preference to different social practices. With age, the importance of various types of practices changes. In a postindustrial society, there are significant changes in the criteria for choosing and configuring social practices by people of the “third age”.
The article presents the original structure of social practices for analyzing the aging of the population in modern conditions. The authors identified three types of social practices: procreation practices, production and labor practices, as well as supra-natural practices. They can complement or substitute each other, as well as overlap each other. In different historical conditions and cultural contexts, these relationships between these practices change significantly.
With regard to individuals, the authors propose to use the short names of the three types of social practices — family, work and leisure. The most obvious way of replacing and complementing these social practices is manifested at different stages of an individual’s life - in childhood, adulthood, and old age. Until recently, reaching the retirement age presupposed the termination of labor practices. Today, more and more retirees can, should and/or want to continue working. This basic change has had a significant impact on the interrelation of social practices in the “third age”. At the intersection of work and leisure practices, educational programs for pensioners began to actively develop, which until recently was perceived as an “exotic”. Family practices are also changing for working pensioners: they are increasingly able to provide financial assistance to children.
In the postindustrial society, the leisure practices of pensioners have become extremely diverse. Along with those which have already taken their place in the life of older people for a relatively long time (attending various kinds of cultural events, sports and travel), practices related to active participation in social and political life, as well as a healthy lifestyle, began to develop.
The triad of social practices proposed by the authors makes possible not only to identify peculiarities of modern pensioners’ life strategies, but also to determine the dimensions in social work with them that require improvement.

Over the past decades, millions of freelancers, free agents, and individual entrepreneurs have appeared in the world, carrying out their activities in both traditional and innovative sectors of the economy. In international practice, all these people are traditionally classified as self-employed (self-employed people). In Russia, the most “small” individual entrepreneurs who do not hire workers and carry out economic activities on a small scale are considered self-employed. They received substantial tax benefits. The article summarizes the results of an Internet survey, the purpose of which was to identify the characteristic features of the portrait of the Russian self-employed, as well as structural and dynamic features of the construction of life strategies of the self-employed. There are three main strategies for building a career for the self-employed in the labor market and their essential characteristics: the strategy of “business expansion”, the strategy of “finding opportunities”, the strategy of “dynamic stability”.

From a sociological point of view, mergers and acquisitions of companies are specific types of integration between social systems. The unions of countries are an analogue of these processes at the macrosocial level. There are a number of important similarities between these seemingly different unifying processes. Like countries’ unions, associations of companies can be voluntary or involuntary (friendly or unfriendly). Unification may not threaten the interests of the lower levels of the social system, but may cause fear and opposition from the elites. Finally, the specificity, ease and effectiveness of associations depend on the institutional context in which they take place.
The most important institutional difference between associations of countries and associations of organizations is the prohibition on the violent seizure of states (in accordance with the principle of inviolability of borders) when invoking and even approving hostile takeovers in the market economy.
Participation management as an implementation of the general trend towards democratization of organizations in the post-industrial era is also one of the elements of the institutional context of mergers and acquisitions. Its three components — capital, sharing, profit sharing and participation in decision making — transform the unifying processes in a specific way. In general, it becomes easier to carry out mergers and acquisitions, since in the conditions of participation management and self-government of independent groups (teams); the formation of a new social system is not a clash of the previously existed hierarchies of power, but the addition of new participants in the intra-organizational market.

This article examines measures to combat coronavirus infection on the example of China’s practical experience, analyzes the negative consequences of the pandemic that have affected all aspects of society. The development of the digital transformation of the production and distribution of cultural content in China, the development of the Internet and artificial intelligence, thanks to which the “new infrastructure” will penetrate the cultural industry through a variety of channels. A sociological analysis of the study of children’s opinions and difficulties in online education in China was conducted. The success of Chinese folk medicine, which was one of the symbols of the successful struggle of the People’s Republic of China against the pandemic, the use of herbal medicine, which involves laser treatment of medicinal herbs, and massage and hirudotherapy is supplemented with quantum technologies, are considered.
The pandemic as a global phenomenon has exacerbated the issue of solidarity relations of people around the world has had a significant impact on the economic, political, social and cultural spheres of life, becoming a traumatic factor for all countries of the world. In this regard, the authors of the article point out the importance of combining the efforts of different countries to solve the global problem of the ability to quickly mobilize and consolidate all layers of the world community during a pandemic. An ideological approach of global solidarity in the fight against coronavirus is proposed, where the goal is to intensify international cooperation in order to contain the spread of infection around the world.

The article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the behavioral health practices of Russian citizens. The coronavirus has created an unstable environment around the world, forced people to adapt to a changing way of life. People realized their own vulnerability and loss of control over their lives, which forced them to act outside the usual context and routine schemes and change their attitude to corporeality. Epidemic and lockdowns urged people to comply with the prescribed precautions, but that also provoked divisions among social groups following the evolvement of different strategies, opinions and behavioral norms related to new rules and restrictions. Based on the analysis of the latest statistical publications and data, the article attempts to assess the consequences of “covid dissidence”. Compliance with restrictive measures and vaccination is considered not only as a strategy of self-preservation for each individual, but also as an act of altruism in relation to their fellow citizens. In this work, the author analyzes the impact of the epidemic on the mental health of people, and also dwells on the role of the family as a significant agent that can protect against the harmful psycho-traumatic effects of the “pandemic of fear” as well as exacerbate its influence, hence instilling certain behavioral habits.
Author deals with the question of how to create discourses about the importance of vaccination and the observance of restrictive measures, not only as an act of self-preservation, but as a responsible behavior towards relatives, friends and compatriots.
The empirical basis of the work is the data of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Federal State Statistics Service, the Public Opinion Foundation and the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion.

The problem of artificial termination of pregnancy remains one of the unsolved problems of our time. The article presents the concept and structural feature of the phenomenon of artificial termination of pregnancy. The traditional approach to the study of the phenomenon, which is based on the category “society”, is considered. The insufficiency of this approach is explained: the limitation of the social aspect of the study of the phenomenon, an incomplete idea of the reasons for its spread. The article analyzes the approach to the study of social reality based on the category “social practice”, which appeared in sociology at the turn of the 1980. The analysis showed that this approach is aimed at studying not the phenomena themselves, but the repeated actions of individuals, the totality of which is a social practice. The article presents the stages of the formation of social practice, its signs, based on which the author came to the conclusion that the set of actions for termination of pregnancy, reproduced by individual individuals, is a social practice, which means that the proposed approach is possible to study the phenomenon of artificial termination of pregnancy. It will make it possible to trace the process of formation of the social practice of artificial termination of pregnancy, to determine its impact on the behavior of an individual and on social subjects; to identify a set of reasons that influence an individual’s decision to terminate pregnancy; which together will lead to the definition and development of more effective methods of regulating the practice of artificial termination of pregnancy.

This work is a continuation of the series of articles dedicated to the genesis of lobbying in Russia. The article examines the specifics of the formation of the institution of lobbying from the moment of the collapse of the USSR to the present day. It is shown that the development of lobbying depended both on the transformations of the political system as well as on the changing norms of interaction between interest groups and the government. The development of lobbying over the past 30 years has passed through three stages: a chaotic period of structural transformations in 1991–1993, the stage of development of the democratic system and oligarchic economy in 1993–2003, the genesis of the vertical of power from 2003 to the present. Specifics of the institution of lobbying in Russia is determined by several key components. First, it is shaped by the interest groups system, which circles around large corporations and business associations. Second, lobbying is determined by the structure of power and decision making, with the President of the Russian Federation, the Administration of the President and the Government being major institutional stakeholders for lobbyists. Third, the development of lobbying depends on modes of interaction between interests groups and public officials which basically remains mostly in the shadows. A fundamental problem in the development of lobbying in Russia is that both the executive bodies and the parliament are closed, non-public power structures, access to which for external groups is generally not systematized. This leads to the elitist, oligarchic tendencies of lobbying means that only few privileged groups enjoy access to the decision-making system.

The article is dedicated to the comparative content-analysis of the two excerpts, considering foreign political leadership theories for the Russian readers and researches and related to the different stages of Soviet and Russian political science development. There are also quotative and quotative analyses of the theories provided by the author.