This article comprehensively examines the problem of social construction of a healthy personality, which, in the context of numerous socio-political upheavals, under the influence of external destructive factors, becomes particularly relevant.

The concept of “personality”, in contrast to the ethically neutral concept of psychophysical and spiritual individuality, it includes a moment of self-determination in the social world. A personality is always characterized by its inherent semantic structure (a system of views, values, ideas), revealed in actions and deeds that are somehow connected with a broader social environment – society and are formed under its influence. Modern social sciences consider personality as a structural integrity of biological, mental and social properties, which gives rise to the identification of several components within the framework of an integral personality structure: biological, mental and social. Similarly, the category of “health” has physical, mental, social and spiritual components that lend themselves to social construction.

The author cites the data of a sociological study conducted by him, according to which both the physical, mental and spiritual health of modern Russian students cannot be considered good. In this regard, he discusses discussions about how it is possible to construct a completely healthy personality, or to restore to it any of the lost components of health using a variety of methods and technologies that differ significantly in their scientific validity and social orientation. Undoubtedly useful methods of strengthening both physical and mental health include those aimed at strengthening the body’s defenses, its self-regulation systems and stress resistance. Thus, such fairly common and scientifically based methods as relaxation and coping, auto-suggestion, creative visualization and common sense therapy seem quite appropriate. In our opinion, pseudoscientific and sometimes destructive methods include extrasensory perception (psychic healing, telekinesis and psychokinesis), karmic medicine, including biofield correction and neuro-linguistic programming. All these methods, as well as the consequences of their application in terms of possibilities in constructing a healthy personality, are discussed in detail in thе article.

In the context of ageing, the problem of health among older adults needs special attention. The article attempts to analyze key health indicators among older people, their perception and acceptance of their own age, as well as the perception of them by others. The article also analyzes processes of inclusion of older people in the economic, social, and cultural life. Trying to determine the age boundaries of an old age, the author comes to the conclusion that it is impossible to identify a single correct classification, due to the heterogeneity of the “elderly” group, the discrepancy between their views on life, the difference in health status and their perceptions of illnesses. The analysis factors influencing this heterogeneity will help to understand the main problems of life expectancy and will make it possible to develop more effective programs to prolong a healthy lifestyle and active aging. The author analyzes such health indicators as: life expectancy, healthy life expectancy, self-assessment of health, social and medical literacy of the elderly population. The author does not ignore the COVID-19 pandemic, which had an impact on physical and mental health of older people, as they were the main risk group during the pandemic.

The article is based on the results of the most significant and recent Russian and foreign works in the fields of sociology of ageing and sociology of health. The methodological basis of the work is a secondary analysis of research data from the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), etc.

The article deals with digital mediatization of health in the sociological discourse and its main directions. Noting that the issues of the impact of traditional media on health attitudes and behavior have been sufficiently developed in the domestic research field, the author focuses on the importance of the elaboration the problems of social construction of youth health in the era of digital media. This is caused by the active “habitulization” of digital technologies, as a result of which they act for young people as the main sources and generators of social knowledge about health, its risks and health-saving practices. Based on the results of a review of relevant publications, the features of sociological discourse are highlighted and research prospects in the development of this topic are defined. The author also puts attention to the necessity of using adequate approaches to analyze ongoing changes and study them. According to the author, a perspective theoretical and methodological framework is the concept of mediatization by German sociologists F. Krotz and A. Hepp. Based on this, the work presents a definition of mediatization of the health sector and key aspects of its study.

The central concepts of the subject area we are considering are two categories – healthy lifestyle and sober lifestyle. Definitions of key terms in the subject area under consideration are considered. The component composition of the concept of healthy lifestyle is analyzed. It is concluded that a healthy lifestyle is a much broader concept, and the term “sober lifestyle” is included in its semantic spectrum. A cause-and-effect relationship between the concepts has been discovered; there is an obvious one: a sober lifestyle is the first step to a healthy lifestyle. At the same time, a contradiction was discovered in the relationship between the concepts of healthy lifestyle and sober lifestyle in everyday mass consciousness: complete abstinence from alcohol is perceived by the public as an anomalous pattern that does not fit into the idea of a conventional social standard. Absolute sobriety is still considered a deviation, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle does not exclude violations of a sober lifestyle. An assumption has been made that the categories “sober lifestyle” and “healthy lifestyle” are located in different dimensions of a person’s worldview – in the mental-volitional and functional (activity) ones, respectively. The article concludes with possible approaches to studying the relationship between the concepts of a healthy and sober lifestyle.

This article is devoted to the study of social phenomena of physical culture and sports, as one of the significant and promising areas of modern sociological research. Starting with a reference to the understanding in Russian legislation of the content of the concepts of “physical culture” and “sport”, as well as their relationship with each other, the author of the article draws attention to the importance of studies of ideas about social phenomena of physical culture and sports that have developed among various groups of the population, in particular, among young people. To identify these ideas in youth, and above all, in its most active part – student youth from September 4 to 8, 2023, he conducted an author’s pilot empirical study “Social phenomena of physical culture and sports” among bachelor students of the sociological faculty of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov 1–3 courses in two areas of training – “Sociology”, as well as “Public policy and social sciences”.

             As part of this study, students were asked to answer blocks of questions aimed at identifying the motivation and involvement of student youth in physical education and sports. The author’s analysis of the results of the study showed that between physical education and sports, students of the sociological faculty of Moscow State University do not see much difference, actually identifying them, and more than half of students actually identify physical education with the discipline taught by him at the university. At the same time, the process of communication in virtual space (in networks, chats, blogs, etc.), communication with friends, as well as walks in the fresh air, for students of the sociological faculty of Moscow State University are more priority than the activities of physical education and sports themselves.

             This article is devoted to understanding the essence of “The Great Game”, that is, the policy of containing the development of Russia by Anglo-Saxon elites and powers (dating back more than two centuries), representatives of Anglo-Saxon geopolitical thought. Perceiving Russia as the main obstacle to achieving its global geopolitical hegemony, Anglo-Saxon elites and powers actively waged large-scale diplomatic, economic, information wars and battles against Russia, military operations, conducted operations to organize coups d’etat and “revolutions”, trying to destroy Russia both by actions from outside and undermining it from within. Naturally, to justify this kind of policy, a certain ideological justification and information support was required, which were carried out in particular by English and American geopolitics.

             The author emphasizes that the ideological justification of the “Great Game” by Anglo-Saxon geopolitics began in the classical period of the development of geopolitics, a characteristic feature of which was the unlimited dominance of the ideas of geographical determinism, which interprets the entire course of the development of human civilization as fundamental geopolitical dualism – the confrontation between two different powerful types of human civilizations and states – the powers of the Sea (sea, colonial powers) and Land (continental, land powers). The author considers the geopolitical concepts of the founders of the American and English national schools of geopolitics – A.T. Mahan, J.H. McKinder, N. Spikeman, formulated the main ideas of Atlantism – the geopolitical theory and practice of the collective West, NATO member countries that assign a leading role in world history to maritime states and civilizations.

             Within the framework of the modern period of the development of Anglo-Saxon political thought (which is characterized by the development of geeconomic concepts and a civilizational approach), the author of the article analyzes the views of American globalist geopolitics – J. Kennan, G. Kissinger, F. Fukuyama, Zb. Brzezinski, S. Huntington, as well as one of the founders of the civilizational approach – the English historian A. Toynbee,  as well as the concept of the “death of the West” P. Buchanan.

The United States of America is living through today one of the most acute socio-political crises in its history. The United States is in a state of deep social, political and economic fracture, which affects political and economic efficiency, leads to significant social dysfunctions and delegitimization of the political system. The author argues that current crisis differs from other crises that the United States had faced in its history. There is a layering of several crises that accumulated over time and eventually merged into a single stream. Describing current crisis in the USA, the author proposes to use the concept of a polycrisis - a relatively rare phenomenon in the socio-political development of any country, implying a simultaneous violation of stability, a breakdown in several key areas for the state and the society. In the American case, the polycrisis consists of four main elements that affect the political and socio-economic spheres of the society: ideological polarization of the American society, multiple splits within the Democratic and Republican political parties, declining incomes of the middle class, and the constant increase in socio-economic inequality. The author comes to the conclusion that the current polycrisis will inevitably transform both the political system and the society. The only question is what direction this transformation takes. In a favorable scenario, new egalitarian forces will prevail, smoothing out the sharp edges of increased inequality, as well as restoring the centrist orientation of American politics. In a negative scenario, the United States will slide into ever greater chaos, which is fraught with social explosions and the undermining of American democracy.

The article is devoted to the concept of power of the professor of the Imperial Novorossiysk University Pyotr Evgenievich Kazansky (1866–1947), described in the capital study “The Power of the All-Russian Emperor. Essays on the Current Russian Law” (Odessa, 1913).

This study was devoted to the supreme power, which, under any political principle, always exists alone in the state. The study deals with the supreme state power, its manifestations in various areas of public administration during the Duma monarchy. The book is devoted to the tradition of Russian state power, the clarification of its historical place in society and the state and its power activities. Professor P.E. Kazansky claims that the emperor possessed not only executive, legislative or judicial power, but also the Supreme Power of the Empire, which directed the activities of all subordinate departments.

             The article is devoted to a detailed sociological analysis of the phenomena of propaganda and counter-propaganda, which are the main tools for managing information, controlling public opinion, behavior, and the system of views and ideas of people. In the process of the formation of an electronic digital society, propaganda changes, but its essence, goals and objectives remain essentially unchanged. Modern propaganda is a complex and multifaceted socio-political phenomenon of undoubted interest for many humanities and social sciences, primarily psychology and political science, but it is especially relevant for sociology.

             The author analyzes and compares the approaches of two outstanding theorists, pioneers of propaganda – G. Lasswell and E. Bernays. Thus, the priority for introducing the term “propaganda” into wide scientific circulation belongs to the American political scientist and social thinker Harold Lasswell, who developed an effective model for organizing propaganda” during the First World War. Propaganda is a “war of ideas about ideas”; it refers exclusively to “the control of opinion by means of significant symbols, or, more specifically, although less precisely, by means of stories, rumors, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication”. According to another prominent theorist, Edward Bernays, “the mechanism of large-scale dissemination of ideas is propaganda in the broad sense of the word – as a set of organized efforts to introduce a particular belief or theory”.

             The article identifies two main approaches to the interpretation of the term propaganda, different in scope, as well as in semantic and value content. The first of them is broad and value-neutral, and the second is narrow and quite ideological. In this approach, the prevailing emphasis is on the class nature of propaganda, the targeted introduction, through its tools, of the attitudes and values of a particular (usually ruling) class or its ideology into the mass consciousness. The author emphasizes that the phenomenon of propaganda implies a targeted communicative process of transmitting to a specific audience, with the help of special means and methods, certain (often constructed) information that can influence its opinion, attitudes, and ultimately its worldview and subsequent behavior. To create a clearer idea of the phenomenon of propaganda is possible by highlighting its essential characteristics, which are outlined in this article. An integral element of propaganda is counter-propaganda – a specialized area of ideological activity, the content of which is to expose the goals, methods and arguments of hostile propaganda, and to neutralize ideological sabotage.

             At the first stages of scientific analysis of propaganda, it was often interpreted as a homogeneous activity combining various elements of socio-political and cultural life. At present, this interpretation seems simplistic, given the ever-increasing variety of materials disseminated through propaganda. Thus, in practice there is an increasingly clear differentiation of types of propaganda on various grounds, which the author analyzes in detail. Particular attention paid to the category “sociological propaganda”, which some researchers do not always consciously and legitimately operate. It is more appropriate to talk about social propaganda or cultural propaganda, the nature of which is significantly different from political propaganda.

             The article outlines the subject field of sociological analysis of the phenomenon of propaganda both within the framework of general and special sociological theory – the sociology of propaganda, and outlines its promising directions in the electronic and digital era.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the system of institutions of sustainable development and the implementation of their principles at the interstate, national macro and micro levels. The interrelation of ecology, economy and social dynamics as a single complex of institutions for solving the problems of sustainable development is shown. The universality of the goals of modern transformations in the field of environmental protection and socio-economic development, a wide range of improving the well-being of the population does not remove the existence of specific strategic goals for the countries of the post-industrial and pre-industrial stages of development. The modern interpretation of the sustainable development goals denies the stagnation of economic development and the reduction of consumption for the realization of environmental sustainability. Articulation of specific tasks at the interstate level is a vector of strategic planning at the national level, goal setting and designing the activities of public companies. The analysis of the formation of the institutional infrastructure of interaction between public companies and stakeholders in the field of non-financial reporting on ESG and financing of “green” investments is given. Non-financial reporting is transformed from the tasks of PR management into the direction of goal-setting and the formation of a new structure of financial activity, including the social development of companies.

The article analyzes the experience of research into the phenomenon of social well-being on the example of the self-employed population. Social well-being is a multidimensional phenomenon. This phenomenon includes several significant characteristics. Social well-being is one of the main indicators of assessing the state of society, various social groups and individuals. In particular, the value-emotional attitude of an individual to his or her social status, the possibility of satisfying his or her needs, interests, as well as a set of assessments that people give to themselves, their daily interactions with each other, with social institutions, communities and society as a whole. In the conditions of digitalization and transformation of the labor market, the process of legalization of the self-employed in the form of a tax on professional income creates great opportunities for the development of this institution. It also seems relevant to monitor the research of social well-being of the self-employed during this experiment, which will certainly affect its effectiveness and efficiency. The design of this study is an analysis of the social well-being of the self-employed in the Russian Federation. The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between various characteristics of social well-being of the self-employed in Russia: subjective assessments of their social status, the level of satisfaction of their needs and assessments of life satisfaction, access to various benefits. The main method of empirical research was an online questionnaire survey (N=504). Self-employed citizens of the Russian Federation who pay NPD participated in the survey. The study revealed the following main correlations between subjective assessments of social well-being of the self-employed and assessments of satisfaction with life and access to various benefits. The level of material well-being of the majority is average, while access to forms of leisure and free time varies from watching TV, reading books and magazines to sports, handicrafts, attending movies and theater. Life strategies of the self-employed are related to further building up the potential of self-employment, increasing income, free schedule, planning their future activities. The emotional state of the self-employed is positive. Access to basic development resources is high. Self-identification is associated with free access to various sources of development: educational platforms, availability of means for familiarization with the values of science and art, as well as with involvement in the traditional values of Russian culture: love for the country (most people are not going to leave the country), state, family, society (friends, colleagues). The results of the study allow us to conclude that the study of social well-being is an important criterion and indicator of the self-employed population’s adaptation to the new conditions that have developed in recent years in the Russian labor market and are associated, above all, with the processes of digitalization of the Russian economy. The study of the phenomenon of social well-being of the self-employed in the conditions of digitalization and changes in the labor market also allows us to identify certain problems and trends in the development of the process of institutionalization of self-employment in Russian society.

             The relevance of the research topic is determined by the fact that China has entered a new stage of its development – the bulk of the population is concentrated in cities. Until recently, migration to cities and active urbanization were system-forming processes in Chinese society. In the post-industrial era, the situation changes significantly and requires sociological understanding.

             The country's accelerated industrialization in recent decades has brought millions of people into the cities. A stereotype has formed according to which success in life can only be achieved in the city. In many ways, migration developed spontaneously; people moved to cities in accordance with fashion, rather than rational considerations. As a result, the culture of urban settlements suffered noticeable damage. There are now areas populated by people who were unable to settle in the city and were limited in their ability to return to the village.

             The country’s leadership has formulated a new policy aimed at integrating urban and rural areas. It is based on three social priorities: 1) slow down migration from villages to cities; 2) rationalize migration flows, taking into account the need for the development of industrial enterprises and the cities where they are located; 3) create opportunities for migration from cities to rural areas.

             The most important direction in the implementation of such a policy was the creation of city-regions, uniting several cities (in some cases including one metropolis) and the surrounding countryside. In this case, the infrastructure of cities gradually spreads to the rural outskirts and then covers the entire city-region; in the same time created in rural areas industrial enterprises and service organizations slow down traditional migration to cities and cause reverse migration flows.

             The purpose of the article is to systematize a number of scientific works devoted to the conceptualization of the concept of the precariat, which received active theoretical elaboration at the beginning of the XX century. The relevance of the works devoted to the precariat is explained by the speeches of representatives of this social group in European countries at the beginning of the XXI century.

             One of the tasks of the article is to solve the “black box” G. Standing, which denoted the relationship of the newly formed social group with social processes outlined in the works of P. Bourdieu, J. Habermas and a number of other sociologists.

             The author also devotes a separate role to the analysis of the precariat by scientists in Western and Eastern Europe. Sociologists of Western Europe have focused on the designation of a newly formed social group in the socio-class structure of modern society.

             At the end of the article, the definition of two concepts, “precariat” and “precariatization”, which can contribute to the categorization of a social group in sociological theory, is given.