Folk Devils and the Hipster Figure: On Classification Struggles, Social Types and Figures in Moral Panic Research

This chapter draws on a case study of contested societal reactions to the middle-class hipster figure and gentrification in contemporary London. The analysis shows how public reactions involve forms of class politics and classificatory struggles over the moral meaning gentrification processes and the role of the hipster figure in the latter. Through this, the chapter discusses how the folk devil can be conceptualized as a social type by drawing on Bourdieu’s research on classification.

The readiness assessment regarding labor migration of the new working-class youth

The article is devoted to the study of labor mobility and the possibility of using systematic sociological data so as to gauge the readiness for labor migration of the working youth. The purpose of this work is to construct a methodology (logical index) and assess the readiness level of labor migration of the new working-class youth of the Ural Federal District (UFD). The study object is working youth (15-29 years old), employed in the sphere of industry and in the field of services. Based on the cluster analysis of data from a mass questionnaire survey (which was conducted in the Ural Federal District in 2018), the gender, the industry and territorial specifics of the readiness level concerning labor migration of three social types of the working youth the earning ones, the surviving ones and the adapted ones, have been analysed. According to the results of the study, it is definite that the most quantified readiness regarding labor migration is among the rural youth of the social type the surviving ones, among young women of the social type the earning ones, as well as among the working youth employed in the service sector (regardless of their social type). The results can be used by public authorities in order to to gauge the readiness level of labor migration in the particular region and to develop regional targeted programs concerning the effective use of labor resources.

Lay Explanation of Poverty During the Pandemic in Hungary

The paper analyzes perceived causes of poverty in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, Hungary, one of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. Data collection was carried out in the second half of 2020 using consensus theory and the methods of systematic data collection. The aim of the research is to discover whether support for explanations which blame structural conditions is dominant in the public perception of poverty during the pandemic. From the research discussed it is clear that structural conditions are not dominant and that the poor are often seen as being themselves responsible for their unfavourable situation. The COVID-19 pandemic is not associated with a high support for the social type of lay explanations.

Hippias’s “Collection” — a handbook for a man of wisdom

Despite the obvious revival of interest in the First Sophistry in recent decades, Hippias of Elis is poorly considered in the con-text of the history of ancient education. Evidences about his phil-osophical views are not investigated as something significant in the development of ancient philosophy. Usually Hippias is inter-preted as a representative of the nascent genre of doxography. Meanwhile, there is an opportunity to consider evidence of his work, teaching, genre of his texts as an element of the history of the “higher” levels of ancient education, intended for successful and self-sufficient members of ancient society. This social type was formed precisely in the era of the First Sophistry. The cen-tral subject of this paper is the «Collection» of Hippias. Despite the minimum of information about this text available to a mod-ern scholar, there is a steady tendency to associate a number of evidences about the work of Hippias with this text. I will try to show that the hypothetical content of the “Collection” is in good agreement with the available information about the wisdom of Hippias. First of all, it corresponds to his belief in the diversity and plurality of being. This is the origin of the sophist's multi-scholarship — the multiplicity of being (the bodies of beings) forces us to develop a variety of knowledge concerning the most diverse aspects of life, its various manifestations. The methodol-ogy of his work was connected with this: Hippias singled out the most important and “homogeneous”. It allowed him to classify the material in full accordance with the tasks facing him. As a re-sult, firstly, this text was an attempt to systematize human knowledge about existence in its most important sections (the beginning of everything, the gods, history, the experience of re-markable people). Secondly, it was a teaching guide that allowed not only to learn various facts, but also helped to formulate judgments about the past so that it became a source of experience for the present. And thirdly, it was an auxiliary mnemonic tool, important for the process of writing speeches or rhetorical im-provisation.

Postface: Brokerage as social practice

This postface argues for a narrow and analytically strong concept of brokerage, which is oriented towards the classical definition by Boissevain. His ideal type emphasises the agency of brokers who actively pursue their own interests and act at an equal distance to the groups between which they mediate. Furthermore, the text argues for thinking of brokerage as a bundle of social practices instead of as brokers in the sense of a social type. While few social actors are fully-fledged brokers, many of them engage in brokerage.

Naturalizing Christians: A Response to Joel Marcus, John the Baptist in History and Theology

This essay examines the conceptual framework that informs Marcus’s distinction between history and theology, and considers what stands to be gained by this manner of classification. The essay observes that Marcus’s classification hinges upon a theory of religion that views gospels as artifacts expressive of sincere belief and, further, suggests this approach serves to mystify the origins of the Christian theological metanarrative by replicating the explanation asserted within the gospels themselves. By reversing the conceptual framework and the explanatory priority, one could deploy a theory of religion that sees gospels as artifacts of persuasion and thereby argue that they aim to naturalize the initially unnatural truth claim that Jesus was the christ by connecting him to a known social type: John. From this approach, it would not be belief in Jesus as the christ that explains the modified constructions of John the Baptist; rather, modifications of John the Baptist would be precisely what construct belief in Jesus as the christ.

On the evolution of social ties as an instrumental tool for resource competition in resource patch networks

Human is a highly cultural species with diversified skills and knowledge. In this paper, we examine whether the diversification of skills and knowledge can promote the emergence of social ties between individuals as means for acquiring resources. Specifically, we construct a simulation model consisting of two types of actors—one who uses social ties to search for resources and one who does not—and allow them to compete for resources that are distributed in resource patch networks of varying structures. In a densely connected resource patch network, implying a setting with less diversified sets of skills and knowledge, model result demonstrates that social ties can be detrimental to those adopting it. In a sparsely connected network, implying a setting with more diversified sets of skills and knowledge, social-type strategy can outcompete solitary-type strategy. Furthermore, actors with a pure social-type strategy are always inferior to their solitary competitors, regardless the structure of the resource patch network. Our modeling framework is of a very fundamental nature, and its relevance to existing theories and the sociological implication of its results are discussed.

CHIMERAS ON A SOCIAL-TYPE NETWORK

We consider a social-type network of coupled phase oscillators. Such a network consists of an active core of mutually interacting elements, and of a flock of passive units, which follow the driving from the active elements, but otherwise are not interacting. We consider a ring geometry with a long-range coupling, where active oscillators form a fluctuating chimera pattern. We show that the passive elements are strongly correlated. This is explained by negative transversal Lyapunov exponents.

Criminological Description of the Person Dealing With Forged Documents

Crime is a very complex social phenomenon. In reality, it consists of a set of different acts of individual criminal behavior. These acts are performed by living people, and each has its own unique meaning. However, it is possible and necessary to scientifically study and analyze various crimes and the individual subjects who committed them. The means of such scientific analysis and generalization is the study of the offender's personality as a “social type” [1]. The study of the identity of offenders not only deepens our knowledge of the perpetrators of a particular type of crime, but is also important in our practical work in preventing those types of crimes.

Transformation of Individuality & Publicity: Philosophic-Anthropological Analysis

The problem of the balance between society and personality, awareness of ‘individuality’, ‘personality’, as well as ‘publicity’ (publicness) are ranked among the central philosophical issues. There are many interpretations of them. And these matters remain critical in today’s ‘individualised’ society. Based on a philosophic-anthropological approach, and using comparative-historical methods, the authors trace the cultural-historical transformation of the subsistence of an individual in society from Antiquity to the present. An individual is characterised via such conceptions as ‘social type’, ‘individuality’, ‘personality’. The author’s interpretation of these concepts does not always coincide with the generally accepted one. In particular, the individual is often understood as an ‘ensemble of social relations’, i.e. as synonymous with the social. Furthermore, the authors define the term ‘social type’ as an expression of the societal, the term ‘individuality’ as a holograph or verge of the world, the absolute, mankind, whereas the term ‘personality’ is understood as an individuality rendered ‘in-being-with-others’. The main developmental trend in the relationship between the individual and society is the long cultural-historical transition from an individuality ‘outside the world’ to an individuality ‘in the world’. The authors justify the idea that an individualised society is not a society of individuals. Furthermore, the transformation of the conventional conception of publicness is revealed, the ephemerality of publicness in contemporary society in general, and particularly in virtual space, is highlighted. Publicness is substituted with cocktail parties, ‘cloakroom communities’, and shindigs. The article deals with the construction of virtual identity in the social media of the younger generation. At the end of the article, the authors conclude that in the contemporary world of multiple identities, a person has to look for life values, once again facing the problem of choice and a new understanding of freedom.