Publications

"Higher education is valued as one of the main sources of civic participation and social benefit. In spite of the significant growth in the number of students over the last 20 years, Russia is still considered to be a country with a low level of civic engagement. Our study aims to respond to this contradictory standing and to explain the causes of student civic engagement. The survey conducted in 10 state universities has shown a difference in civic engagement index values among students from 4 educational programmes. The results of linear regression models have shown that, in addition to the ‘pure teaching effect’, such factors as religiosity and social capital influence student civic engagement."

"his article presents a discussion of the economic ethics of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, manifested in the practices of economic actors, and Orthodox economic ideology, drawing on the approach formulated by Max Weber in The Pro-testant Ethic. Orthodox ideology and economic ethics are analyzed using popular Orthodox literature (1990–2004), doctrinal texts on social and economic issues, as well as materials gathered in ethnographic expeditions between 1999–2004 to eight monasteries in various regions of the Russian Federation. Key aspects of the economic ideology include love for one’s neighbor and work as a means for self-sufficiency; the result of work is considered to be the gift of God. Key ca-tegories of economic ethics are obedience and humility. This article concludes in the framework of Weber’s approach, that such ethics of obedience and humility determine the attitude towards economic activities, which the Russian Orthodox Church generates among its followers."

"This article analyzes the economic ethics of modern Orthodox laity belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church. The article is based on an array of interviews with priests, and Orthodox laypersons (as well as non-believers and Catholics for comparison purposes). Data were collected via several projects from 2004 to 2014. Data (in-depth interviews from the recent projects 2012?2014 amount to 395) are analyzed by means of the grounded theory methods, including substantial and theoretical coding, theoretical sampling, and constant comparative method. Theories used include the concept of elective affinity between the motivation of economic activities and types of economic organization (Weber) and the typology of economic systems by K. Polanyi. This study attempts to show the elective affinity between the ethics of humility and the principle of economic integration known as reciprocity networks of mutual support of both churched and unchurched Russians, centered in the parishes and functioning on the basis of the logic of gift giving. Such a coupling of motivation and informal economy, invisible to the GDP, performs important functions in contemporary Russia which has a mix of economic types (such as generating of social capital or development of moral density and solidarity in local communities. They in it’s turn fulfill some economic functions — i.e. avoiding getting into the debt bondage or some others).The article deals with (the activated by humility ethics) reciprocity and its consequences for the community seeks to challenge the established view on Orthodox Christianity as an ‘unproductive’ culture, hindering economic development."

"The collection contains a number of articles resulting from the research seminar “Sociology of Religion” at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University. The selection of the studies covers a wide range of topics: religious socialization, influence of religion on the birth rate, impacts of a Church-affiliated university, social network of the Orthodox community, social capital of the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church, social activities of the Church, impacts of religiosity on the normative and regulatory sphere, and some other topics. The studies presented in the book were made in 2011–2014. Most of the articles are based on empirical (qualitative and quantitative) data obtained from the projects of the Research Seminar “Sociology of Religion”. Some publications were prepared using the analysis of secondary data derived from international comparative studies. The book is addressed to a wide circle of readers interested in the problems of functioning of religion in the societies which had undergone forced secularization."

"The significance of debt relations is constantly growing in the present-day world, so do economic problems related to debt. Credit relationships on market are usually treated as morally neutral despite the fact that debt generates a number of moral contradictions. This paper suggests an understanding of debt that draws on the anthropological theory of gift. It enables to expose the moral content of the utilitarian market exchange as compared to gift exchange and to differentiate between various forms of debt. This approach is used for analyzing consumer credit and for demonstrating that debtor’s behavior is paradoxically determined by striving to avoid the moral obligations of debt. The main moral imperatives are indicated that govern consumer credit — independence and necessity, calculativeness and quantification. This article demonstrates that making the borrower responsible for growing debt makes credit burden increasing rather than restraints it. "