Research & Expertise news at HSE University

Relationships within Russian families are being transformed. While most people in the country still think that mutual support between the different generations within a family are necessary, these traditions of ‘family service’ are receding into the past. Russia is becoming more oriented to Western cultural values, including the priority of individual interests, reported  Cecile Lefevre, Irina Korchagina and Lidya Prokofieva at the HSE XV April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development.

The HSE has set up a new International Laboratory for Applied Network Analysis. The lab’s Academic Supervisor, Professor at Indiana University, Stanley S. Wasserman and Deputy Dean for International Relations at the HSE Faculty of Management, Valentina Kuskova talked to the News Service about the aims of the new laboratory.

Sociologists have developed a variety of theories and empirical research on social movements that are closely connected with democracy. Why do people join and stay in social movements? What happens to them when participants achieve their goals? Benjamin Lind, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sociology and author of the course 'History of Social Movements', explained what makes the subject relevant nowadays and shared his own experience with social movements in an interview for the HSE news service.

Rural residents are not concerned if televised news or its interpretation misrepresents information. Television plays an entertaining role in rural areas, and the internet is more and more often the primary source of news, researchers from the HSE Laboratory of Media Studies revealed in a study of media consumption in rural areas. The results were presented at the HSE’s XV April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development.

If laws exist at the state level that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, then the impact of individual values creating a negative attitude towards homosexuality falls. People are inclined to adapt their behavior to conventional norms. A group of European researchers came to this conclusion over the course of an international study, the results of which Peter Schmidt presented at the XV April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development of the Higher School of Economics.

On April 23, 2014, Professor Dennis Mueller (University of Vienna, Austria) spoke at the HSE on 'Democracy and Citizenship'. He agreed to speak with the HSE news service to share his views on successful democracy and his impressions of the HSE as an institute.

A crisis of trust in Russian society keeps people from enjoying their lives to the full, said Anna Mironova, Research Intern of the HSE’s International Laboratory of Socio-Cultural Research and postgraduate student at the HSE Department of Demography in her presentation at the XV April International Conference.

Harvard professor Richard Pipes, one of the most renowned Western experts in Russian history, explained why freedom in Russia is impossible without a developed private property system, in his speech at the 15th April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development.