LCSR International Workshop - Day 3

by Julia Savinkova

The third day of the 3rd International LCSR Research Workshop opened with Natalia Firsova’s (HSE, Moscow) progress report on her research on innovative consumption practices in Russia. Natalia tries to clarify why some people adopt new consumption practices earlier than others. Internet shopping index built on data of RLMS-HSE show that people adopt innovative practices more easily if they have higher education, higher income, know foreign languages, and possess good learning and reading skills. Fabio Sabatini (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy) presented on his new project which studies how communication via the Internet influences personal social capital and well-being.

Maria Kravtsova (HSE, Moscow) discussed the link between values and corruption. Her research argues that corruption is a type of personal security behavior. Empirical analysis done by Maria and her co-author, Alexey Oshchepkov, shows that, on average, post-materialists are more likely to tolerate corruption as they tolerate greater norm deviance in general; yet post-materialists living in developed countries nonetheless demonstrate lower tolerance for corruption. Nicolas Griesshaber (Humboldt University, Berlin) continued on the topic of corruption by presenting his research on the relation between different forms of civic engagement and corruption. The results of the study indicate that societies with high civic engagement demonstrate lower level of corruption.

After the coffee break, Arye Rattner (University of Haifa, Israel) delivered a guest lecture on the problem of the crisis of trust in legal institutions such as the court and the police in Israel. Arye investigates how cultural, religious, and ideological differences among various groups are reflected in their attitudes toward law. The results indicate that the general level of trust in legal institutions among all citizens of Israel has been falling over the past 12 years.

Joshua Dubrow (Polish Academy of Sciences) argued that sociologists from specific сountries are not able to participate at the meetings of International Sociological Association (ISA). Due to this reason, these researchers do not have an opportunity to benefit from the meetings. Moreover, participants cannot share their ideas with those who are not attending. Joshua and his colleagues aim to demonstrate the factors that influence the possibility for members to participate at the ISA meetings. Roberto Foa (Harvard University, USA; LCSR HSE, St. Petersburg) presented on the issue of state history as a factor explaining success or failure at provision of public goods, corruption, and the maintenance of the rule of law.

The final session of the day started with a presentation by Andrey Shcherbak (LCSR HSE, St. Petersburg). His collaborative research project with Svetlana Borinskaya aims to find the correlation between genetic diversity and social and political change. Their hypothesis  postulates that a genetic predisposition of a given population to alcoholism increases the probability of being colonized by other nations. They showed that the risk of colonization by Europeans is higher for indigenous populations that have genotype with lower allele frequencies which could otherwise "protect" them against alcohol abuse. The next speaker, Alexey Zakharov (HSE, Moscow) presented on association between income redistribution preferences and genetic factors. His results showed that there is a small but statistically significant effect of genes on redistribution preferences.

by Julia Savinkova