This article sketches out a multifactorial approach to the analysis of social conflict, based primarily on studies by Max Weber and prominent contemporary historical macrosociologists such as Michael Mann, Richard Lachman, and Ivan Szelenyi. The approach offers opportunities to bridge the gap between two key strands of the sociological tradition of conflict — Marxist and Weberian. It is argued that they do not exclude each other but work on the principle of complementarity, operating on a similar set of terms (primarily class and capital) and reducing the diversity of social phenomena to a common ground — conflict. Michael Mann’s theory of sources of social power, to which the first part of the article is devoted, warns against the fundamental one-sidedness of interpreting any conflict related to power (any conflict falling within the perimeter of macrosociology can be classified as such) exclusively as political, economic, ideological, or military. A complete description of such a conflict requires engaging all four of these aspects of social power, even if some of them do not manifest themselves sufficiently in a particular conflict. The approaches outlined in the second part of the article to the analysis of its direct participants — social classes with their resources (capital in its various forms), which ultimately determine the specific configuration of inequality — the driving force of any conflict— are based on this initial marking of the conflict field. Such a comprehensive approach allows us to overcome the dogmatism of Marxist schemes without abandoning the theoretical legacy of Marxism: the reinterpretation of its key terms in the Weberian paradigm thus enriches the sociological tradition of conflict, forming the necessary kaleidoscopic view of this social phenomenon.

There are certain grounds for asserting that the fifth generation of revolution theories is being formed in the 21st century. The main distinguishing features of the new generation of theories of revolution seem to be the reliance on global databases of revolutionary events, the widespread use of modern methods of quantitative analysis, and the fundamental idea that armed and unarmed revolutionary events are characterized by fundamentally different factors, structure and consequences. At the same time, revolutions / maximalist campaigns are understood as “series of observable, continuous, targeted mass tactics pursuing fundamental changes in the political order: regime change or national self-determination” (E. Chenoweth). This article opens a series of reviews of the main concrete results obtained within the research of this generation, which opens with an analysis of the economic factors of revolutionary destabilization identified within the framework of this approach. Quantitative cross-national studies of the economic factors of revolutionary destabilization carried out to date (which we refer to as the fifth generation of studies of revolutions) show that the same economic factors can have very different effects on the likelihood of the outbreak of armed uprisings, on the one hand, and unarmed revolutionary actions, on the other. These studies show that the likelihood of unarmed revolutionary uprisings is higher in middle income countries without oil revenues, against the backdrop of rapidly rising food prices (whereas both recession and economic recovery can provoke such uprisings). On the other hand, armed uprisings are most likely in the poorest raw-material-based economies against the backdrop of an economic downturn and falling investment in fixed assets.

People have different attitudes toward military action as a way of resolving international conflicts. In this article we will examine the psychological approach to the study of these attitudes: (a) the levels of attitudes toward war (attitudes toward specific military campaigns vs. general attitude toward war as a way of resolving international conflicts); (b) psychological (individual, social-psychological, and situational) factors predicting these attitudes; (c) limitations of the existing research and directions for future research. We will focus on three social-psychological factors predicting attitudes toward military action on the territory of other states: social identities (common human identity vs national identity, secured national identity vs national narcissism), attitudes toward political authority (right-wing authoritarianism, political trust), and the perceived threat from adversary countries. We will show that common human identity is negatively related to the attitudes toward military companies, whereas national identity (especially national narcissism), positive attitudes toward political authorities (primarily right-wing authoritarianism), and perceived intergroup threat are positively related to them. In this review we will discuss the results obtained in various countries, primarily in the USA, several European countries, and Russia.

The paper examines the structure and dynamics of the political imaginary of the two countries of post-Soviet Central Asia - Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. As the authors show, Russia has a special place in this structure. For a long time, many ordinary citizens of these states did not perceive Russia as a foreign state on an equal footing with others. This perception was due to a number of factors, the most important of which was Soviet institutional and psychological inertia. At the institutional level, Soviet inertia was expressed primarily in the transparency of the borders between Russia and the Central Asian countries. On a psychological level, it manifested itself in nostalgia for the Soviet past. It was the overlapping of soviet nostalgia with the understanding of the importance of migration to Russia for the material well-being of households that gave rise to a high level of loyalty to Moscow. Recently, however, the Russian Federation has started to gradually become a foreign state among others in the eyes of ordinary residents of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In the minds of people, Russia still has a specific status, but this specificity is increasingly seen in a global context; in this context, other actors along with Moscow matter (Beijing and Washington, as well as Istanbul and Tehran). The process of turning Russia into an ordinary “abroad” was going on before, but it accelerated sharply after February 24, 2022. The authors identify signs of distancing from Russia both at the level of the ruling elites and at the level of civil society. Among these signs are, in particular, the desire of governments to demonstrate a multi-vector foreign policy, a change in the public rhetoric of top officials, as well as manifestations of anti-Russian sentiment in the public sphere of Kyrgyzstan.

The article provides an analysis of the Western tradition related to the problem of conflict in the urban context. It analyzes problems of urban justice based on the topization associated with Plato's political philosophy. The article substantiates the naturalness of the state of war and conflict in the urban environment. The city is shown as a primary political field, a primordial political locus, within which civil conflict is embedded. According to Plato, conflict permeates not only poleis, but also individuals, households and villages. The cure for this all-encompassing war is the correct organization of the conflicting parts based on justice, since it represents a state of realized universal good based on the ideal of integrity. As N. Loraux's historical and anthropological research has shown, the oath and the establishment of a citywide fest serve as auxiliary cultural mechanisms for overcoming urban conflict. The intermediate link of the chain of ideas is the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, in which the political is taken out of the city, but the city continues to be potentially conflictual. Henry Lefebvre is shown as an unobvious heir of Plato in urban theory. The concept of the right to the city, which is still relevant today, turns out to be closely related to political aesthetics. Residents of the city are opposed to the mobile elite, who do not actually inhabit the city, but have full rights to it. The city is understood as an oevre, while genuine urban life can be created only by the practical collective effort of citizens and is expressed in the form of a Fest, an absolute event that excludes the coercion of capitalist logic. Contemporary academic discussions are characterized by tension between discursive (S. Feinstein) and practical (D. Harvey) understandings of justice in the city.

This article represents a comprehensive study of transition peculiarities from a latent stage to the open demonstration of conflict, drawing on the concepts of base trigger, trigger situation, and crucial episode (L. Boltanski, L. Thévenot). The trigger situations of urban conflicts were studied on the broad empirical material of the Novosibirsk urban agglomeration over the last decade. The research authors created a geoinformation database containing a structured description of more than two hundred cases of urban conflict. The trigger is presented as a complex mechanism that contributes to the aggravation of tension (risk trigger) or the manifestation and/or escalation of conflict, which can be launched only when the addressee perceives the situation of change initiated by the addresser as a threat — which, in turn, creates the conditions for changing of actions, order of involvement and register. This opens up opportunities for influencing and managing the situation of change. A morphological analysis of triggers of the unfolding conflict made it possible to identify several groups determined by investment, institutional, normative, and value regulations. In a modern actively changing city, the investment-type trigger was empirically shown to be the most conflict-generating, with the first steps of project publicizing and proclamation having the greatest trigger potential. However, an analysis of the relationship between the nature of the trigger and the outcome of the conflict showed that conflicts caused in particular by the investment-type triggers have a higher probability of settlement. As a rule, private investors are more flexible in meeting the demands of the protesters than the authorities, especially if the investors do not rely on the unconditional support of the authorities. This does not negate the important issue of the poor quality of decision-making in conflict regulation. Just a few conflict actors aim to fix the balance, which is why only a small part of the conflicts ends with the search for a compromise; mostly the conflicts end with a complete victory of one of the parties or the cancellation of the project in favor of the protesters.

The paper reviews the main concepts and methodological approaches of feminist peace and conflict theory. It reproduces and analyzes the arguments of feminist war critique, and critically relates them to the general theoretical assumptions of the sociology of conflict. The following spheres of feminist war critique are considered in their intersection with sociology of conflict: feminist international relations theory, feminist peace research, peace activism, and peace education. Moreover, the paper shows that there is an intellectual intersection of the feminist prism and R. Collins’ project of micro- and macrosociology. It is argued that the level of awareness of the feminist tradition of conflict in Russian social studies is insufficient at the disciplinary level. The concepts of gender, everyday violence, and positive peace are introduced; their roles are investigated in the feminist war critique. Gender is considered a social and symbolic construct that both creates and is created by the social relations of power. Gender inequality in power, in its turn, produces various forms of violence (physical, sexual, financial, psychological, and social). Other structures of marginalization — race, class, sexuality, physical/mental (dis)abilities — are also taken into consideration. The continuity of the different forms of violence, as posed in the feminist war critique, is problematized: global and regional conflicts are seen as an extension of those diverse forms of violence that flourish during everyday social interactions. Thus, through the problematization of the “continuum of violence”, the paper conceptualizes the trend of feminist research (tracing the connection between everyday social interactions and global conflicts) as a common task of conflict sociology. The essay is intended to highlight the potential of both conceptual and methodological interchange between feminist war critique and conflict sociology.

Contemporary research in social science often turns to the problem of the hybridization of politics: analyzing the “gray zone” between authoritarianism and democracy; defining the role of new media, and understanding informal practices in restoring peace in post-conflict societies. The contribution of the present article is based on an investigation of the concept of risk hybridization to explore the reflection on risk in the public sphere for the state, social movements, and citizens. The sociology of U. Beck with the theory of reflexive modernization — as well as the concept of cosmopolitics — are used to explore different effects of risk hybridization models (diffusion, dominance, breakdown of hierarchy and causation) for the public sphere and politics. The author used materials on the COVID-19 epidemic — practices of the Russian state and the change of mass consciousness — to analyze interrelations between the process of risk hybridization and decrease in the coherence of state institutions and the transformation of political alienation in Russian society. The relationship between risk hybridization models and the formation of collective cognitive maps is considered through the practice of framing social movements and protest campaigns. Said nexus is illustrated by the Russian cases of social movements and specific public claims of mass protests actions in 2019-2020. The state governance perspective is used as an framework for a discussion of the effects of risk hybridization on limitations of deliberative and authoritarian models for managing of risk, as well as its perception by social groups. In the conclusion, the author highlights the high cost of maintaining the consistency of reflection on risk in the model of managing (authoritarian) knowledge. Moreover, the author discusses the rising complexity of social reality and the spread of digital media that multiplies reflection on risk.

In the first part of this paper, the author proceeds to identify and clarify three categories that are distinctive for the social philosophy of genocides: aim, subject, and method. The clarification of these categories makes meaningful the social philosophy of genocides. This makes it possible to distinguish between the social philosophy of genocides — and the scientific objectification of this phenomenon — and the social philosophy of genocide — alongside other philosophical disciplines — using the empirical material of genocides. It is argued that the subject of the social philosophy of genocides is the definition of genocide and the epistemically problematic in genocides; the aim of this discipline is to prevent genocides by criticizing the determinants (pre-reasons) that precede decision-making; the method of social philosophy of genocides is a parallax vision and a critical attitude towards the search for the "dark" in modernity. Each of the thematized categories defines the social philosophy of genocide as an independent discipline, distinct through its subject from scientific objectivations of genocide and through its method and aim from objectivations of genocide by moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. The first part concludes with a brief definition of the discipline: the social philosophy of genocides is a cluster of critical philosophical studies which examine the epistemically problematic in genocides, the definition of genocide, the causes of genocide, with the aim of preventing genocides through critical reflection. In the second part, the author situates the methodological problems of the research within the social philosophy of genocides and proposes a program of this discipline consisting of three projects: genealogy of genocides, studies of pre-modern genocides, and a catalogue of family resemblances of genocides.