The article shows how the concept of "hope" in the space of urban everyday 9 life suggests the way to analyze fluid urban social interactions. The conceptualizations of hope in urban studies remain rather vague, therefore the article proposes redefining of hope and the techniques for the implementation of hope. The conceptualization of "techniques of hope" is grounded on to Simmel's definition of hope in social interactions and to the anthropological research, where hope acts either as a legal element or as an epis-temological method. To test the efficiency of the proposed conceptualization of the "techniques of hope", the article examines two pure cases of the "ideal villa" and the "vernacular ensemble". The cases represent the work of two forms of urban knowledge: transcendent or self-knowledge. Each case shows how the techniques of hope connect the material and social in the urban space and allow them to coexist. The functioning of the techniques of hope in each case depends on two methods of regulation: technical (the geometry of the villa or the urban grid) and social (common law and nonwritten rules). The results of the analysis of two cases are tested on two empirical situations. Switching between different types of knowledge in these situations demonstrates how urban actors combine different types of knowledge. To translate their hopes into social interactions, actors turn to urban technical regulations and mobilize fluid jurisdictions that localize the application of technical norms.

This article is devoted to a conceptualization of the city through the assemblage theory of Manuel DeLanda. We will show how his system of distinctions (built around three oppositions: "expressive/material”, “territorialization/deterritorialization”, and "encoding/decoding”) explains the nature of urban heterogeneity. The city as an assemblage is “not a single whole”, demonstrating “sovereignty without self-reference”, a paradoxical stability of relations between heterogeneous elements. Particular attention in the text is devoted to the “connectedness/segmentarity” opposition. Borrowing this conceptual pair from the works of G. Deleuze, DeLanda rearranges the focal points, as a result of which the segmentation of space - an analogue of the disentanglement phenomenon in actor-network theory - is taken out of the brackets of his analytical narrative. We will try to correct this unfortunate omission by returning the concept of segmentation to the language of assemblage urbanism. Another aim of the text is to outline possible scenarios for the transformation of urban assemblages. The empty 36 streets of “quarantine cities”, the transfer of public city events online, the development of delivery services and the gradual death of familiar social practices - all these observable phenomena can be analyzed as attributes of the processes of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” in the language of assemblage urbanism.

In most countries, the development of hospices occurs as a double import: first, as single initiatives based on the high standards of successful world hospices, and then as an attempt to scale these cases into the national healthcare system. As world practice shows, the result of this process is unpredictable: with the development of the hospice network, some structural elements are deformed, which leads to a decrease in the quality of care. However, avoiding a normative view of this process, it is worth recognizing that the upscaling leads not only to a deformation of care practices, but also to a change in the institutional environment into 56 which hospices are incorporated. In such a case, care practices become a source of analysis of these deformations, capable of showing structural factors. I describe and interpret mutual distortions using ethnographic data conducted in state hospice departments in contemporary Russia. As a result of the integration of the hospice into the hospital infrastructure, the provision of care for the dying is not being implemented. Instead, hospices were adapted to the existing protocols and their usual interpretation. Hospices have acquired unexpected functions: they cover the resource needs of the hospital and make it possible to receive funding using the bed fund. The idea of caring for the dying in contemporary Russia is reduced and now imitates the usual therapeutic practices of treatment, which is illustrated by the protocols of patients staying in hospices.

The article considers the problem of the cooperation of participants in everyday interactions while doing social distancing. "Social distance" has become one of the symbols and the new reality of the pandemic. For sociologists, social distance most often serves as a metaphor for social relations that takes shape today when restrictions on face-to-face contacts are imposed by officials, employers, or people themselves. But social distance is also a practical problem that everyday actors have to deal with in routine circumstances. The article examines the grammar of social distancing that can be found in everyday situations, and describes how this grammar is realized in two particular cases, one of which demonstrates affiliation between the participants while the other demonstrates 76 disaffiliation. It is shown that in both cases some form of cooperation is present: in the case of affiliation, cooperation is observed following social distancing and involves monitoring the actions of the other, while in the case of disaffiliation, cooperation is observed prior to the instance of nondistancing and involves not monitoring the other. These observations allow us to take a critical look at the possibility of applying the classical sociological notion of "solidarity" to the phenomenon of social distancing.

The purpose of this article is to propose the concept of synchronization as a minimal temporal quantum of social interactions. For this, the author turns to the sociological concepts of synchronization and places them on the "macro/micro" continuum. The author systematically moves from macrotheories to theories of everyday life, discovering a feature common 98 to macrosociological theories of synchronization along the way: the object under study is not an independent phenomenon, but acts as nothing more than a manifestation, a sign of something else (requiring study from the point of view of a macrosociologist). However, when moving to theories that study everyday interactions here-and-now - a similar substitution is found: synchronization turns out to be subordinate to the logic of practices, frames, ethnomethods, and acts only as their predicate. The key question for the author is whether it is possible to keep “microsynchronization” in focus at all, avoiding its reduction to other phenomena? In an attempt to answer this question, the author makes a distinction between explicit and implicit synchronization using examples of interaction between a conductor and a musical orchestra (explicit) and interactions between drivers and pedestrians at unregulated intersections (implicit). And if in the case of the first, its key characteristics are easily detected (collectivity, transcendence, centralization), then the second one turns out to be “invisible” and appears only as a mechanism for ordering interactions in time. In other words, the author shows that synchronization is found at the very foundation of interactions, that is, it serves to maintain the process of mutual tuning and the temporal coordination here-and-now.

Public discourse about technological accidents is dominated by the popular explanation through the "human factor". It makes the essential assertion that a human, by definition, is prone to error, but a machine is not. In the field of autonomous vehicles, it emerged as a result of first the US media- and subsequently, stakeholders-demodalizing the results of a 2008 US National Highway Safety Administration study that claimed drivers were the critical cause of 94% of all road traffic accidents. In this article, we want to show what theoretical and socio-political problems exist with an explanation through the "human factor”. To this end, we consider an alternative in the form of the concept of a technological system as a conflicting set of rules that follow the contextualizing practices proposed by the British sociologist Brian Wynne. We compare this interpretation with Robert Merton's explanation of deviant behavior in the 1930 s. Criticizing the utilitarians, Merton shows that deviations are caused by contradictions in the socio-cultural structure of society. In both conceptual schemes, failures are presented as the result of relational effects of tension and contradiction between the elements of the systems. For a different and more realistic alternative of dealing with accidents, we highlight the ideas of Annemarie Mol and John Law. The latter, analysing accidents, identified four modes of determining the good within disputes after accidents: mobile utopia, absolutism, managerialism, and practical manipulation. We show that both the explanations through the human factor, Merton's theory of deviation-and, to some extent, STS-lean towards utopian regimes (the first three), while the latter regime, based on an ontological turn, proposes a radical project of changing the modes of explanation and accusations of accidents: this makes it possible to articulate different relationships between the ontologies of accidents, to make non-utopian versions of technologies more real and public.

This paper approaches the study of ‘apparently irrational beliefs' in anthropology. The author traces how the debate that emerged in the 1960s around Evans-Pritchard's work on Azande magic has developed in the context of the ontological turn. The author focuses on how Martin Holbraad is engaged in the debate. Holbraad argues that Evans-Pritchard was the forerunner of the ontological turn. His followers have overlooked his argument about the fundamental difference between ‘empirical causality' and ‘mystical causality'. Holbraad develops Evans-Pritchard's idea by drawing on his empirical study of Cuban practices of Ifa divination. He seeks to prove that the region of ‘mystical causality' is autonomous. This region has a ‘movable ontology', which makes it possible to have alternative criteria for the truth of predictors. In turn, these criteria allow the verdicts of the oracles to be regarded as indubitable truth. Holbraad suggests exploiting the unrepresentative truth of oracles and rewriting anthropology's epistemological foundations so that anthropologists can formulate truth statements but do not allow for the existence of universal criteria of judgment. However, this move fails because Holbraad admits a contradiction by justifying the autonomy of the two regions of causality. According to some of his assertions, the two regions are interdependent: each is a "condition” or "prerequisite” of the other, though logically, they are incompatible. The author proposes a solution that makes it possible to define an independent ground for both regions. He analyses how Holbraad and De Castro understand the concept of belief and suggests an alternative conceptualisation of belief, referring to interpretations of Wittgenstein's "On Certainty”.

The article focuses on the problem of contingency in John Law's theory of sociological method and its theoretical implications for social theory. The theory proposes to use as a legitimate source of sociological knowledge any sensory or cognitive experience of a researcher-bodily sensations, emotions, etc.-along with classical sociological methods. Such a methodology follows from Law's metaphysical premises that classical methods do not grasp the "fluid” and changeable realities of the social world, capturing only a part of them. According to Law, in order to know the "fluid” realities, a flexible method is needed that is not regulated by normative means; that is, a method that does not reject some forms of data obtained in others as illegitimate and "unscientific.” The elimination of the norms of the scientific method doubles the problem of contingency - now not only knowledge becomes contingent to the world, but also the way to obtain it becomes contingent on the situation of research, since in each specific situation different methods will be relevant. The problem with such a theoretical move is that it roots knowledge in subjectivity, making the former dependent on the latter. This means the impossibility of a general science of the social guaranteeing the legitimacy of the data as relevant and scientific. To resolve this contradiction, the author of the article refers to the ideas of Quentin Meillassoux on the absolutization of contingency, arguing that only the mathematization of knowledge can ensure the irreducibility of knowledge to subjectivity. This means that the only logical way to resolve the contradiction of Law's theory is to get normativity back into a rigid mathematical form. Such a move raises the question of the possibility and attempts to mathematize sociological theory, and not just its methods. This issue is discussed briefly at the end of the article.

The paper examines the epistemic significance of maintaining consistency in confabulations. It has been argued recently that confabulations might have some positive epistemic features; notable among them is maintaining a consistent set of beliefs about oneself. This paper focuses on confabulatory beliefs which are not connected with a self-concept. However, it is demonstrated that such beliefs might contribute to maintaining narrative consistency and thus also yield some epistemic benefits. The author analyzes cases of confabulations concerning legends and fairy-tales, and shows how confabulatory utterances contribute to the maintenance of consistency. The examples analyzed include both clinical and non-clinical confabulations; yet, in all instances, confabulations contribute to maintaining narrative consistency. Subsequently, the author compares the ways of maintaining consistency in confabulations and in mundane cognition. Based on Melvin Pollner's conception of mundane reasoning, it is demonstrated that maintaining consistency is a fundamental principle of organizing mundane accounts. It is also proposed that basic principles of mundane cognition have substantial epistemic functions; among them, their foundational role and their contribution to the sense of ontological security are of particular importance. Finally, it is shown that confabulations of a certain type might have the same epistemic functions. Consequently, producing confabulatory accounts might yield significant epistemic benefits in certain cases.

The following paper analyzes the interactional shifts precipitated by the pandemic induced turn to telepresence. Using the framework of multimodal conversation analysis, we analyze a videorecording of a webinar organized by The Psychological Service of Moscow. In this specific case, webinar participants had unequally distributed interactional resources; only one participant was able to speak, while all other participants could only participate through a text-based chat. We focus on a change of the course of action where the instructor's monologic presentation transitions to a question-answer interaction. We highlight the way the single speaker organizes the transition from these structurally dissimilar participation frameworks. A key feature of the move from monologue to question-response is a self-initiated interruption: another participant's diachronic chat message is deployed as a synchronic overlap by orienting to a virtual second speaker. Thus, we document a case where one speaker chooses to give a voice to a voiceless participant. The work contributes to studies of educational interaction by providing insights on the work that goes into the transition between interactional formats in telemediated asymmetrical ecologies. Our work opens up discussions about the interfacing between different modalities as a locally emergent phenomenon, and how new interactional ecologies create a fertile substrate for hitherto unfamiliar forms of talking, embodiment, and local sequential ordering. The work thus also contributes to research that highlights the non-passive role of the 'listener', which is reflected in the active speaker's orientation to the listener's active contribution to ongoing talk.

Present paper is dedicated to categories of "freedom from value judgments” and "sobriety of judgment” in Max Weber's theory. The author examines them in three contexts: as a logical principle of science, as Weber's position in university politics, and as elements of his conceptions of "personality” and "life conduct”. The author shows that the principle of "freedom” as a logical requirement is a necessary but insufficient condition for objectivity in social sciences. In actuality, it aims to separate the heterogeneous spheres of facts and practical judgments. However, an implementation of this separation in research practice cannot be realized without other elements of Weber's logical-methodological arsenal: value interpretation and nomological knowledge. At the same time, the internal structure of ideal types turns out to be insufficient to preserve the objectivity of judgments, if they turn into logically perfect, but still practical "samples”. Therefore, the demand for "freedom from value judgments" and the personal readiness of scientists to follow exclusively the values of science again becomes necessary and functionally significant. In the context of university politics, the lack of academic self-control in evaluations undermines the moral strength of educational institutions and the unity of the university system. That is why abstinence in practical evaluations becomes a tool for Weber to reassemble the construction of "academic freedom" proposed by Karl von Amira. At the same time, "freedom from value judgments" is a condition for the independence and dignity of scientists as "personalities" in science. Moreover, the lack of a "sobriety of judgment" and the inability to consciously serve the chosen matter is a threat, according to Weber, to the consistent "life conduct" of the modern person. The author concludes that the participation of a young Weber in the organization of courses in 1893 dedicated to the high-quality theoretical training of clergy can be considered as one of his first steps in posing the problems of the "sobriety of judgment" and rational "life conduct" - in this case, of scientists and the clergy. The translation of Weber's small newspaper article about the upcoming courses, presented in the present issue of "Sociology of Power", thus expands the conventional and common set of Weber's texts concerning the problems of "freedom from value judgments" and "sobriety of judgment".