Category Archives: Publication

Social Values and Identities in the Black Sea Area

Malina Voicu and Kseniya Kizilova proposes a special issue in Frontiers of Sociology.

The Black Sea has always been an area of vivid economic and cultural exchange, located at the intersection of different political systems and local cultures. Depending on the historical moment, the economic and cultural exchange varied, leading to the development of national cultures in the area, having their own individuality and bearing at the same time the touch of the common history. Thus, this is the place where the Byzantine Empire, followed by the Ottoman Empire, met with Russia and with the influences of West European culture in the Middle Ages. Later on, during the Cold War, this is the place where the Soviet Union and its satellite countries from Southeast Europe met with modern Turkey, which was at the time a member of NATO. After 1991, the area witnessed the political changes that occurred after the former USSR dissolved, which came together with the development of new national states and with significant changes of political and economic systems, as well as with new international alliances. All these cultural encounters, together with the clash of various political systems may led to the development of a unique cultural space, fostering political identities and social values.
This topic aims at studying the culture and identity in the Black Sea area, inquiring the existence of a common political identity relying on a similar cultural background. The research project builds on the revised modernization theory, combining several perspectives rooted in The end of history and the last men of Francisc Fukuyama, Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and Inglehart’s Cultural Evolution to shed light on how the struggle for survival combined with the clash of various political and religious cultures lead to the development of a common cultural and political identity with significant impact on the path to social development of the region.

The topic proposes an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together contributions from political science, sociology, international relations and security studies to analyze what is the common background of cultural and social identity in the Black Sea area and what are the roots of this background. In defining the Black Sea region we suggest going beyond the geographical and historical perspectives and also consider trade, geopolitics, existing international and regional policy initiatives and international relations/organizations operating in the region. We encourage submissions approaching the topic from a holistic perspective, looking at the cultural space, not limited to the geographical one, inquiring to what extent the historical path contributed to the creation of a common cultural space and what is the contribution of economics, politics, and international relations to its development. Can we talk about a single cultural frontier relying on the common heritage or about several frontiers delineating distinctive sub-regional cultural patterns? Submissions using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods and employing an interdisciplinary perspective are equally welcome.

Abstract submission by 31 August 2022.

Manuscript due by 31 October 2022.

More information regarding the submission is available here.

Improving measurements by survey infrastructures synergies: insights from the revised gender role attitudes scale in EVS2017

In this recent article published in Quality & Quantity, Vera Lomazzi (secretary of the Executive Committee of EVS) uses the revised scale of gender role attitudes (GRA) surveyed in the fifth wave of the European Values Study (EVS2017) as an example to explore how cooperation between survey programmes can produce improved measurements in a context of methodological innovation.

Lomazzi, V. Improving measurements by survey infrastructures synergies: insights from the revised gender role attitudes scale in the european values study 2017Qual Quant (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-021-01312-6

How party polarization shapes the structuring of policy preferences

While polarization has garnered a lot of academic attention, not much is known about its influence on citizens’ preferences. Frèderic Gonthier and Tristan Guerra show, in their recent article in Party Politics, that party polarization enhances the ideological consistency of belief systems.

First they apply Correlation Class Analysis to the latest EVS data to classify respondents based on the extent to which they use similar principles for structuring their economic and sociocultural preferences. Second they demonstrate that Europeans’ belief systems are more consistently aligned with the progressive-conservative continuum in polarized party systems. It means that when citizens receive a rich supply of coherent and distinctive elite cues, they are prompted to structure their policy preferences according to the progressive-conservative polarity.

The authors also find that greater party polarization results in more tightly organized belief systems for all Europeans, regardless of their degree of political sophistication (see figure below).

Image

This turns out to be an overlooked effect of party polarization: Elite cues becoming clearer reduce the reservoir of cross-pressured voters that radical parties may appeal to.

Gonthier F, Guerra T. How party polarization shapes the structuring of policy preferences in Europe. Party Politics. January 2022. doi:10.1177/13540688211064606

Just published in the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

In this paper, Natalia Soboleva (National Program Director of EVS in Russia and member of the Theory Group of EVS) uses EVS data to explore the effect of work values and socio-demographic characteristics upon the link between life satisfaction and job satisfaction.

Findings

Socio-demographic characteristics matter more than work values in explaining the effect of job satisfaction on life satisfaction. The association between life satisfaction and job satisfaction is stronger for higher educated individuals and those who are self-employed and weaker for women, married individuals, religious individuals and those who are younger. Extrinsic and intrinsic work values significantly influence life satisfaction independent of the level of job satisfaction.

Soboleva, N. (2022), “The determinants of the link between life satisfaction and job satisfaction across Europe”, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-06-2021-0152

Values in Poland: New Book

Edited by Mirosława MARODY and with contribution by Joanna KONIECZNA-SAŁAMATIN, Maja SAWICKA, Sławomir MANDES, Grażyna KACPROWICZ, Krzysztof BULKOWSKI, and Jerzy BARTKOWSKI, the new book SPOŁECZEŃSTWO NA ZAKRĘCIE. Zmiany postaw i wartości Polaków w latach 1990–2018 (SOCIETY IN A BEND Changes in attitudes and values of Poles between 1990-2018) includes studies on value change in Poland.

The thirtieth anniversary of the political transformation is an excellent moment to take stock of the changes in attitudes and values of our society. Such an opportunity was created by the long-term participation of the Polish team in the international European Values Study (EVS). Repeated every nine years on representative samples of Poles offers a unique opportunity to follow the changes taking place in their consciousness.

In this book we set ourselves the task of systematically reconstructing the process of evolution of values in Polish society. We then ask to what extent its direction is consistent with the overarching goal of the systemic transformation, which was to build a liberal-democratic social order. We also try to answer the question what are the social sources of political divisions in contemporary Poland by analyzing arguments in favor of different hypotheses explaining the phenomenon of populism and proposing an additional hypothesis of ‘banks of anger’.

In the analysis we use not only data from the EVS questionnaire survey, but also information obtained from focused group interviews, in-depth individual interviews and fragments of the analysis of selected social media content.
from the Introduction

The analyses and the presentation are carried out in a fair and clear way. And above all, they produce interesting results. Among them, the following can be pointed out:

  • The visible secularization of Polish society over time,
  • Continued relatively weak interest in politics,
  • The small role of traditional socio-demographic factors in defining right-wing and left-wing society.
    (from a review by prof. dr hab. Andrzej Rychard)

The authors’ efforts to interweave the description of captured statistical relationships with the analysis of qualitative material should be appreciated. Sometimes qualitative descriptions are only illustrations of slings reconstructed statistically in trends, at other times they provide an understanding of the mechanisms behind them, at other times they suggest other interpretative possibilities.
(from a review by dr hab. Przemysław Sadura)

How Italians change. Values and attitudes from the eighties to today

The joint EVS-WVS Italian team published the book “Come cambiano gli italiani, Valori e atteggiamenti dagli anni Ottanta a oggi” (How Italians change. Values and attitudes from the eighties to today).

How have Italians changed from the 1980s to today? How have Italians’ attitudes towards society, politics, work, family, religion, the European Union, science, the environment changed? Organized in fifteen short chapters dedicated to individual themes of great cultural, social and political relevance, the book presents the unpublished results of a major survey on the values of Europeans and Italians. Thanks to the comparison with similar data from previous research, the authors can conduct an in-depth analysis of the opinions and attitudes of Italians over the last forty years and measure the underlying trends of public opinion and our society over time.

Edited by Ferruccio Biolcati, Giancarlo Rovati and Paolo Segatti, the book includes chapters drafted by members of the Italian team and other Italian value scholars.

EVS2017: Results in spain

Valores en la era de la incertidumbre: individualismos y solidaridades

The Spanish EVS team published the book “Valores en la era de la incertidumbre: individualismos y solidaridades”, edited by María Silvestre Cabrera (former EVS National Program Director in Spain).

The book focuses on the EVS2017 results in Spain, whose fieldwork took place between late 2017 and early 2018. It consists of almost one hundred questions on the values of citizenship, values that are grouped into large thematic dimensions of analysis: family, work, friendships, leisure, politics, religion, personal satisfaction and quality of life, attitudes towards migratory movements, social capital, social solidarity, identities, etc.
This fifth wave shows us a Spanish society that was beginning to feel the relief of the hardships of the economic crisis, but that had very close to its memory. This has meant that uncertainty and precariousness persist but, at the same time, hand in hand with an individualism that is based on the defence of free choice, new forms of solidarity have emerged that recognise the vulnerable person as being close to them, in a recognisable situation of which they are not to blame, which provokes empathy and social recognition. Individualism persists, even in times of uncertainty, but it is not alien to social solidarity. But it also shows us a dual Spain, which shares in a very unanimous way certain fundamental principles, such as support for democracy or the legitimacy of the welfare state, but which, in others, reminds us that this country has been trying for centuries to string together diverse identities, dual ideologies and a social stratification that is not quite egalitarian.

Content:

Introducción, María Silvestre Cabrera
Capítulo 1. Bienestar personal, asociacionismo y participación ciudadana, Ane Ferrán, Cinta Guinot y Bakarne Etxeberria
Capítulo 2. Familia, género y cambio social: un acercamiento a los valores familiares en el imaginario colectivo de la sociedad española, Raquel Royo, Lía González y Maialen Suárez
Capítulo 3. El valor del trabajo, Iratxe Aristegui, Usue Beloki y Estíbaliz Linares
Capítulo 4. El valor del ocio: significado y evolución, Joseba Doistua, Idurre Lazcano y Aurora Madariaga
Capítulo 5. Valores y creencias religiosas de los españoles, Manuel M. Urrutia
Capítulo 6. Los valores políticos de los españoles: actitudes políticas, confianza en instituciones, eficacia política y postmaterialismo, Edurne Bartolomé, Jone Goirigolzarri y Maite Aurrekoetxea
Capítulo 7. Preguntas de ayer, respuestas de mañana: confianza en el estado del bienestar y centralidad del cuidado, Felix Arrieta, Ainhoa Izaguirre y Martín Zuñiga
Capítulo 8. Capital social, solidaridad e identidades, Rafael Leonisio y María Silvestre
Capítulo 9. Actitudes y valores ante las personas migrantes, Patricia Espinosa, Mabel Segú y Edurne González
Capítulo 10. Evolución de los valores finalistas y principios éticos en España y Europa (2008-2017): ¿hemos cambiado?, Arantxa Rodríguez-Berrio, Emma Sobremonte y Amaia Mosteiro
Capítulo 11. Una tipología de la sociedad española en cuatro clústeres, Javier Elzo y Jon P. Laka
Aspectos metodológicos en torno a la oleada de 2017 de la Encuesta Europea de Valores, Rafael Leonisio y Edurne Bartolomé
Anexo. Cuestionario

EVS2017: New book published

The Czech and Slovak teams of EVS released the book “Living apart together? Czechia and Slovakia through the lense of value development after 1991”

RABUŠIC, Ladislav, Zuzana KUSÁ, Beatrice Elena CHROMKOVÁ MANEA a Katarína STRAPCOVÁ. Odděleně spolu? Česko a Slovensko optikou vývoje hodnot po roce 1991. 1. vyd. : Slovart, 2019. 428 s. nezadána. ISBN 978-80-556-4590-2. “

The edited monograph presents an analysis of the development of values ​​in the Czechia and Slovakia in the period 1991-2017. The main aim of the book is to capture the extent to which the modernization of both companies after 1990 and the separation of both companies in 1993 had an impact on different value developments. The analysis of value trends is made possible by the longitudinal sociological international research European Values ​​Study, of which the Czechia and Slovakia have been a member since 1991. Quantitative data is obtained through a standardized questionnaire that allows international comparison. In addition to the introduction, the methodological chapter and the conclusion, the book has a total of 12 chapters, which are organized into four sections thematically: I Family, children and gender roles; II. Labor, subjective well-being and social capital; III. Religion and social solidarity; IV Politics, national identity and migration.

The basic hypothesis of the book is that, in line with modernization theory, we should expect value structures and preferences to converge gradually during the 1991-2017 period, although they might differ at the beginning of the period under review due to different socio-economic and cultural bases.

Values in France: Forty Years of Evolution.

Enquête de grande ampleur sur les valeurs en France : publication des résultats dans un ouvrage
The French team of EVS just published a new book based on the results of EVS

EVS was conducted in France by some twenty researchers from several social science laboratories, gathered in the Association pour la recherche sur les systèmes de valeurs (Arval). The Pacte Laboratory (Sciences Po Grenoble, CNRS, UGA) was responsible for steering the project. The main random sample consists of 1,870 people, residing in France, aged 18 and over, plus an additional sample of 721 young people aged 18 to 29 selected by quota. The face-to-face interviews were conducted by the Kantar Public Institute from March to August 2018.

The French survey benefited from numerous partnerships: the TGIR Progedo (CNRS-EHESS), the Institut national de la jeunesse et de l’éducation populaire (Injep), the Service d’information du gouvernement (SIG), France Stratégie, EDF, the Caisse nationale des allocations familiales (CNAF), the Fédération internationale des universités catholiques (FIUC), Sciences Po Paris (FNSP) and Sciences Po Grenoble (Pacte).

The complete results are published in La France des valeurs. Forty years of evolution, under the direction of Pierre Bréchon, Frédéric Gonthier and Sandrine Astor (Presses universitaires de Grenoble).

This text is a translation of the original text in French published on PACTE-Grenoble website.

Here is available an extract of the introduction.
Several press articles commenting the results of EVS in France have been published, as such as in Le Monde, CNRS Le journal, RFC Radio.

Value Change, Solidarity, and Identity Issues in a Changing World


Ladislav Rabusic (NPD of EVS Czechia) and Zuzana Kusá (Member of the Slovakian team of EVS) are the Guest Editors of the Special issue of  The Czech Sociological Review on Value Change, Solidarity, and Identity Issues in a Changing World.

The Czech Sociological Review is announcing a Call for Papers for this thematic issue in English. The deadline for the abstract submission is 31 March 2019.

· Editors: Ladislav Rabušic (Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Studies MU) and Zuzana Kusá (Institute for Sociology, Slovak Academy of Science)

· Planned issue: Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 6/2020

The idea that core values are shifting in response to economic, political, cultural, and social development resonates widely in current public and academic discussions. In recent years Europe has been exposed to important dynamic forces that have challenged its geography, politics, cultures, and social fabric. While the economic crisis of 2008 and its aftermath called into question European and country solidarity, increasing immigration from outside Europe has challenged the ‘old continent’ and raised questions about security and responsibility for border controls and for the distribution of wealth. The most recent developments have affected the social structure within states as well as the relationships between them. They tend to deepen existing inequalities and lead to structural changes and rapid social transformations that challenge social cohesion not only within individual countries but also at the Europe level. They endanger the already modest sense of European identity and thus raise the question of what holds Europe together.

While the prevailing consensus is that something is happening, there is no agreement over exactly what and why this may be (see, e.g., R. Inglehart and C. Welzel, 2005, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. The Human Development Sequence, Cambridge University Press; P. Bréchon and P. Gonthier, eds, 2017, European Values. Trends and Divides Over Thirty Years, Brill Publishers; and R. Dalton and C. Welzel, eds, 2014, The Civic Culture Transformed from Allegiant to Assertive Citizens, Cambridge University Press). The main goal of this thematic issue is to gain a better theoretically grounded and empirically supported understanding of the phenomenon of value changes, solidarity, and identity in a changing Europe using the European and World Values Surveys, which provide reliable data on the value orientations of Europeans and on their group affiliations, identities, and understandings of solidarity. We welcome papers on the following issues (among others):

  • Where do countries stand in terms of the trends in individualism and collectivism in the light of cross-cultural research on values?
  • What values and attitudes concerning work and employment do people hold? Did any substantial change occur between 1991 and 2017?
  • How do values and attitudes differ between various social strata and between different cultures?
  • How have attitudes towards immigrants and immigration changed since 1990 in Central and Eastern Europe?
  • Has there been a cohort shift with respect to the meaning of partnership, family, and parenthood?
  • Has there been a gender ‘value revolution’ in European countries and what patterns can be seen in this area?

Contributors do not, however, have to limit themselves to these topics and may explore others, as long as the submitted papers are based on EVS/WVS data. Preferably the papers should also deal with value shifts observed by comparing different waves of the EVS/WVS (i.e. a time dimension should be included in the paper’s analysis). We expect the primary focus of papers to be on European countries.

The deadline for the submission of abstracts (300–500 words) is 31 March 2019. The abstracts are to be submitted directly to the guest editor – rabu@fss.muni.cz – who will inform authors as to whether their abstract has been selected by 15 April 2019.

Full-text papers must be submitted no later than 30 November 2019.

Attached documents:
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