The article is devoted to the analysis of interspecies relations between humans and insects living in urban houses — bedbugs and cockroaches. The purpose of the work is to describe the modes of interaction between two biological species and reflect on how posthumanistic optics works in relation to insects. The study was carried out within the framework of multi-species ethnography, and the text pays attention to its possibilities and limitations. In such studies, it is necessary to pay attention to people’s emotional and sensory experiences and sensations. According to the study, there are two modes of relationship with insects — the mode of confrontation and the mode of intimacy. As part of the first mode, the maximum otherness of bedbugs and cockroaches is produced. At the same time, the uniqueness and value of the human being is not in doubt, he or she remains the centrе and measure of things. In this case, the person is trying to destroy insects in the house. In the proximity mode, relationships with insects are built on a different basis — people define themselves as the same biological beings as insects. They try to coexist together. People minimise violence against insects. Post-humanistic ethics is included in this mode. As a study showed such ethics are possible even in relation to those that bring psychological and physical suffering.
The article presents the results of an experimental study of barriers to access to the labour markets in Moscow and the Moscow region for applicants from Tajikistan (both Russians and foreigners). The method of correspondence testing was used, which involves sending CVs of fictitious applicants from among the ethno-national majority and minorities, matching in all parameters except ethnicity or nationality, to the same vacancies in order to establish the presence / absence of discrimination in the hiring process. To examine the impact of ethnicity and nationality on employment success, four fictitious CVs were created: a Russian applicant with Russian citizenship, a Russian applicant with Tajik citizenship, a Tajik candidate with Russian citizenship and a Tajik candidate with Tajik citizenship. Co-applicants’ names (Slavonic and Central Asian) and mother tongues (Russian and Tajik) were used as markers of ethnicity. Statistically significant differences were found in the results of the fictitious applicants, with the finding that belonging to both a national and ethnic minority more than halved the chances of an applicant being invited for an interview compared to a candidate belonging to the majority. In addition, the study showed that ethnic discrimination may be caused by employers’ misconception that such markers as a Slavonic name and native Russian language automatically indicate the possession of Russian citizenship.
This article examines the structuring role of moral emotions in autobiographical and family narratives produced by storytellers from different generations. The research draws on two types of autobiographical texts and employs an interdisciplinary framework inspired by the affective and sensory turns in contemporary humanities scholarship. The first corpus consists of memoirs published at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that recount the authors’ lives and the histories of their close relatives (N. Anufrieva, M. Vekhova, and S. Navarskaia). The second corpus includes transcripts of interviews conducted by the author with contemporary “family historians” who work in archives with investigative files concerning their ancestors (43 interviews). These texts are characterised by emotional intensity, a strong orientation toward the search for and transmission of family memory, and a commitment to documentary authenticity. The article compares autobiographical texts of different origins — memoirs and interviews with family historians — to explore how forms of narrative self-interpretation register and process “morally complex heritage,” including experiences of political repression and other forms of biographical rupture. The analysis identifies factors that facilitate recognition of the temporal and social relativity of moral regimes and highlights the importance of emerging emotional communities. It also outlines strategies through which narrators engage with difficult family pasts and formulate their own ethical positions. Among the most typical responses to newly discovered information about ancestors incorporated into an expanded family autobiography are the inversion of emotional reactions and a narrative orientation toward the inclusion of forebears.
It is common practice in medicine today to explain mental disorders from the perspective of the so-called biopsychosocial approach, which integrates biological facts, psychological concepts, and an awareness of the social processes that influence the course of diseases. Although this disciplinary eclecticism has repeatedly been criticised by both medicine and psychiatry as well as by the social sciences, the contributions to this discussion raise the question of whether it is actually possible to find common ground and reach an understanding in a dialogue between representatives of different disciplines. In the second part of the “Forum”, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, philosophers, historians, sociologists and anthropologists, drawing on their own experience, discuss the possibility of collaboration between the psy-disciplines and the humanities and social sciences. The discussion addresses the institutional and practical challenges that specialists face in attempting to overcome the interdisciplinary barrier, the methodological problems that seem insurmountable to them, and the potential mutual benefits of such collaboration, which, in light of this discussion, no longer seem utopian. A variety of opinions, illustrating the problems of interdisciplinarity and the inadequacy of this kind of interaction, form a dramatised dialogue divided into two “acts”.
Paula Bialski’s book examines the technological culture of software developers and the everyday practices of software production. Unlike most ethnographic studies that focus on startups or large Silicon Valley companies, Bialski investigates a “mid-tech” German firm, offering a detailed account of programmers’ daily work practices and their engagement with labour. She shows how a technological culture oriented toward achieving “good enough” outcomes challenges dominant discourses of excellence, optimisation, and the normative expectation of excessive effort. The “good enough” culture, Bialski argues, embodies balance, collegiality, care, and reasonable expectations, while also functioning as a tactic of resistance to technological overproduction and as a foundation for more responsible forms of innovation. This review situates the monograph within its broader political-economic context and highlights the potential of Bialski’s ethnography for understanding the role of cultural factors in European technological industries. It concludes by advocating for comparative research on technological cultures, including in Russian technology firms, with attention to everyday practices of care, resistance, and alternative professional strategies in “mid-tech” organisational settings.
