Review of the collective monograph: How are you, intelligentsia? Sociological essays / Zh.T. Toshchenko (ed.). Moscow: Center for Social Forecasting and Marketing, 2018. 360p.

Abstract

The article contains an analytical review of the latest research of the Russian State University for the Humanities sociological center, devoted to the state and development of the social group of intelligentsia and presented in a collective monograph. The author analyzes the issue of the social group separateness and independence, considering its social status, values, and everyday life of that differentiated group. The methodological frame of the project is the sociology of life (Zh.T. Toshchenko), the key concept of which is a “life world” as public, group consciousness; behavior, activity. In accordance with the chosen methodology, the book presents the features of the modern humanitarian intelligentsia life world. The logic of the essays corresponds to the logic of the life worlds concept: the intelligentsia is regarded as social and professional groups; as worldview communities; as the subject of the main activities – professional, domestic, political, sociocultural. A cross-cutting aspect of the study is the issue of the labor and lifestyle precarization of the intelligentsia, which is present in almost every chapter of the monograph.