Vol 1, No 3 (2021)

Modern technologies have fundamentally changed the sphere of communication. One of the interesting social media characteristics is the prevalence of the visual transmission mode. Regardless of the fact that photo-rhetoric in social networks usually lacks complexity and is often limited to the statement of facts, there exist more complex forms of visual syntax. The article analyses the options for creating a twofold semantic conception of images, enabling communication to expand temporally. Moreover, there have been demonstrated the visual metaphors in social networks as exemplified by 2020 gestalt.

David Chalmers and John Perry both construe phenomenal concepts as irreducible to descriptive concepts of physical properties or properties, which logically supervene on them. But they draw different conclusions from this point. D. Chalmers in “The Conscious Mind” argues that the epistemic gap between phenomenal and physical properties shows that the former cannot be ontologically identified with the latter. J. Perry in “Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness” claims that we can identify phenomenal properties with physical ones without being committed to reductionism. In this paper I am going to examine Chalmers’ and Perry’s views on meaning and necessity, especially with respect to identity statements, in order to find where exactly their ways of thinking about the content of phenomenal concepts.

The article examines the “GDR Trilogy” by Fritz Kater as a dramatic collage, characterized by the multiplicity and heterogeneity of its constituent elements, re-coding the meanings of each fragment in the context of the whole, synthesis of various dramatic and epic techniques, elements of music, painting and other types of arts. The relations of connection, repulsion, parallelism, contrast that arise between the scenes in the context of the trilogy are traced. The author’s strategy of constructing an auditory image in the play is described. On the example of the first of the plays “Vineta or Vodomania” / “Vineta or Oderwassersucht”, 2001), the author analyzes the sound score written in the author’s remarks, emphasizing the division of the piece into two parts according to the principle of the golden section. The motive analysis used in the article shows how the extra-musical sound palette of the play, built in the spirit of John Cage, reveals and enhances the motive of loss – the main motive of the first movement, and the silence that occurred in the last scenes helps to highlight the shame-motive that arises in them. Musical fragments of the play are associated with the mythological image of the sunken city, the lost “paradise”, the flourishing Vineta.

The article focuses on the features of the dramatic process in Belarus and Russia, studied in a comparative aspect of the Soviet (1970s-1980s) and post-Soviet (1990s – 2010s) periods. Our goal is to identify common and different in the dramaturgical systems of related literatures through the prism of the
key topos of the artistic structure of the works of Russian and Belarusian authors – hero, conflict, chronotope. Methods of comparative studies (comparative analysis of the literary process), as well as historical and literary methods are used to implement the tasks set. The material includes the works of more than 200 Belarusian and Russian playwrights. Russian literature (A. Vampilov, L. Petrushevskaya, N. Kolyada) and Belarusian literature (A. Makayonok, E. Popova, A. Dudarev), separate directions (“new wave” of Russian dramaturgy of the 1970s-1980s), stages of dramaturgical life (“new drama” of the 1990s-2010s), aesthetically controversial development intentions (dramaturgical practice of “netuteyshy” in Belarusian post-Soviet dramaturgy) are given special attention. The scientific novelty of the research is predetermined by the fact that for the first time in literary studies, a comparative analysis of the dynamics of the dramatic process in Belarus and Russia has been undertaken for such a long time – the last four decades.

The article is devoted to the study of the causes, essence and social consequences of socio-economic inequality in the modern world. On the basis of an economic-sociological approach, the author investigates the evolution of this phenomenon from the beginning of the implementation of neoliberal reforms to the present. The article proves that the key reason for the intensification of the polarization of income and wealth in recent decades has been the fundamental transformations of the sphere of labor and employment, as well as other economic and political measures implemented within the framework of introducing the principles of neoliberalism into economic practice. The declining share of the labor income within the national income, the blurring of the link between productivity and wage growth, the dismantling of the welfare state and weakening trade unions are the result of the neoliberalization of the global economic system and key drivers of income and wealth differentiation and our modernity of labor inequality.
The article focuses on the study of inequality in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current COVID-crisis. The author comes to the conclusion that the growth of inequality and other social problems as a result of the pandemic was determined mainly by the socio-economic policies of the states of the pre-pandemic period. The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a “social x-ray” that revealed to the world’s population the real state of modern social institutions.

The article is focused on one of the public participation technologies within the scope of the state processes’ management – an independent assessment of the work quality regarding institutions providing services in the social sphere. The author examines the process of changing the legislative norms governing the process of conducting an independent assessment. The main purpose of the analysis is to demonstrate how the understanding of the object, subject, methodology and methods are changing. The informational background for writing the article is domestic researchers’ data, as well as the author’s own experience as the chairman of the public council for carrying out the independent assessment concerning the terms of service quality of the organizations referring to the social service (Ministry of Socio-Demographic and Social Policy of Samara Region), as well as the status of a representative of the organization-operator. Analyzing the key components of an independent assessment, the author describes the risks of reducing the data quality, expanding the practices of conducting work in a cost-cutting format by operating organizations, emasculating the contents from an independent assessment, and, as a result, the loss of significance related to public control technology.