Institute of Sociology NASU

“Building a responsible society: Opportunities, constraints, and prospects” (A round-table discussion)

(L. Bevzenko, I.Bekeshkina S.Dembitskyi V.Kazakov N.Kostenko T.Liubyva O.Reznik A.Ruchka O.Stehnii V.Stepanenko)

stmm. 2019 (2): 5-52

UDC: 316.342

Viktor Stepanenko - Doctor of science in Sociology, Principal Research Fellow at the Department of History and Theory of Sociology, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv).

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3623-0057 / Scopus Author ID: 57189273050

Abstract. Responsibility is the ability of a social activists to realize the possible consequences of their decisions, choices, actions, fulfilled responsibilities and obligations, as well as the willingness and ability to make the burden of them all.

M. Weber considered the responsibility of individual and collective actors as one of the important preconditions and foundations of social life. He spoke not only of the individual but also of the joint liability of the social activists. Such responsibility implies the predictability, coherence, compatibility and complementarity of the social actions of different actors, their co-ordination and cooperation as the guarantors of existence and progress of the society. Weber work in which it alluded was at one time ranked first in the ranking list of the Book of the Twentieth Century by the World Sociological Association (ISA), which included the titles of the 100 most famous books in the field of sociology. This circumstance attests to the fundamental notion of responsibility in sociology and the exceptional importance of this social phenomenon in society.

In Ukraine, sociological studies of responsibility were initiated in the previous years by M. Shulga, O. Zlobin, O. Bezrukov, and others. There is considerable experience of conceptualization, theoretical understanding and empirical analysis of the peculiarities of responsibility formation in modern Ukrainian society. But given the unprecedented dynamics of social processes, the current interpretations of the responsibilities of social activists may not be relevant enough.

The incomprehension of the tendencies of formation of a responsible society in Ukraine in recent years makes it impossible to assess the relevance of the widespread and established conceptualisations about mechanisms of these processes. Thus, at the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, the research work “Forming a Responsible Society: State, Political Movements, Business” has been started. The purpose of this work is to investigate the factors and the current course of formation of a responsible society in our country with the direct involvement of the Ukrainian state, political movements and business. First and foremost, it is these activists who have to adequately respond to the contemporary challenges to the existence of Ukrainian society - threats from the external aggressor, economic disorder and the need for a radical institutional transformation of the country.

On March 26, 2019, a round table was held in the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, at which the responsible performers of the above-mentioned research work presented the current results of their research within its framework. We make public the speeches of the participants of this roundtable.

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