Institutes of inequality in modern society

• Main Author: Alexander Sh. Viktorov
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Publishing House of Lomonosov Moscow State University 2019-04-01
• Series: Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta: Seriâ 18, Sociologiâ i Politologiâ
• Subjects: inequality; institutions; family; property; state; political power; elite; institutional approach
• Online Access: https://vestnik.socio.msu.ru/jour/article/view/522

The ambiguous process of global changes associated with the growing instability of modern society, the aggravation of the social tension in the world between developed and developing countries, the opposition of the well-being of the chosen minority to disadvantage and poverty of the majority, has highlighted the imperfection of existing institutions and the need to move to a new model of the social world order. On the basis of institutional analysis, the article reveals the inefficiency of the functioning of public institutions, which leads to the reproduction of unstable structural social interactions and the opposition of various societies, groups, individuals. The problem of transforming existing institutions into institutions of inequality turns into a system (structure-forming) and becomes relevant both in fundamental theoretical development and in its practical solution in ensuring the development and enhancement of the vitality of modern society.As a result of the research it was shown that the systemic crisis of modern capitalist society is, first of all, an institutional crisis related to the imperfection and inefficiency of the functioning of its key institutions (family, property and state). They essentially stopped (or cease) in various ways to promote social development and began to turn into institutions of inequality at different levels of the social system and encompass its various structural elements: at the level of the institution of the family it is associated with the beginning of the deformation of the institutional matrix of the relationship between a man and a woman (gender balance between role positions); at the level of the institution of property, it is predetermined by the concentration of power and the distribution of resources in the hands of pseudoelites; at the state level, it is due to the fact that it is being transformed into a supranational corporation, which, depending on the nature of its legitimacy (or illegitimacy), reproduces certain permissible (or unacceptable) limits of social inequality.