Unanswered questions from teachers to students

The central positions of the publication are discussed: “Shubrt, I., & Podvoisky, D. G. (2024). Modern sociological theories: how not to get lost in the conceptual maze? Russian Public Opinion Research Center”. The book describes the state of science in the humanitarian sphere today in terms of “sociological theories”. The review presents an analysis of the main content of this book and outlines the authors’ reflections and conclusions regarding its entry into the professional space of sociologists. The review identifies its key strengths and explicitly highlights critical and debatable points, which boil down to the fact that alongside other books on “modern sociological theories”, the reviewed work stands out because its authors seek to convey their content, essence, and meaning “in their own words”, in the scientific style of a “concise cheat sheet”. Although, as the authors of this book themselves admitted, the logic of selecting the analyzed figures in sociology and the depth of elaboration of their scientific contributions are not entirely clear to them, nevertheless, the merits of their approaches are expressed quite clearly and precisely, based on publications in the high-rated journal “Sociological Studies”. However, it should be noted that there are conceptual errors such as that in Jurgen Habermas’s “latest Russian translation”, the original category is designated as “activity”, although in reality, this internationally recognized definition is “action”, stemming from the scientific tradition of action systems of Talcott Parsons and Max Weber. The review proposes original conceptual resources to clarify the authorial paradigm of I. Shubrt and D. G. Podvoisky for a more precise and concise operationalization of modern sociological theories in the case of the second edition of this book.