Kondratyk L. The economic morality of Ukrainian society.

The thesis is devoted to study of Ukrainian society economic morality from a point of view of the new institutionalism and sociology of morality in cross-national and Ukrainian dimension. The possible ways to overcome a number of theoretical and methodological problems of the sociology of morality in the context of the study of the normative aspects of the economic interactions of the population of contemporary Ukraine are analyzed. The concept of the economic morality is analyzed as having the genetic roots in the notion of moral economy, introduced by E. P. Thompson. The concepts of "moral economy" and "economic morality" that were elaborated within historiography and sociology are analyzed in the thesis. The possibilities for interdisciplinary dialogue are сonsidered. The fundamental difference between moral economy in traditional and modern societies is conceptualised. Theoretical part concerns with the theoretical framework construction and deliberation of the content of the dominant and alternative discourses on the social basis of the economic performance. Two opposite discourses, liberal and communitarian, and related normative systems are defined. The thesis examines both the victimisation of consumers by different scale unfair practices, and their own involvement as offenders in an array of illegal or "unethical" practices. It establishes a conceptual framework for these phenomena, in terms of trust and confidence in business and state institutions, and general normative patterns, which is based on the assumption that the emerging dynamics between victimisation and offending contribute to the dynamics of the general normative framework of society. The dynamics that develops within the normative sphere has an decisive impact on other arenas of social life. Normative boundaries that develop within the market place shape and reshape the normative patterns of society in general. Normative system of the contemporary Ukrainian society is described as the one combining the specific features of both ideal types of normative systems and reproduced by the maintaince and transformation of the moral boundaries constituted in Soviet times. Author stresses the importance of the study of the socially disadvantaged and socially advantaged social groups economic morality according to their importance in defining the moral boundaries dynamics in contemporary Ukrainian society. The economic morality of the deprived social groups is interpreted as "the weapon of the weak", the instrumentalisation of which is the part of the named groups survival strategies and the economic morality of socially advantaged groups is interpreted as the mechanism of legitimization of their innovative, in R. Merton terms, social practices. The wide range of empirical sociological methods is applied. The empirical part is based on the secondary analysis of the European Social Survey data base (wave 2004 - 2005). The integrated economic morality indexes are created and verified on the basis of the correlational analysis with the Freedom housecivil and political liberties index, economic freedom index and human development index. The social portraits of the economic morality of the polar along the lines of gender, age and the level of income social groups are constructed. The results achieved on the stage of quantitative study are verified, using the group discussions method enriched by L. Thevenot and L. Boltanski sociology of critic and justification. It is defined that social mechanisms of the content of the polar social groups economic morality include the one that are caused by the specific postsoviet conditions (organizational failure (R. Rose term), normative system crisis, destabilization of the status achievement system) and the one that are caused by the relatively context free social features of the specific age and gender groups. The consistent model of the economic morality theoretical and empirical study is constructed, implemented and verified in the given thesis.