Surviving the Transformation: Social Quality in Central Asia and the Caucuses

Abstract

This paper develops a sociologically informed understanding of what influences the lives and life-choices of people living in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (Central Asian Republics) and Armenia and Georgia (the Caucasus), four of the successor states of the Soviet Union that suffered significant social and economic changes following the collapse of the Union in 1991. The focus is on the nature of these societies for their citizens; ultimately we are concerned to understand what makes a society liveable for all, what type of society enables people to be generally satisfied with their lives. To do this we use the Social Quality model to derive indicators from which to model what makes for a liveable or at least tolerable society. The model is validated by reference to subjective satisfaction-how people feel about life in general-as the ultimate outcome indicator of individual well-being. The data we use were collected as part of a broader study of living conditions, lifestyles and health in eight of the successor states of the Soviet Union, the Confederation of Independent States (CIS).

Social Quality and Health: Examining Individual and Neighbourhood Contextual Effects Using a Multilevel Modelling Approach

“…In a Chinese context, Yuan and Golpelwar (2012) used recommendations from Abbott and Wallace for indicator variables, and analysing these variables separately, found that all four conditional factors of social quality had strong (but differing) links with subjective well-being. In an analysis of survey data from three Chinese cities, Lin (2014) also analysed social quality variables separately, but found that social inclusion was less influential than the other domains, consistent with Abbott et al’s (2010) study.…”

“…This model has been operationalised successfully in cross-national comparative research in Europe (East and West) (Abbott et al 2010; Abbott and Wallace 2012, 2014) and East Asia (Lin 2014; Yee and Chang 2011) but is only now being applied to solely British data sets. This application is timely because social quality is the only comprehensive model designed to evaluate the quality of society, as opposed to the wide variety of measures of quality of life at the individual level (Phillips 2006).…”

“…Research using social quality as a predictor has tended to take the approach of constructing scales for each of the four conditional factors, but given our focus on area-level effects and our use of secondary data, which limits data availability, we follow the specific research agenda as discussed above. For example, Abbott et al (2010) constructed scales of each of the four social quality conditional factors using factor analysis from a wide range of relevant variables. They found that economic factors were the strongest predictors of life satisfaction (25% variance explained), followed by social cohesion (20%), social integration (10%) and social empowerment (13%).…”

Loneliness: Its Correlates and Association with Health Behaviours and Outcomes in Nine Countries of the Former Soviet Union

“…Determining the factors associated with feeling lonely and its relation with health outcomes across a number of countries that differ not only culturally, ethnically, religiously, and economically, but also in terms of the way their populations have reacted to the changes that have occurred in the post-Soviet period [31], is an essential task when it comes to gaining a better understanding of the relation between loneliness and health and whether it varies between countries.…”

Collective dissonance and the transition to post-consumerism

“…I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for drawing attention to this connection. [28][29][30][31][32]. Eastern Europe and the Balkans experienced a similar phase of reorganization and it took years for societal expectations and lived experiences to realign, and in some cases pronounced public ambivalence, or indeed resistance, to newly predominant lifeways remains a palpable feature of these countries [33][34][35].…”