Skilling digital technologies in the labour sphere: experience of empirical research in Minsk and Saint Petersburg

Article is written on the basis of an analysis of empirical data obtained in 2021 from sociological studies conducted in Saint Petersburg and Minsk – cities with a population of one million, which served as the object of research of the current digital transformation. A feature of both samples was the large percentage of people with higher education among the employed population. In fact, we studied a group of urban professionals. The authors identify trends in the world of work that detail digital transformation processes. The purpose of the article is to describe the trends in the digitalisation process in the world of work in a large city and to reveal how relevant these trends are for the Belarusian and Russian professionals. The authors show the level of digital acquisition of the employed urban population today, as well as the impact on this process of the previous year associated with the pandemic and the inevitable transition of a part of the employed population to remote work. The article presents the factors that determine the labour motivation of urban professionals of different levels in their mastering of information and communication technologies, reveals the development trends of labour digitalisation processes and their impact on certain groups of professionals employed in both production and non-production spheres. It is concluded that the motivation of the employed population to master new digital knowledge directly depends on how much a person needs it in the workplace, contributes to his career advancement or helps to keep the workplace.

The Phenomenology of Change: How Conflict Drives Urban Transformation

Here we propose a new methodology for learning from conflict, referred to as a 'phenomenology of change' approach. This framework can be used to ascertain how, why, and under what conditions conflicts can lead to social, spatial, and political transformations in the urban built environment. This approach builds on examination of ongoing struggles and actions undertaken by citizens and urban governing officials during conflict. It uses this evidence to document whether and how authority is renegotiated as well as the conditions under which the issues under contention and the identity positions of stakeholders will positively or negatively impact the likelihood of built environmental change. Drawing on the five case studies in the special issue, we come to four general conclusions. 1. Change is more likely when actors strategically combine one action repertoire with another. 2. Conflicts over space are particularly well suited to the formation of institutionalized engagement processes for renegotiating authority, thus making change more probable. 3. Despite the importance of negotiating with institutions during conflict, opportunities to engage in such processes are not equally distributed among all races and classes of citizen. 4. The temporality of conflict – that is, the length of struggle – has a direct bearing on both the likelihood and durability of change. The article concludes with a focus on the roles of urban professionals in mediating conflict, reflecting on their relations with both citizens and governing authorities, and discussing how insights drawn from a phenomenology of change framework can be used by professionals to enhance desired transformations in the urban built environment.

Enshrining Motherhood, Entombing the Mother

In India, motherhood is a haloed trope that has ‘enshrined' motherhood leading gradually to an ‘entombing' of the mother – pushing her to decisions and actions, the alternatives of which may not have been realised or explored. The persona thus takes over the person, resulting in a need to assess what is and what needs to be done, to establish a balance between the two. The attempt would be to establish motherhood as just another role of a woman, thus liberating the person from both the ‘enshrining' and the ‘entombment' and offer suggestions based on the experience of Indian urban women professionals that would help them reach fulfilment at the professional and personal fronts. Based on the target audience, which includes not merely women from academia, but the Indian working professionals at large, the tone has been deliberately kept conversational, rather than one that is purely academic. Furthermore, given the paucity of work on the impact of motherhood and mothering on urban professionals in India, this would engage with important questions in the area of women's studies.

Flexible Work Arrangements and Health in White-Collar Urban Professionals

Although some research has examined health implications of flexible work arrangements, little is known about job flexibility and health in the context of modern working life, characterized by intensification. Grounded on the Job Demand-Resource model, this article explores access to flexible work arrangements and organizational climate on the health and well-being of white-collar, urban professionals in downtown Toronto. A qualitative content analysis of eight semistructured interviews with white-collar, urban professionals between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-two revealed three domains—intensity of work life and demands, coworker and managerial relations, and the boundaries between work and home—where demands outweighed resources to limit workers’ ability to practice flexibility. Thus, an emerging trend where workers need to be flexible within flexible work arrangements emerged. Findings point to the need for organizational commitment and activities to address unhealthy behaviors in the context of modern working life.

Lord Kāmadeva’s Digital Bow: Dating and Marriage

When simran arora returned to New Delhi from London, master’s degree in hand, her parents welcomed her with an enough-is-enough ultimatum: she was twenty-six, and it was time to settle down with a good Punjabi boy of their choosing. “I said sure, why not,” recounted Simran, four years older (and wiser, as I was to find out). “If the guy is Mr. Right, who cares if it’s an arranged marriage?” Simran isn’t her real name. She asked me to keep her identity secret because she didn’t want her family and friends to learn the details she was about to tell me. “It’s a complicated, messy, crazy story,” she warned me. Simran’s willingness to be matched by her parents was not unusual. The 2012 India Human Development Survey found that a mere 5 percent of women picked their own husbands; 22 percent made their choices along with their parents or other relatives, and 73 percent had their spouses picked for them with no active say. When marriages are “arranged,” parents usually filter candidates based on compatibilities of caste, class, and family. In many cases, the stars must be aligned—quite literally—as astrological charts are matched to ensure a future of marital harmony. Not everyone follows convention. A small but growing number of Indians, mostly young urban professionals, dismiss the prospect of being set up. Their alternative is the curiously named “love marriage”—a union that implies not only the serendipity of falling for someone but also a proactive, defiant choice. Adding the prefix “love” attaches a hint of illicit romance to what is known in most other parts of the world as, simply, marriage. The choice isn’t always binary. Sometimes unions nestle between “arranged” and “love.” There is, for example, the increasingly common “arranged-to-love” approach, where old-school-but-liberal parents allow a family-matched couple to go on several dates in the hope of Cupid doing his thing. (Incidentally, Indians have their own version of the Greek god: the Lord Kāmadeva is often depicted as a handsome man with green skin, wielding a sugarcane bow with a bowstring of honeybees.