Modern nordic sociology: basic lines of researches

There is no information in Russia about modern Nordic sociology. So, we decided to inspect the magazines which are published by the Nordic Sociological Association, which are available on the Internet (http://www1.svt. ntnu.no/nsajournals/) and have articles in English to get a general impression of their sociology and to educe the basic lines of their research.

The Nordic Sociological Association (NSA) is an alliance of the national sociological associations in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. NSA's main tasks are the quarterly journal Acta Sociologica, Nordic Sociological Conference which take place every second year, and support the sociological professional development in the Nordic countries, particularly through financial support to seminars and conferences. The Association is located in Oslo, Norway. The president of NSA is Christofer Edling

The Nordic Sociological Association has many magazines on general topics which have articles in English: «Acta Sociologica», «Bifrost Journal of Social Science», «Comparative Social Research», «Nordicom Review», «Outlines. Critical Practice Studies», «Qualitative Studies», «The Nordic Journal of Social Research».

Also there are many specialized journals, for example, «Journal of comparative social work», «Nordic Social Work Research», «Nordic journal of migration research», «Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs», «Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention».

By inspecting the abstracts of these magazines we detected basic lines of modern Nordic sociological researches which are: social work, sociology of gender, sociology of deviance, migration, management, sociology of organizations, marketization.

What is interesting is that there is a strong accent on social work, especially on elderly care, it is because of the specific of the countries which are welfare states. Besides, the average age in Nordic countries is higher than in other countries, so they are really interesting for a research.

To sum it up, we should say that reviewing different sociological magazines is a good way to get information about this poorly studied field. We have found out main research directions of modern Nordic sociology and have come to a conclusion that these magazines do represent the actual social reality.

А. В. Кулешова