Start: 2017 – ongoing
This is a preparatory project, aimed at the formation of an International Joint-research Project Ukraine (the INRU project). This would apply the Social Quality Approach (SQA) to researching the many problems Ukraine is facing. This in turn will make it possible to gain new insights on national level, EU-level and beyond, focused on how to address some of the main questions related with the four dimensions of societal complexities in Ukraine.
For example:
- The increase of inequalities and questions of employment which follow the current and future changes in economic production and distribution relations,
- Political expressions of populism, undermining democratic based values and practices,
- Increasing forms of migration and how to cope humanely with these flows on national and supra-regional level,
- The challenge of sustainability and herewith related climate change questions.
Using the social quality approach
In November 2015, the Institute for Economics and Forecasting of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (IEF/NASU) invited the International Association on Social Quality (IASQ) to apply the social quality approach (SQA) for stimulating new politics and policies on local/urban, sub-regional and national levels of Ukraine. The objective of the SQA is to contribute to daily circumstances of people in such a way that its normative factors will be strengthened. Therefore the invitation concerns in general sense politics and policies oriented on - tentatively speaking - the socio-economic/financial, socio-political/ legal socio-cultural/welfare and socio-environmental dimensions and their interrelations, which concern the heart of the matter of the nature of daily circumstances of people. Despite the invitation, it has so far not leaded to the desired steps leading to the actual formation of the INRU project. IASQ is looking for new ways to bring this important project to fruition.
Working Paper about Ukraine
Please refer to IASQ Working Paper 17 (2019) for more information and background. Another relevant paper is the article by Zuzana Novakova ‘Four Dimensions of Societal Transformation: an Introduction to the Problematique of Ukraine’, This article has appeared in International Journal of Social Quality, Vol. 8 (1), pp.1-30 and is available online.