International Journal of Social Quality

This issue is dedicated to two general topics that play a central role in social quality thinking and its policy application. The first is how to sharpen the social quality approach (SQA) as an intellectual instrument to understand the nature and rationale of political/legal, economic, cultural, and environmental processes in societies that aim to cope with their interpretations of mainstream contemporary challenges. The distinction between these processes concerns the main subject of the procedural framework of the SQA (IASQ 2019). The second is how to use social quality indicators for conceiving of the consequences of these processes in communities and cities. This concerns a main subject of the analytical framework of SQA. The connection of these main themes of the SQA is increasingly becoming the crucial challenge for, in particular, the theoretical reflection on thinking and acting for the increase of social quality in communities, cities, and countries. Instead of old and new ideas about individual happiness, the crucial challenge is inspired by ideas about “a good society,” as discussed by antique Greek philosophers.

This study explores the BRICS platform, composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It discusses its vision and principles, as well as its objectives. I also present a selection of particularly significant and emblematic programs of activities. A core question is how its members will realize their main objective, to contribute to the quality of global development. And how do they relate their objective to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations? Aspects of the current framework of the social quality approach (SQA) will be applied in order to deepen this exploration. In the context of this study, it is relevant to cite the decisions by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to assist the elaboration and dissemination of the SQA.

Nearly 30 years of transformation of the sociopolitical and legal, socioeconomical and financial, sociocultural and welfare, and socioenvironmental dimensions in both Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, has led to a change of the social quality of daily circumstances. On the one hand, the interconnection and reciprocity of these four relevant dimensions of societal life is the underlying cause of such changes, and on the other, the state as main actor of the sociopolitical and legal dimension is the initiator of those changes. Applying the social quality approach, I will reflect in this article on the consequences of these changes, especially in Ukraine. In comparison, the dominant Western interpretation of the “welfare state” will also be discussed.

This study employs the social quality approach to analyze public evaluation of society in China based on the data of the 2017 Chinese Social Survey. It includes both objective and subjective survey indicators of the conditional factors of social quality, namely, socioeconomic security, social cohesion, social inclusion, and social empowerment, as independent variables. Regression results reveal most of these indicators are significantly related to the overall evaluation of society though with different explanatory power. This study not only helps understand how Chinese people evaluate their society but also calls attention to further improve social quality indicator system.

This study investigates the difference between the maps of social quality and perceived social quality. Using survey data collected from Peshawar, a prominent city in Pakistan, we compare the general and the perceived maps of social quality drawn from survey respondents based on their stands of income, education, age, and gender. With this comparison, the study conducts the regression analysis about the data to reveal the relations between these factors and draw some policy implications. The analysis contrasting objective and subjective visions of the social quality map may support a constructionist view on social quality and, more essentially, bring our view into the diversity of the perceived maps of social quality in reference to the interests of different social groups in society.