Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:Russian Society and Russian Civil Identity (Case of the Youth). Tutorial
.pdf
manipulation is performed by foreign agents residing in the Russian
Federation 59.
In the processes of active homogenizing the world society,
traditions, and cultures, N.N. Moiseev, a Russian scientist, sees a gradual
establishment of the ‘regime of new totalitarianism’, “in which the fivebillion brainwashed population of poor countries would support the
democratic and environmental well-being of the Golden Billion.”
In view of targeted globalization processes, we can clearly see the reality of
a new global power with imperial views, a unified managing center,
dividing countries into different ‘worlds’ and hard, quite a ‘no-flow’
dividing the population (on the international scale and in individual
countries) into elite and ordinary people, and into the metropolitan Golden
Billion and colonial backwater 60. Today, some doubts are cast upon the
fruifulness of globalization for a nation even in those having previously
advocated
for it.
When studying the modern globalization processes, many
researchers understand that those processes are inevitable and that the
Russian society rapidly adopts new values and references influencing its
civilizational identity. Keeping in mind the situation, we can put the
questions: What will be the further development of civilizational identity?
What will be lost for ever, and what new traits will evolve? What will the
post-globalization represent?
M.A. Cheshkov links the new stage of post-globalization
development to the crisis of idea of the global human communality itself.
The crisis of the globalization ideology and practices manifests in the fact
that the redundancy of diversity is observed at the limited social
organization, which means, according to the author, that “we deal with
something larger than a crisis or, more specifically, with a fundamental
malfunction in universal evolution, i.e. a malfunction that threatens the
59
Zima, N.A. (2005) Globalizatsiya kultutry i spetsifika yeyo proyavleniya v Rossii
[Globalization of Culture and Specifics of Its Manifestations in Russia].
Dissertation in support of candidature for a philosophy degree. Stavropol. P. 28–45
(In Russian).
60
Moiseev, N.N. (1996) Informatsionnoye obeshchestvo kak etap noveyshey istorii
[Information-Oriented Society as a Stage of the Recent History]. In: Svobodnaya
mysl [Free Thinking]. No. 1. P. 39–56. (In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
51
existence of humanity as a whole.” This is not just a crisis, M.A. Cheshkov
argues, but an anthoropological mega-crisis. Despite the fact that
researchers consider the current crisis managerial rather than civilizational,
i.e. a crisis of the traditional model of managing various aspects of the
modern society’s life, the number of those who go negative on the
globalization-related so-called programs of structural adaptation of
individual countries to the general process. Criticism is also expressed
regarding the neoliberal nature of globalism containing the eoconmic
doctrine provoking the threat of economic degradation, increasing
terrorism, and soaring corruption. In the United Nations Development
Programme for year 1999, where necessary, there was even the idea
advanced of the “globalization with a human face” 61.
The presence of crisis earmarks in the ideological foundations of
globalization is also recorded to a certain extent by many authors in the
Western culture, including G. Soros. The signs of a crisis of the modern
civilization development are to a large extent provoked by globalization
that strengthens the cultural aspects of human life, subordinated to
economic and political goals. This situation takes place due to the
realization of the goals of the globalization process and the application of
techniques or methods chosen for such realization. The globalization
process and its crisis have a cultural dimension illustrated by figures that
are rather negative for the society.
Thus, we can say that the civilizational identity of the modern
Russians will rapidly change under the influence of globalization processes.
Obviously, the strive for globalization, for creating a universal global
culture based on the unification or standardization of different cultures
rather than a constructive dialog among them, would lead to the crisis of
national traditions and cultures. Strategic reforming the Russian Federation
at the moment of its nation building upon the breakup of the USSR ignored
the specifics of the Russian traditions, culture, and mental attitudes. The
negative results obtained due to the disadvantages of this strategy provide
evidence that the movers of the ambitious plans and changes did not touch
on the matters preserving the civilizational identity of Russians considering
global processes marked by high activity and assertiveness. Reforming
61
Cheshkov, M.A. (1995) Novaya nauka, postmodernism i tselostnost
sovremennogo mira []. In: Cheshkov, M.A. ed. In: Voprosy filosofii [Philosophical
Issues]. N. 4. P. 44–76. (In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
52
broke the main code of the local civilization: The dynamic balance of
integrity, continuity, and practicability. According to many researchers, the
period of the Yeltsin presidency in Russia saw the destruction of values,
traditions, and moral landmarks 62.
In this regard, in order to develop the civilizational identity of the
modern Russian society, it would be advisable to remember the roots,
primordial traditions, and the culture that has been lost due to multiple
reforms, stresses, and transformations. However, there is a problem arising:
The globalization process has deeply rooted in the Russian society,
especially among young people, i.e. the rising generation. The values
inspired from outside have practically become native, i.e. a part of the
people’s identity.
The initiative groups’s attempts to turn to the past, restore the
traditions lost, and cast off all foreign things are given quite an aggressive
reception. This provides evidence that there is practically impossible to
restore the civilizational identity without taking into consideration modern
trends and views. Moreover, the open and commonly available masscmmunication channels outweigh, in terms of their impact, all prerequisites
for turning people’s attention back to old traditions or values.
Despite the great variety of various cultures that ensures the
concentration of the individual, i.e. the panhuman, totality in each of them,
the common culture is a necessary condition of forming social relations and
evolution of human immunity. A question arise what methods can be used
to distribute it over the entire society. Seemingly, at the present stage, only
local social groups that realize the problem or are distant from any mass
communications network can be the carriers of primordial civilizational
identity.
General culture must create the general context of social relations,
i.e. the fabric of cultural denotations, which each particular individual may
associate him or herself with. Culture must exist as a net of individual,
social stories. Global values are irretrievably integrated on the initial
reference points of the modern culture. This particularly concerns the welldeveloped regions of Russia. For this reason, within the framework of
62
Zima, N.A. (2005) Globalizatsiya kultutry i spetsifika yeyo proyavleniya v Rossii
[Globalization of Culture and Specifics of Its Manifestations in Russia].
Dissertation in support of candidature for a philosophy degree. Stavropol. P. 28–45
(In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
53
forming the new civilizational identity, it would be topical to build up
conditions for integrating into the national culture the facts of individual
existence and biographies, simultaneously including the elements of
globalization processes into it. Cultural values and globalization processes
are infused into a specific content, i.e. the unified fabric of civilizational
identity and global culture, within which the difference between them must
be kept to such extent that one could see the unity in diversity, not in the
universalization of the global cultural environment.
It is reasonable to consider the interrelation of civilizational identity
with how an individual sees him or herself as a part of an ethnic group and
how this is represented in the modern science. Currently, the problem of
civilizational identity starts to come under the notice of Russian
sociologists, psychologists, social psychologists, and cultural experts. They
distinguished the whole area of studies related to this topic: Conflict
Resolution Studies, Conflict Theories, and Ethnic Conflictology. These
disciplines pay much attention to the problem of ethnic identity in its
various modifications.
It is important to study ethnical identity because it can cause serious
processes of global nature. This is why this matter is investigated by
sociology itself and its branches, such as conflict resolution studies, conflict
theories, and ethnic conflictology. These domains develop the structures of
identifying the participants of social processes.
A.V. Avksentyev argues that, in case of a heightened ethnic identity
accompanied by aggression and by demonstration of one’s superiority to
others, conflicts and wars may develop. Depending on the identity degree
among the belligerents, he distinguishes open, active doers (these are
usually a part of the ethnic group, primarily its political elite) and the
‘secondary belligerents’, i.e. the largest part of the ethnos involved in the
conflict via mediating links. Along with the subjects bearing the conflict,
V.A. Avksentyev also suggests to distinguish among the belligerents the
initiators, supporters, and mediators of an ethnic conflict. At the same time,
such people can rarely be marked by a positive ethnic identity 63.
The matters taken up with ethno-sociology have mainstreamed the
problem of the necessity to consider the changes in the people’s national
self-identification in ethno-political processes, the ways of becoming aware
63
Avksentyev, V.A. (2001) Etnicheskaya konfliktologiya [Ethnic Conflictology].
In 2 parts. In: Shapovalov, V.A. ed. Stavropol, 267 p. (In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
54
of one’s ethnicity, and the features and functions of expatriate communities
as a stable totality of people having the same ethnic origin and living
outside their historical communities (A.G. Zdravomyslov,
Zh.T. Toshchenko, and T.I. Chaktykova)64. In this situation, when
interpreting the identity in terms of ethnos, a landmark aspect takes place.
Ethnic identity started to be considered both as a summary indicator
of the subject’s past development and as an illustrative sample of a certain
social orientation to future, i.e. as a structure developed prior to any
behavior act determining further actions, and therefore, as a structural
element of self-comprehension. At the same time, ethnic identity started to
be considered as the factor of both stability and conflictogenity 65.
Social psychologists fixate on studying, first, mental mechanisms
of the ethnic identification itself and, second, the ethnic self-identification
of people. S. Hall emphasizes that identity always keeps its ‘incompletion’,
it is always ‘halfway through’, always being formed. Thus, ethnic identity
is being continuously formed, complemented with new specific aspects, and
strengthened.
Identification involves a process characterized by psychological
and social inclusion into certain national traditions, values, and ethnicity.
Being one of the mechanisms of ethnicity cognition, along with
interpretation, attribution, and reflexion, identification represents one’s selfmatching with other ethnicities and one’s own ethnos, perceiving the moods
of the object 66.
Ethnic identity can be explained from W. James’s perspectives. A
personality tends to identify with the surrounding world and see his or her
64
Zdravomyslov, A.G. Etnopoliticheskiye protsessy i dinamika natsionalnogo
samosoznaniya rossiyan [Ethnopolitical Processes and the Changes in the National
Identity of Russians] [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://ecsocman.hse.ru/
data/399/787/1219/003_zdravomyslov.pdf (In Russian).
65
Zima, N.A. (2005) Globalizatsiya kultutry i spetsifika yeyo proyavleniya v Rossii
[Globalization of Culture and Specifics of Its Manifestations in Russia].
Dissertation in support of candidature for a philosophy degree. Stavropol. P. 28-45
(In Russian).
66
Vekilova, S.A. (2013) Etnicheskaya identichnost, otrazhennaya v imeni
cheloveka [Ethnic Identity Reflected in the Human Name]. In: Vekilova, S.A. ed.
In: Vestnik YuUrGU. Seriya “Psikhologiya” [Bulletin of the South Ural State
University. Series “Psychology”]. Vol. 6. No. 1. P. 14–18. (In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
55
boundaries and place within this world. James showed that a person thinks
of him or herself from two perspectives. So we can speak about two aspects
of ethnic identity: 1) Personal aspect creating the personal self-relation and
2) social aspect forming the manifold of an individual’s social selves.
Speaking about personal ethnic identity, we mean selfdetermination in terms of an individual’s intellectual, cultural, traditional,
and moral traits. To define personal ethnic identity, it is necessary to
describe the self-concept, i.e. a set of an individual’s ideas of him or herself,
along with his or her evaluation thereof. In this case, the individual receives
information about his or her ethnos and relevant evaluation from outside.
Ethnic identity means self-definition in terms of self-placing in a
certain ethnic group. Forming ethnic identity is inseparable from social
interaction with environment. However, ethnic identity is related to the
much larger extent to correlatin one’s self with a certain ethnic group; this
is a way for a given individual to arrange his or her ideas of him or herself,
his or her ethnicity, his or her traditions and culture, as well as of the ethnic
group he or she belongs to.
Ethnic identity determines the individual’s actions within social
structure, establishing his or her position within the ethnic group.
Considering the elements of the personal ethnic identity, B. Schäfer says
that, based on the studies of this topic regarding identity problems, three
parameters of group identity may be proposed:
– similarity/commonality. This includes common language, culture,
history, and political order;
– specific features of the external social group (outgroup). The
internal group (ingroup) identity becomes powerful where the members of
the outgroup have essential differences, special features, or characteristics
as compared to the members of the ingroup, regarding their language,
ethnicity, etc., and particularly where the outgroup is considered as a threat
for the functioning of the ingroup;
– instrumentality reflecting the extent to what an individual is
interested in being included into the ingroup, in addition to the fact that that
individual just shares the characteristics common with the social group 67.
67
Schäfer, B. (1994) Sozial-psychologisches Modell des Fremdbildes [Electronic
resource]. – URL: http://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/sotsialno-psihologicheskayamodel-vospriyatiya-chuzhogo-identichnost-znanie-ambivalentnost (In Russian,
translated from German).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
56
N.L. Ivanova argues that the problematics of the principles of
building up the structure of personal social identity is the key theoretical
and practical domain of research. Despite the increased actuality of the
above problems and the large flow of studies related to the specific types of
social identity, there is a large space for scientific activities towards
considering the matters of ethnic identity, the integrated structure and
elements of this phenomenon, the interrelation of all identity components,
time history, and changes in ethnic identity caused by various social
conditions.
There is no complete and comprehensive representation of personal
ethnic identity as a model that would reflect the hierarchic arrangement of
components, psychological features of their content, and functioning. The
existing ideas of an individual’s identity with an ethnic group do not let us
analyze its integrated structure as a complex and many-sided formation.
N.L. Ivanova represents social identity as a unity of motivational,
cognitive, and axiological aspects. Personal social identity is built up as a
complex personal formation containing the subject of identity and formaldynamic characteristics, such as mindfulness, persistence, intensity,
pronouncedness, etc. Ethnic configuration of social identity also represents
a totality of value-based, cognitive, and motivational components. This is a
complex phenomenon characterized by development dynamics and various
trnsformations. Ethnic identity is a dynamic system of cultural, traditional,
and national constructs, i.e. it performs its functions as a construct
representing a simultaneous statement of similarities and differences. Ethnic
identity is constructed in interaction, social comparison, and active
constructing the social reality68.
Personal ethnic identity has been constructed for a larger number of
the social group members from their very birth and is based on a suggestion
of their sociocultural experience gained and represented. H. Tajfel speaks of
social identity as a part of the human self-concept structure arising in one’s
comprehension of oneself as a member of a certain social group, with an
emotional and value-based meaning one attributes to this group. Ethnic
identity is a part of the personal social identity, i.e. a psycho-social category
68
Ivanova, N.L. Problema psikhologicheskogo analiza sotsialnoy identichnosti
[Problem of Psychological Analysis of Social Identity]. [Electronic resource]. –
URL: http://elar.uniyar.ac.ru/jspui/bitstream/123456789/77/1/inl_1_a.pdf, free.
(In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
57
related to one’s understanding his or her belonging to a certain ethnic
group. Thus, ethnic self-comprehension in a personality is related to ethnic
self-determination69.
In social psychology, analyzing ethnic identity is related to
studying the mechanisms of building up, i.e. forming the connections to the
ambient reality. At the same time, ethnic identity is considered as an
integral part of a structure consisting of interrelated social groups. Studying
ethnic identity based on socio-psychological approach focuses on a process,
due to which individuals construct and build up their communicative
relations to people and groups of people within their own or other ethnic
groups.
Apparently, ethnic identity is marked by the high dynamics of its
different elements, suggesting an active interaction of the levels of analysis
conducted regarding an individual, a society, and a culture. Ethnic identity
is considered as the process of adopting by a person the qualities and
special features of external environment, aiming at actualizing the
personality traits that are important in certain conditions. G.G. Shpet
defines ethnic identity as experiencing one’s own sameness with a certain
ethnic group and separation from other ethnic communities 70.
In the course of studying ethnic identity over many years, its
genesis, tendencies, transformation, and formation at various stages of
human life allowed distinguishing its seven basic types that have certain
attributes and differentiae:
1. Normal identity. With normal identity, an individual perceives
the image of his or her nation positively, which includes perceiving the
nation as a carrier of useful knowledge, native traditions, and multiple
cultural values; but the need for identifying him or herself with the given
ethnic group depends on his or her type of behavior and situative
conditions. Deviations from that ‘norm’ may go both towards increasing
ethnicity and towards its reducing or, sometimes, even disappearing.
2. Ethnocentric identity. It means preferring, to a non-critical
extent, a certain ethnic group. An individual identifies his or herself with
this specific group. With this identity, there are elements of ethno-
69
Tajfel, H. Social identity and intergroup relations / H. Tajfel // II European
studies in social psychology. 1982. P. 15–40.
70
Shpet, G.G. (1996) Vvedeniye v etnicheskuyu psikhologiyu [Introduction into
Ethnic Psychology]. In: Shpet, G.G. ed. St. Petersburg. 196 p. (In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
58
isolationism, limited communications, and introversion. In some ethnic
groups the elements of strangeness or introversion are determined by the
established traditions, norms, rites, and religious rules, though they are not
accompanied by total isolationism.
3. Ethnodominating identity. Ethnic identity becomes more
preferred than any other types of identity, such as civil, family, or
professional identity. This type of identity is usually marked by
acknowledging the ‘people’s right’ as being above the common human
rights, the determination of one’s nation’s superiority, discriminating
attitudes towards other ethnoses, and justification of ethnic cleansing or
genocides. This community does not wish to mingle with the
representatives of other ethnic groups.
4. Ethno-bigotry. This identity only accepts the absolute dominance
of its ethnic interests and goals, often perceived in irrational manner and to
the detriment of other people’s interests. It is accompanied by the readiness
to make any unlimited sacrifices or actions for them. This is an extreme
form of aggressive identity.
5. Ethnic indifference. With this identity, an individual is
disinterested in the problems of his or her own ethnicity or interethnic
relations, as well as in the values, traditions, or references of his or her own
or any other ethnoses. Such people are independent on the norms or
traditions of their own ethnic group; their actions or behavior in any areas
of life are influenced by neither their own nor others’ ethnicity.
6. Ethnic nihilism. In form of cosmopolitanism, it represents the
full negation of one’s own ethnicity and ethnic and ethno-cultural values. It
usually occurs due to realizing the low status of one’s ethnic group and
accepting its unequality as compared to other groups. This results in
escaping one’s own ethnos and being in complete denial of any ethnicity.
7. Ambivalent ethnicity means an ethnic identity that is not
pronounced explicitly. It occurs widely in mixed ethnic environments.
N.M. Lebedeva and V.Yu. Khotinets add 2 more types of ethnic
self-identification:
1. Ethnonegativism means that the comprehension of one’s
belonging to an ethnic group is of negative nature. The negative attitude to
one’s ethnos may be determined by the unevenness of the ethnic
community development and by the different levels of economic or cultural
progress. The pronouncedness of ethnonegativism depends on the
attractivity of other ethnoses.
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
59
2. Ethno-elimination. This identification is characteristic of people
partly belonging to different ethnoses, but no having completely integrated
in any of them. In this case, there is a commitment to another ethnos with
simultaneous realizing one’s belonging to one’s own ethnos.
Pronouncedness of this type of identity is related to the “contribution of
other ethnos’s value-based needs to the motivational frame of the
personality” 71.
T.G. Stefanenko describes false identity found in young children
with ethnic identity not yet formed, which perceive themselves as the
members of a group of higher status. This type of identity should be
differentiated from altered identity that is formed as a result of conscious
changing the ethnic group. The researcher argues that it is inherent to an
individual to identify him or herself more or less intensively with one or
two ethnic groups simultaneously. So he proposed a model of two ethnic
identity changes. It contains four types of ethnic identity, within which the
interrelations with two groups may be established quite independently of
each other:
1. Monoethnic identity with one’s own ethnic group. It is official
ethnicity.
2. Monoethnic identity with another ethnic group. It may be formed
where, in a multiethnic society, a nonindigenous group is considered from
the perspective of a more successful economic or social status than that of
one’s own group. Identification with a nonindigenous group results in full
assimilation. It means that a person adopts the values, norms, traditions, and
language of the nonindigenous group, up to complete dissolving in it.
3. Biethnic identity. The carriers of such identity have the
psychological traits of several ethnic groups and demonstrate bicultural
competence.
4. Marginal identity. This type of identity is typical of people that
have not adopted the values and norms of any of the ethnic groups and are
balancing between them.
People may demonstrate weak or amorphous identity or even no
identity at all. As the search for and following the strategy of personal well-
71
Lebedeva, N.M. (2003) Psikhologicheskiye issledovaniya enticheskoy
tolerantnosti [Psychological Research in Ethnic Tolerance]. In: Lebedeva, N.M.,
Khotinets, V.Yu., Vyskochil, A.A., and Gayurova, Yu.A. eds. Yekaterinburg.
UrMION. P. 44–55. (In Russian).
RUSSIAN SOCIETY AND RUSSIAN CIVIL IDENTITY
60
Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]