Does ethnicity remain in the urban environment? Some answers to the mysteries of the big city

Drobizheva L.M.

336-348 p.


doi.org: 10.22378/he.2024-9-3.336-348


From the editor. A special issue of the journal dedicated to ethnosocial processes in the modern city opens with a translation of the paper by L.M. Drobizheva “Does ethnicity remain in the urban environment? Some answers to the mysteries of the big city”. The publication is intended to present to the global academic community of the famous Russian scholar, a recognised Russian ethnosociology classic’s the view on urban ethnosocial issues. The journal expresses gratitude to Vitaly Vladimirovich Goshulyak, the editor-in-chief of the publication News of higher educational institutions. Volga region. Social sciences, in which the paper was published in Russian, for the courtesy to translate it into English (See: Drobizheva L.M. (2013) Does ethnicity remain in the urban environment? Some answers to the mysteries of the big city. Izvestiya vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniy. Povolzhskiy region. Obshchestvennyye nauki. [News of higher education institutions. Volga region. Social sciences]. No. 3 (27): 73–83. URL: https://izvuz_on.pnzgu.ru/files/izvuz_on. pnzgu.ru/09313.pdf).

Abstract. Background. The processes of industrialisation and modernisation, according to classical sociologists, should lead to the blurring of ethnic differences, but practice shows the opposite trend. The purpose of the paper is to identify the level of civil and ethnic identity in the settlements of different types (metropolis, town, village), and the impact of various factors on its formation. Materials and methods. The implementation of the research tasks has been achieved on the basis of analysing the data of the nationwide research by the RAS Institute of Sociology “20 years of reform as viewed by Russians”, a series of studies by the International Relations Research Center of the RAS Institute of Sociology in Moscow and the republics on a representative sample, a study conducted by the subdepartment of sociology and personnel management” of Penza State University under the grant “Dynamics of students’ values and attitudes in the Volga Federal District under Russian sociocultural modernisation”, as well as data of the European Social Survey. Sociological survey and secondary analysis methods have been used. Results. The analysis of the research results showed that civil and ethnic identity in the cities not only lower than in the rural areas, but the significance of ethnic identity in the cities is even a little higher. Conclusions. The nature of interethnic relations is influenced by many factors, such as the level of education, satisfaction or dissatisfaction with one’s life, the assessment of what people gained or lost in the last decade, the collapse of hopes, anger against corruption and injustice in life. In addition, each factor in conjunction with the others “works” in different ways on every territory.


Keywords: civil identity, ethnic identity, xenophobia, identity matrix, ethnic tensions, immigrants

For citation: Drobizheva L.M. (2024) Does ethnicity remain in the urban environment? Some answers to the mysteries of the big city. Transl. by D.R. Sharifullina. Istoricheskaya etnologiya [Historical Ethnology]. Vol. 9. No. 3: 336–348. https://doi.org/10.22378/he.2024-9-3.336-348


REFERENCES

Pokrovskiy N.E. (2001) Transit of Russian values: unrealized alternative, anomie, globalization. In: Globalisation. Post-soviet society. Moscow: Stovi Publ.: 39–60 (In Russ.)
20 years of reforms in the eyes of Russians: experience of long-term sociological observation (2011). M.K. Gorshkov, R.Krumm, V.V.Petukhov (eds.). Moscow: Ves’ Mir Publ. (In Russ.)
 

About the authors: Leokadiya M. Drobizheva (1933–2021), Professor, Doctor Sc. (History)
The translation author: Dilyara R. Sharifullina, Cand. Sc. (Philology), Kazan (Volga region) Federal University (18 Kremlevskaya St., Kazan 420008, Russian Federation); e-mail: dilara.ksu@gmail.com


Published Online 24.07.2024