CC BY
13
DOI 10.23947/2414-1143-2021-25-1-11-15 UDC 316.35
MULTI-LEVEL STRUCTURE OF IDENTIFICATION OF MODERN YOUTH
© Madina Z. Magomedova
Regional Center for Ethnopolitical Studies of the Dagestan Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Makhachkala, Dagestan Republic, Russian Federation spirow@mail.ru
The article presents a multi-level structure of identification in the youth environment in an interdisciplinary manner. The search for identity is especially relevant for the younger generation, which does not have an established system of values, in connection with the crisis in the spiritual sphere of society and a certain ideological vacuum. The transformation of the sociocultural space has led to a crisis of identification certainty and blurred life strategies among modern youth. Ignoring the problems of sociocultural identification of young people will lead to negative consequences in the very near future. Therefore, it is necessary to lay the foundations of civic consciousness, critical thinking, adaptive flexibility, professional competence and responsibility in the younger generation. The formation of identity is closely related to the socialization of a person within the framework of certain sociocultural traditions. In a multi-level identification structure, many identities are simultaneously combined, some of which are basic, others are auxiliary. Taking into account the peculiarities of youth as a social group, the author considered socio-cultural identity, which includes ethnic, confessional, ethnocultural and civic identity. These types of identity are considered at the individual and group levels.
Key words: identity, identification, youth, ethnos, nation, religion.
[М.З. Магомедова Многоуровневая структура идентификации современной молодежи]
В статье в междисциплинарном ключе представлена многоуровневая структура идентификации в молодежной среде. Поиск идентичности особо актуален для молодого поколения, не имеющего устоявшейся системы ценностей, в связи с кризисом в духовной сфере жизни общества и определенным идеологическим вакуумом. Трансформация социокультурного пространства привела к кризису идентификационной определенности и размытости жизненных стратегий у современной молодежи. Игнорирование проблем социокультурной идентификации молодежи приведет к негативным последствиям в самой ближайшей перспективе. Следовательно, необходимо заложить в подрастающем поколении основы гражданского самосознания, критического мышления, адаптивной гибкости, профессиональных компетенций и ответственности. Формирование идентичности теснейшим образом связано с социализацией человека в рамках определенных социокультурных традиций. В многоуровневой идентификационной структуре одновременно совмещается множество идентичностей, одни из которых являются базовыми, другие вспомогательными. С учетом особенностей молодежи как социальной группы автором рассмотрена социокультурная идентичность, включающая в себя этническую, конфессиональную, этнокультурную и гражданскую идентичности. Данные разновидности идентичности рассмотрены на индивидуальном и групповом уровнях.
Ключевые слова: идентичность, идентификация, молодежь, этнос, нация, религия.
Madina Z. Magomedova - Ph.D. in Philosophy, leading research worker, Regional Center for Ethnopolitical Studies of the Dagestan Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Makhachkala, Dagestan Republic, Russian Federation.
Магомедова Мадина Зайнудиновна - кандидат философских наук, ведущий научный сотрудник, Региональный центр этнополитических исследований Дагестанского федерального исследовательского центра РАН.
Identity problems are studied by specialists from different fields of socio-humanitarian knowledge: sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, ethnologists, political scientists, etc. This interdisciplinary concept implies the awareness of the involvement of one subject in
another as a part of a whole, a single common. While identification implies the formation of identity, the correlation of an individual, a social group with another person or group. Identification provides for the possibility of coexistence of different self-images in a personal identity. A person can simultaneously combine several identities, some of which are basic, others are auxiliary. Sociocultural identity includes ethnic, confessional, ethnocultural, civil and civilizational identities. These types of identity can be considered at the individual and group levels. A certain balance of both levels is required for the formation of a stable identity. The first level characterizes the authenticity of a person as a unique personality, the second one is associated with the perception of them by the people around them. The structuredness of a person's identity makes it possible to realize the degree of their unity with a social group while simultaneously seeing their uniqueness. Awareness of "what I am", "who I am" comes to a person in their youth and is consolidated in a more mature age although the concepts of "youth", "maturity" are relative.
In sociology, youth is viewed as a large social group with specific social and psychological traits, the presence of which is determined by the age characteristics of young people and the fact that their spiritual world is in a state of formation. In modern scientific literature, this group usually includes people between the ages of 14 and 30.
The age limit for young people in the Russian Federation from 2021 has been officially extended to 35 years old inclusive. Experts in the field of age policy justified the adoption of such a decision by some infantilism of modern youth and an increase in the retirement age in Russia. Young people, defining their life strategy, solve conflict situations based on a comparison of alternative options. Considering that young people are characterized by emotional excitement, inability to restrain themselves, incomplete social status, lack of skills in resolving even simple conflict situations, youthful maximalism - all this ultimately leads to the erosion of identification processes among this social group. The "youth" itself as a social group is not homogeneous. The identification processes in adolescents aged 14-18 differ from the self-perception of young people aged 20-25, and even more do not coincide with "mature youth" of 30-35 years old. Each age group has its own identity. The concept of identity, laid down in the works of the American psychologist E. Erickson, includes the awareness of one's own length in time, and covers eight stages of a person's life, ensuring the continuity of all aspects of one's own "I" in development.
According to E. Erickson, youth, as one of the stages of a person's life, is characterized by the formation of individuality, the formation of a young person's identity. At this stage, it is important to understand the social roles performed and integrate them into one holistic identity. The young person seeks basic values and attitudes that encompass all social roles performed. If they fail to define a basic identity or to resolve a serious conflict between roles with opposing value systems, then disagreement, confusion of social roles or so-called role confusion arises. As a result, it leads to suspiciousness, shyness and self-doubt, burdened by a sense of guilt and self-inferiority.
The next stage in a person's life, called by E. Erickson "early adulthood ", is characterized by the formation of closeness and unity with the outside world, self-acceptance in social space. Otherwise, unwillingness to build trusting relationships with others or excessive self-absorption will lead to loneliness, social vacuum and isolation.
An identification environment is a system where tradition and innovation coexist. In the age of high technologies, the virtualization of society leads to a change in the hierarchical connections between local and global processes. The virtual space of the Internet "absorbs" a person and begins to dictate his own rules to him. In virtual reality, a person can achieve a very specific social recognition, take place as a person to a greater extent than in "real life" [5, p. 33]. The information society destroys what the traditional one was based on, i.e. the integrity of ethnocultural life, the loss of the usual ways of transmitting information from the older generation to the younger. The connection between generations
is minimized as peer communities or the virtual space now become connecting factors. In the post-industrial era, people are less guided in life by knowledge, but more by information that instantly spreads in the social space. Manipulating human consciousness, depersonalizing people, replacing spiritual values with the cult of consumerism have become the main characteristics of modern life. Passion for social networks, life for show, virtual reality - all this has become an integral part of the life of modern youth. While adapting to rapidly changing living conditions, young people try to find a basis in basic identification values.
The stability of identification ensures a person's ability to achieve a harmonious relationship between their own idea of themselves and the ideas of others, between the individual and social "I". The main principle of the formation of identity is the process of "correlating" an individual with a certain social group. Social categories record from the general diversity of the surrounding world only established and time-tested phenomena. Among the multitude of sociocultural groups, the most stable and sustained are religious and ethnic communities, which provide a person with reliable support, support him during the period of social cataclysms and personal upheavals. Ethnic identity is the result of a young person's identification with an ethnos and ethnic group. The decisive factor is the feeling of immutability and stability of ethnic characteristics, or "ethnic constancy". Moreover, ethnic constants are affirmed in the behavior and consciousness of a person no earlier than 1213 years. Since for the awareness of ethnic differences "in addition to simple perception, more complex mechanisms of socio-cultural identification and intergenerational transmission of information are needed, therefore the formation of ethnic constancy ... completes the process of gradual awareness of the invariability of the main psychosocial characteristics" [7, p. 14].
Ethnic status most often remains unchanged throughout a person's life. And yet, ethnic identity is not static, but dynamic education: the process of its formation does not end in adolescence. External circumstances can push a person of any age to rethink the role of ethnicity in his life, lead to the transformation of ethnic identity. Issues of ethnic self-identification, ethnic involvement, etc. are very contradictory and ambiguous. To prevent a further exacerbation of the identity crisis among young people and the loss of value orientations, a reasonable combination of ethnic and civic components of identity is necessary. The state of civic identity directly depends on the degree of social well-being in society. "Uncertainty of civil identity largely stems from not only its "youth" and immaturity, but also from the very modern realities of economic and social reality" [4, p. 147]. Civil identity is the result of purposeful educational activities of society and the state, in contrast to ethnic identity, which is formed in the process of socialization and has an ascriptive, primordial character [1, p. 70].
The identification space can simultaneously include ethnic, regional, civil and civiliza-tional levels coexisting and actualizing depending on the context. Multilevel identification presupposes belonging to a complex culture (for example, Russian or Dagestan), the right to stay outside a particular ethnic culture. The great poet of Dagestan Rasul Gamzatov, defining the meaning of this phenomenon, said that in Dagestan he was an Avar, in Moscow he was a Dagestan, and abroad he was Russian. A multilevel structure of identification is an indispensable condition for the stable existence of any multiethnic-confessional society.
There is a close relationship between ethnic, religious and confessional identities. According to M.M. Mchedlova, "a person's religious identity is formed as a result of correlating himself with a certain religion and is determined by the meaning of faith and the role of religious institutions in his consciousness and behavior"; "confessional identity appears to be a component of religious identity, the result of correlation, self-identification with a certain religious movement or confession" [3, p. 335]. The intersection of religious and
confessional identities predetermines the multivalued Russian context of religiosity, which includes correlating oneself with a certain stable cultural tradition, faith as a component of ontological identity, of being, when the cornerstone of life experience is the relationship of a person with God, an increase in the number of those who consider themselves Orthodox, Islamic or other religious tradition and the presence of traditional confessions in the public sphere [3, p. 338]. The main tendencies in the formation of ties between religion and ethnos are manifested in their interaction. Ethno-confessional values accumulate the rich moral experience of the people and ensure the continuity of their spiritual culture. At the same time, religious traditions, penetrating into national forms of social life, acquire the character of ethnic phenomena or are "ethnized", and ethnic phenomena, as a result of long-term interaction with religion, are saturated with cult and "confessionalized." Each of the modern religions differs from one another primarily by the system of dogmas and cult actions. They are, as it were, external symbols of a believer's belonging to one of the religious confessions [2, p. 17]. It is assumed that due to the cosmopolitan nature of world religions, the role of the ethnic component is not so important for them, but in reality the link "nationality-religion" works. If we say "Avar", "Chechen", "Tatar", etc., then we expect the reference "Muslim", similarly "Russian", "Ukrainian", "Serb", etc. - "Orthodox Christian". In the mass consciousness, ethnic identity is steadily associated with confessional affiliation. "Ethnic identity in modern conditions is inevitably transformed under the influence of modernization processes. It is assumed that modernization processes lead to the leveling of ethnic and cultural differences by destroying the cultural isolation of small peoples. At the same time, the modern world demonstrates the fact that ethnic identity is characterized by stability and still determines the actions and behavior of people" [6, p. 4].
Ethno-confessional identity is formed under the influence of multidirectional socio-cultural trends. The formation process is cyclical, but the impact of social life on basic identities can be different depending on the value priorities of a given time. When ethnic and religious values dominate in society, the phenomenon of sacralization of ethnocultural life takes place. There is a certain pattern: the role of ethno-confessional identity in the mass consciousness increases in conditions of socio-political instability, in the individual consciousness - as a result of personal tragedy, job loss, etc. In such cases, people want to rely on time-tested core values. The calm, tolerant coexistence of a community with different sociocultural identities needs to intensify their dialogue. Misunderstanding and conflicts between bearers of different religious and ethnic identities have negative consequences for the entire world community. Therefore, there is a need to form a single cultural space that promotes ethno-confessional dialogue, with full awareness that differences of cultures, ethnic groups, languages, religions are the norm of human society.
Литература
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8 March, 2021
