ETHNOCULTURAL AND SOCIOCULTURAL MARGINALITY: CONTRIBUTION TO CIVILIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION

Author: Olga SERGEEVA . Any civilization relies on self-identification for its existence. Indeed, the very principle of identification demonstrates an ability of diachronous sociocultural reproduction that means reproduction of basic values and stable skills determined by cultural traditions, social, and spiritual constants. Obviously, a higher level of structural organization of any civilization calls for a greater number of identification subsystems (state, national, ethnic, and confessional). Disrupted identification speaks of a crisis of the social structure. If and when it becomes radical mechanisms of cultural degradation, of crumbling of the civilizational field or, at least, of lowering the identification level (from civilization to a nation or an ethnos) appear. This can happen if these structures preserve their self- regulatory and self-reproducing abilities within civil society. Otherwise we shall witness a process of atomization of the socium, decay of its integrity and appearance of temporal structures unable to reproduce themselves and devoid of any stable sociocultural behavioral patterns. A great number of factors may start an identity crisis: . -alien civilizational influence due to contacts with other ethnoses; . -asymmetric ethnocultural contacts and different socialization models (traditional and modern) residing in an ethnically patchy society; . -migration and urbanization that encouraged socialization outside habitual cultural and behavioral stereotypes; . -cultural differentiation inside the interacting sociums that overlays specific mentality with the process of assimilation; 1 . -measures the state resorts to when new social structures appear; when the socium and its axiological and meaningful core is split in the course of political struggle, cultural conflicts, etc., or as a result of negative complementarity between the structural systems of the lower level; 2 . -erosion of the socium's integrity by introducing cultural multistructuralism; introduction of the norms of behavior not fitting the already accepted cultural stereotypes; appearance of new dominant groups with the normative-axiological systems of their own that do not fit traditions; . O. Sergeeva, Cand. Sc. (Philos.), assistant professor, Tsiolkovsky State Technological University. The article appeared in Russian in Obshchestvenniye nauki i sovremennost, No. 5, 2000. Pages. 3 . -abandonment of the already accepted culture followed by a change of axiological orientations, activity motives, behavioral and thinking stereotypes on the individual level that embrace large groups of people. Marginality as a result of the identity crisis (on a group or individual level) and an indicator of such crisis can be actualized on the following levels: . -status (form of existence); . -phenomenon (a special subculture in the sphere of interaction of various social groups); . -situation taking shape where different forms of social life meet; . -discrete forms of social regulation of behavior, and, finally, . -destruction of ethnocultural standards that is an ambivalent process. It can become a vehicle bringing new features to the social and cultural sphere or a source of destructive behavior. Marginality can be an ethnocultural phenomenon obvious at the environmental or individual level (more of this below). Let us examine the definitions. It is commonly accepted that an individual existing at the conventional border between two or more ethnoses and accepting none of them can be described as ethnically marginal. From this it follows that people socialized within two cultures, two axiological systems, or two behavioral stereotypes belong to an ethnically marginal group or stratum. A marginal group and a marginal individual live on the borderline between two cultures, identify themselves with both while insisting on their own system of norms and values. Such groups are internally and externally contradictory and their actions potentially have many vectors. At the same time they exhibit a higher than average level of negative (suicidal tendencies) and positive (high creative activeness) features. 3 . An ethnically marginal individual who exists in two cultural and axiological systems at one and the same time is psychologically divided. Such people betray dual behavioral stereotypes, devotion to several (sometimes mutually exclusive) traditions that causes lability and ambivalent world outlooks and orientations at the subjective perception level. Having found himself in this situation an individual tries to overcome his psychic and emotional bifurcation; such people demonstrate dedication to certain social ideals, an active social and political position. This explains why ethnically marginal people often play key roles in ethnic conflicts. A combination of lability and ambivalent ethnic ideas with an awareness of an identity crisis and a desire to belong to a group with which a person shares positive complementarity determines his behavior in social and political crises.