LOCAL IDENTITY AND MECHANISMS OF ITS CONVERSION INTO CONSTRUCTIVE SOCIO-POLITICAL PRACTICES OF YOUTH

Abstract

The results of the authors’ research concerning local (urban) youth identity, alongside the manner in which it develops into constructive socio-political practices, are presented in this article (based on materials from the Krasnodar Territory). The authors describe urban youth identity as a part of the subjective space influencing the organizational forms and content of local youth socio-political practices and their participation in power relations. The theoretical model includes parameters of youth as a specific socio-demographic group such as a special stage of socialization, attitudes towards social mobility, type of organization, number, etc. The content of local identity and the parameters of the city as an identification object were taken into consideration. The conceptual model also includes practices of social activity in which local identity is realized, a system of factors influencing the process by which local identity actualizes, forms, and changes, and mechanisms for converting local identity into social practices. Empirical research showed that local (urban) identity informs the social and territorial identities of urban youth, and its character depends on the size of the city and the category of young people. The authors describe the semantic space of the city (the attitude towards the city) and the features of its configuration in different age groups. The direct and inverse models of converting the meanings of local (urban) identity into the socio-political practices of young people and their dialectical nature were revealed. Three trigger zones actualizing local identity and converting it into socio-political practices were characterized (a zone of direct conversion, a zone of potential conversion of local identity into constructive practices, and a zone of potential conversion of local identity into destructive practices). The administrative, political, public, and network mechanisms for converting local (urban) identity into constructive sociopolitical practices of youth were identified and described.