Phenomenology of the «lifeworld» of urbanites in the extra urban space in the near north: The house and domestication

Abstract

The article deals with a phenomenological reconstruction of the «lifeworld» of urbanites who buy houses in the countryside for recreation and who then begin to create a different, non-urban models of existence, the center of which becomes a rural-style log house. The empirical frame is based on the so-called «distant dachas». These are houses bought by urbanites in the villages in the peripheral rural areas located more than 400–600 km from the major cities – Moscow or St. Petersburg. This process is accompanied by the formation of a special «lifeworld» (in terms of phenomenology) among the townspeople with associated mental structures such as «home», «hearth», «possession», «historical past», «world of belongings of previous owners», «abandonment in space», «solitude», «significant other», «archaica», etc. In the Near North of Russia, specifically in the villages of the Kostroma Oblast, among the urbanites – summer residents and downshifters, one can observe a special approach to organizing everyday life, involving the individualization of their living space with the priority of intangible values that fit into the context of preserving the socio-cultural space of their vision of the ideal Russian village.