Litvin, J. V. BIOGRAPHIC METHOD IN STUDYING THE SOCIAL SELF PERCEPTION OF KARELIAN ACTIVISTS. Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2021;43(4):103–109. DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2021.624


Ethnology, anthropology and ethnography

BIOGRAPHIC METHOD IN STUDYING THE SOCIAL SELF PERCEPTION OF KARELIAN ACTIVISTS

Litvin
J. V. 		Karelian research centre, Russian academy of sciences
Keywords:
ethnicity
social self perception
ethnic processes
biographical method
Republic of Karelia
Karelian language		 Summary: The study of ethnicity is relevant in the context of globalization. So a person emphasizes his identity in the conditions of mass culture and increases self-awareness. Ethnosociologists and ethnologists pay attention to thisproblem, based mainly on the data of quantitative analysis. The number of scientific publications using non-formalized analytical tools has been growing in recent years. The paper aspires to investigate the possibility of qualitative methods to study the social self perception of a specific social group – ethnic activists. It is based on series of biographical interviews. Interviews were conducted in the republican center of Karelia – Petrozavodsk, and in large settlements of so-called “national” districts as well (where the proportion of Karelians is higher than in the Republic of Karelia in a whole). The analysis of materials was carried out by assigning keywords to the decrypted large text. the novelty of the study lies in the research accents: a group of ethnic activists usually interviewed as experts, but their socio-psychological characteristics have not become the object of special attention in Karelian ethnological and sociological research. It was concluded that biographical method is importance in the study of the socio-psychological characteristics of a person. The communicative power of the Russian language leads to a situation of conflict between different components in the ethnic identity structure among ethnic activists. The Karelian language retains the value of an essential factor of identity (cognitive component), while the scope of its use is narrowing, some of the respondents note ignorance or low level of language competence (affective and behavioral components). Such ambiguity has a negative influence on the ethnic self perception of Karelian leaders, makes them look for other ways of identification. The results allow a deeper study of ethnic processes, and can also be used in comparison with the processes taking place in other “national” regions experiencing the influence of globalization.



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