Trends in the Moral and Spiritual Development of Rural Residents in Belgorod Oblast (the Experience of Institutional Analysis)

Abstract

This article examines contradictions in the spiritual development of residents of villages in Belgorod Oblast using data from a panel study conducted in 2000 and 2013. It attempts an institutional analysis of the role of social practices in contemporary processes. The results make it possible to assert that an individual’s actions are determined not so much by their internal attitudes and preferences, as they are by popular practical standards of behavior and the demands and restrictions imposed on the individual from without and on the part of the institutional environment. In particular, the internal contradictory nature of transitional institutions is emphasized. This contradictory nature is expressed in the confrontation between “old” (traditionalist and paternalistic) practices and “new” (competitive and achievement-oriented) practices on the one hand and between “positive” (independence, personal responsibility) and “negative” (moral and legal nihilism) norms underlying the practices of daily social interactions on the other.

Keywords:

• institutional changes
• panel studies
• Russian village
• social institutions
• social interactions
• social practices

Notes

^1. Data from surveys in 2000 (N = 857) and 2013 (N = 897) of employable residents in nine villages in Belgorod Oblast form the basis of this analysis. P.S. Sorokin, a candidate of sociological sciences, helped conduct the 2013 study.

^2. During the preliminary stage of the 2013 study, 55 in-depth interviews were conducted in three villages of Belgorod Oblast. People from all the main categories of rural residents were interviewed: agrobusiness workers, farmers, individual entrepreneurs in construction and trade, public-sector workers, people employed by companies in the city, unemployed people, and pensioners.