“In the District”: Youth Solidarities on the Urban Periphery

Abstract

The article presents the results of a pilot survey1 devoted to the behavior of young people in the public places of residential districts in St. Petersburg. These places are viewed as the spaces of potential interaction among the various urban publics in which the processes of self-identification and the establishment of social differences take place, and also where the foundations for the formation of solidarities are laid down.

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis, from the Russian text © 2013 the author. “‘Na raione’: molodezhnye solidarnosti na gorodskoi periferii,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, 2013, no. 10, pp. 69–76. A publication of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, and Law, Russian Academy of Sciences; and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.

Anna Aleksandrovna Zhelnina is a candidate of sociological sciences and an associate professorin the department of sociology at the Higher School of Economics National Research University (St. Petersburg). Aleksei Aleksandrovich Zinov'ev is a junior science associate in the Center for Youth Research at the same university. Margarita Igorevna Kuleva is a junior science associate at the same Center.

Translated by Kim Braithwaite.

^1. The survey was carried out by the Center for Youth Research in the framework of the project “Youth Solidarities in the Local and the Global Context: Economics, Politics, and Culture,” supported by the Center for Fundamental Research of the Higher School of Economics National Research University.

^2.Grounded theory, a methodology developed by American sociologists A[nselm] Strauss and B[arney] Glaser, is generally used in qualitative research. In translations into Russian the methodology also figures as “substantiated theory” and “ascent to theory” (e.g., see V.V. Semenova).

^3.Kodeks kupchintsa, http://www.frunzspb.ru/ru/info/2011-10-10-14-19-34.html.

^4. A loft is a former industrial facility whose function has changed into, for example, a home or office.

^5.“Gruppa ‘Fabrika:’ gid po art-prostranstvam Obvodnogo kanala,”http://www.the-village.ru/flows/spb/posts/106363-severnyy-ist-villedzh-gid-po-obvodnomu-kanalu.

^6.“Kupchino segodnia,”http://kupsilla.narod.ru/now.htm.

^7.“Obvodnyi kanal v Sankt-Peterburge,”http://www.obvodnyi.ru/canal.