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Социальное знание в поисках идентичности
In March 2011 scholars met in Prague at the conference Interculturalism, Meaning and Identity. This event revitalised this important theme related to Diversity and Recognition. The terms 'interculturalism' and 'integration' are experiencing a renaissance. As the extent of human movement between nations increases attempts are made to balance cultural difference and social cohesion. In some contexts immigration and settlement policies are becoming more draconian in response. Because of this, interculturalism can take on many meanings. However, pivotal to the way interculturalism is understood is identification. As the relationship between nation, ethnicity and language becomes more complex so too do the ways in which people represent them selves. The cultural resources drawn on and the processes used to form identities are examined in this truly international collection. So too are the implications of these developments for how we theorise culture, meaning and identity.
The paper treats the issue of identity of the ego, which constitutes the central problem of personology. The skeptical approach to this problem, which sees it as not being subject to be resolved by means of science, began with D. Hume's work. Contemporary personologists (P. Ricoeur and others) approach this problem through study of culture, which imparts the ego with «narrative identity». Cultural historic psychology is a «Bridge of interpretations», upon which philosophy of culture meets psychology, and psychological data associated with «personality» are interpreted on the basis of some specific cultural philosophic theory. The «conflict of interpretations» plays and essential role in personology, which participates in the processes of emergence and overcoming of the cultural crisis. Philosophical and methodological problems that define the near term perspective development of personology are formulated: whether there are any «ego invariants» that remain regardless of any possible cultural determination; whether the ego possesses any rigidity in relation to cultural determination and, if it does, what is the nature of this rigidity; whether ego identity is destroyed when cultural determination diminishes or ceases, etc.
A joint research project carried out by an interdisciplinary group of Russian and Swedish linguists, sociologists and educators-psychologists (the Swedish Institute grant), besides solving pragmatic tasks of finding out relative quantitative-qualitative specificity of national cognitive representations of values, first of all, had methodological goals. They were to check the efficiency of the linguistic methods developed in this study (and, thus, to prove the theoretical ideas that served the basis for it) of getting factual data that allow reconstructing and comparing of the corresponding areas of cognitive representations.
The results of cross-cultural research of implicit theories of innovativeness among students and teachers, representatives of three ethnocultural groups: Russians, the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingushs) and Tuvinians (N=804) are presented. Intergroup differences in implicit theories of innovativeness are revealed: the ‘individual’ theories of innovativeness prevail among Russians and among the students, the ‘social’ theories of innovativeness are more expressed among respondents from the North Caucasus, Tuva and among the teachers. Using the structural equations modeling the universal model of values impact on implicit theories of innovativeness and attitudes towards innovations is constructed. Values of the Openness to changes and individual theories of innovativeness promote the positive relation to innovations. Results of research have shown that implicit theories of innovativeness differ in different cultures, and values make different impact on the attitudes towards innovations and innovative experience in different cultures.