THE DYNAMIC CONCEPT OF MENTALITY
AND VARIABLE DIVERSITY OF RUSSIAN
HABITUSES
Ideyi i Idealy, 2010,
vol.1, No 1(3)
The paper is an attempt to
solve the following tasks: 1) to develop an overall vision of the national
mentality dynamics, to connect micro-, meso- and
macro- levels, to explain the variability and diversity of basic mental types
and properties, 2) to reveal diversity of basic habituses,
i.e. types of consciousness, identity, behavior, political culture in modern
Russia, to reconstruct the mental components which underly
them, and 3) to reveal social mechanisms of the formation and maintenance of this
diversity, to study relationship between typical habituses,
rituals, institutions with the cycles of Russian history.
Variability and variety of mental
components and habituses (P. Bourdieu)
can be explained through the participation of
individuals in interactive rituals (I. Hoffman and R. Collins) as the basic way
of ensuring providing communities and social institutions. The typology of
Russian habituses includes five nests: outsiders, smart
insiders, honest statesmen, dissidents, and selfless
creators. Main frames and worldviews, attitudes as the
basis for these habituses are reconstructed. It is
shown that the habituses of each
nest are characterized by their typical rituals, by specific providing
communities and institutions.
The following links between institutions-rituals-habituses and the Russian socio-political cycles are discovered. When elites are emancipated
from coercive control and begin to appropriate public resources, the coercive institutions
weaken or destroy, institutions of social security and resource reallocation degrade,
and institutions for mutual support get relief. In accordance with revealed
principles of social and mental dynamics, the niches for honest statesmen, selfless creators and reformers reduce, but the
niches for smart insiders are expanded. The state loses "high value" attributes
and becomes something like "profitable environment" for its insiders.
At the same time the state becomes alien for ordinary people, it becomes an
enemy and a source of trouble for a growing number of radicals. In periods of
counter-movement national mobilization starts, the coercive institutions rise
again, and resource reallocation institutions are improving.
The institutions of mutual support
are attacked but they fall only in extreme cases (the Collectivization, the
Great Terror), and typically escape to underground. The social niches for
honest statesmen, conservators, reformers, and selfless
creators expand. Smart insiders never disappear, but they are
forced to adapt to strict control. Russian mentality besides its diverse
habituses appears as having a single deep foundation that
consists of the specific basic frames and worldviews, the formation of standard
practices and policies. It forms the well-known features of the Russian
national character, but also serves as an important part of the mechanism that
generates the Russian socio-political cycles.