Life Success and Chances for Its Achievement in the Representations of the Russian Province Inhabitants

Life Success and Chances for Its Achievement in the Representations of the Russian Province Inhabitants


Reutov Е.V.

Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Assoc. Prof., Belgorod National Research University, Belgorod, Russia. reutovevg@mail.ru

Reutova M.N.

Cand. Sci., (Sociol.), Assoc. Prof., Belgorod National Research University, Belgorod, Russia reutova@bsu.edu.ru

Shavyrina I.V.

Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Associate Prof. of the Department of Sociology, Ethnography and Sociometry of the Russian State Social University, Moscow, Russia shavyrina_77@mail.ru

ID of the Article:


The reported study was funded by RFBR, project No. 18-011-00474.


For citation:

Reutov Е.V., Reutova M.N., Shavyrina I.V. Life Success and Chances for Its Achievement in the Representations of the Russian Province Inhabitants. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2020. No 6. P. 61-71




Abstract

Life success is a normative model of self-realization, based on the adaptation of socially significant values and prescriptions to individual life goals and opportunities for their achievement in specific social conditions. It is shown that the key parameters of life success for the inhabitants of the Russian province are family happiness and material well-being. The hyperbolization of family happiness and the prevalence of ideas about the impossibility of achieving success in the province without ties are “acquittal” factors of passive life strategies. Professional self-realization and career growth in the hierarchy of criteria of life success, at first glance, look peripheral. But an in-depth study of the prevalence of these vital goals shows their higher importance – especially for young people. The inequality of chances of achieving success in life is quite acutely recognized by the inhabitants of the Russian province both in relation to the economic and cultural “centers” – Moscow and St. Petersburg, and within the provincial society. The narrowness of labor markets, low level of wages in most branches of regional economies, the manifestations of nepotism, dissatisfaction with the conditions for obtaining quality education are factors intensifying of territorial-educational and labor mobility. Almost two thirds of the respondents demonstrate their readiness to leave their region for a long time or forever, and among young people this proportion reaches 9/10. The data obtained indicate further reproduction of the differentiated spatial development model, within which the province remains a source of various kinds of resources.


Keywords
province; spatial differentiation; regions; life success; territorial mobility

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Content No 6, 2020