Polycultural environment and its influence on ethnic self-consciousness of a person

Abstract

The structure of ethnic self-consciousness as a function of ethno-cultural situation (dominant ethnic group affiliation, predominance of one’s own or other culture representatives in the environment, use of a native or non-native language in communication) was studied. The empirical data were collected in Kamchatka Krai, the area of compact settlement of indigenous peoples of the North, in 2007-2010 (N = 139). It is shown that living in the predominantly polyethnic or autoethnic environment is a condition for actualization of structural units of self-consciousness and determines man’s perceptions of the world and of himself in the world. Feeling of predictability and control over the world under relative homogeneity of ethnic space is associated with a man’s less differentiated perception of himself as a member of a certain ethnic community. Incompleteness of the man’s perception of his own relationships with the world and contradictory views due to interference of several ethnic “images of the world” determine the man’s search for reference points which provide psychological protection and comfort as well a possibility to perceive the world as a more predictable and controlled place. In the polyethnic environment the man constructs an ethnic reality that correlates with an ideal group prototype (“an ethnic ideal”) by investing modern realities with ethnic meanings.