Search

From the perspective of social constructivism, the cultural shock is one of the possible forms of individual experiencing a clash with an alien socio-cultural reality. Both the actualization of otherness, and the cultural shock, belong to the subjective reality. This is the result of the mental activity of a particular person, the product of his consciousness. It is important that these elements of subjective reality can be objectified by a person within the framework of social interactions in the form of verbalized and unverbalized actions. An extreme form of such objectification may be non-constructive forms of interaction between the carriers of cultural differences, such as the aggressive manifestations of intolerance, cross-cultural conflicts, extremism, xenophobia and others. In this paper we have tried to answer the question of how cultural differences are experienced by a person and how these differences are actualized in the form of culture shock. We also wanted to know how the culture shock is constructed at the level of consciousness of respondents and in what form is manifested their reaction. As a theoretical and methodological basis, we used the theory of social constructivism. We also used the snowball method and the saturation method. As a result, descriptions of situations of cultural shock were obtained in the form of unstructured texts. The main research method was the "cultural shock" method. To work with texts, techniques of structural analysis of text, typology and qualitative analysis of documents were used. As the result of the cultural shock situations descriptions analysis, we found the general structure of the descriptions that was typical of all the stories. Based on this structure, we have compiled a matrix of descriptions of cultural shock situations. Also, the main types of respondents' reactions to the situation of cultural shock were revealed. Most situations of cultural shock describe short-term contacts with an "alien" culture. Therefore, in most cases, respondents describe cultural shocks associated with the manifestations of culture on everyday (food, clothing, manners, basic life manifestations, etc.) and conventional (personal space, interpersonal distance, forms of expression of feelings, typical forms of relations and interaction, styles of thinking, etc.) levels. At the same time, almost none of the respondents described the situation of cultural shock associated with the spiritual sphere of social relations (values, worldview, ethics, aesthetics, etc.). The most likely reason is that cultural shocks associated with the spiritual realm are usually experienced by persons with a deeper immersion in "alien" culture. In addition, it can be noted that the majority of respondents preferred not to express their reaction explicitly. The prevailing reaction of the respondents can be called as "surprise, without negative coloring". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of extremism and terrorism is an actual threat in the modern world. The national security of Russia is no exception in this sense. In the context of negative statistics of extremism, the methods of scientifically based prevention of intolerance in all its forms acquire great importance. The scientific task of this research is monitoring of political tolerance of the population of the Russian Arctic region (Murmansk region) as well as the diagnosis of the risk groups of intolerant behavior. The paper presents some of the results of the fourth wave of long-term sociological monitoring (the first wave - in 2007 - 319 respondents, the second wave - in 2009 - 449 respondents, the third wave - in 2011 - 421 respondents and the fourth wave - in 2016 - 702 respondents). The sample represents the age-sex and settlement structure of the adult population of the region. The maximum statistical error in all researches did not exceed +/- 4.5% with a confidence level of 95.4%. The method of collecting sociological data is a personal, standardized interview. Measurement of political tolerance was carried out with the help of the author's methodology "Values and attitudes of political tolerance". Formalization, processing and statistical analysis of data were carried out in the SPSS software environment. As methods of statistical analysis of primary data, descriptive statistics methods were used. The research showed that most residents of the Murmansk region adhere to the values of political tolerance. The average group value of political tolerance for the total number of respondents was 25.8 points. This value can be interpreted as a high level (where the index value from 8 to 15 - low level, from 16 to 23 - average level and from 24 to 32 - high level). The ratio of population groups within the sample in terms of the expression of their values of political tolerance is the following. The percentage of respondents for whom the values of political tolerance are of low significance was 5.1%, the average significance - 23.2% and high significance - 71.7%. At the same time, a stable trend was found when the values of political tolerance are weakly actualized in conditions of interaction with a particular "political other", in other words, at the level of attitudes, respondents are mostly intolerant. Values of political tolerance are partly declarative, weakly actualized in socio-political practice. The index of political tolerance of the population at the level of the social attitudes is 44.4 points and describes the average level of tolerance among residents of the Murmansk region in relation to Russian political parties (where from 18 to 36 points - low level of party tolerance, from 37 to 54 - average level and from 55 to 72 - high level). Frequency analysis allowed to reveal the ratio of subgroups of the population showing low, medium and high levels of tolerance, which are respectively 20.5%, 66.7% and 12.8%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]