Социально-политические стратегии молодёжи: между D.I.Y. и институциональными форматами

Abstract

Today’s youth are characterized by the diversification and turnover of collective actors claiming their interests, rights, and needs. ‘Dispersed’ politicization of youth is also manifested in the extending range of socio-political activities, which at the moment may take place not only in the vertical structure of official state institutions, but also in the horizontal plane of autonomous ‘grassroots’ initiatives according to D.I.Y pattern (Do It Yourself), which raises the issue of describing and systematizing these phenomena. The objective of this paper is to compile the outcomes of 2019 studies aimed at creating and testing the tools to describe the current phenomena of institutional and self-organized politicization of youth, namely, to develop the concept of sociological and political strategy and to determine the range of such strategies in the youth milieu.
 The paper presents the concept of the sociological and political strategy, including a methodological framework, a model and typology of sociological and political strategies of the Russian youth, comprising 10 main types with the focus on the institutional and self-organized patterns of political activities along with the main risks identified. The research methods: the content analysis of statements on the Internet (on thematic resources and social networks), the analysis of essays by students and school pupils (n = 21) regarding the issue of self-determination with respect to politics, interviews comprising the elements of case studies (n = 10) conducted in 2019 as well as the analysis of interview findings for 2017—2018 (n = 17). The diagnostic method – ‘Determination of the youth political strategy type’ was appraised (n = 55). The Delphi approach and brainstorming with elements of technology foresight were used at the phase of developing recommendations to work with the young.