Interrelation of Social Capital and Modernization of Values in Fellow Student Collective

Abstract

The article presents the experience of assessing social capital (SC) in the youth student environment. The choice of students as the object of sociological research was stipulated by the special place of this social group in the hierarchy of social relations. This "specialness" is characterized by three important factors: 1) potential or actually manifested active performance; 2) openness to innovation in any field of activity; 3) constant search for ideological and moral foundations for their personal development. The most active part of youth, from the point of view of intellectual searches, are the young people studying in secondary and higher educational institutions. Another important feature of the youth student audience, which led to its choice as an object of sociological research, was the representation of different social strata (urban and rural youth, descendants of humanitarians and "techies", representatives of different territories, etc.). The author presents his own approach to the definition, operationalization and measurement of this sociological concept. Of particular importance of this study is the attempt to assess the relationship of the components of social capital with such an important indicator of cultural dimensions as the modernization sociocultural syndrome (MSCS). The concept and development of MSCS was proposed by Associate Professor of sociology and political science of Perm National Research Polytechnic University Yu.M. Wasserman. The work of this author is based on a long-term longitudinal study of the process of modernization of students' culture, conducted since 1991. The calculation of the MSCS indicator was based on the analysis of the process of modernization of the culture of students of various universities in Perm. In the course of the work on the RFBR project "Intergenerational dynamics of culture: territorial section" (RFBR grant No. 18-011-00548), the research group including the author conducted an online survey of students of Perm and Berezniki universities (N = 305) in November-December 2018. On the basis of the results obtained by Yu.M. Wasserman there were two alternative subarrays of the respondents formed, distinguished in the opposite ratings on a scale of MSCS. This procedure allowed us to assess the degree of influence of the MSCS indicator on the formation of the SC. The obtained results made it possible to assess the value of SC in the youth student environment, as well as to identify the closeness of relation and the impact of MSCS on the process of formation of SC.