Nationalistic, Religious and Civil Components of Identity in Post-Soviet Georgia

Abstract

Abstract Deep economic and democratic changes in Georgian society in last 20 years have conditioned the transformation of social environment in such a way that people had to change their views on society and their place in the new social environment. Changing attitudes on social reality affected and transformed the whole system of social identity. Transformation processes were characterized with reduced trust and tolerance among people and different social groups and with increase/weakening of different aspects of basic identities. Difficulties emerging from the process of formation of identity system hinder the development integration processes in the society. For the society in transition in the conditions of normative uncertainty and devaluation of values actuality of such problems as are the lack of trust on every level of relationship and disorientation of people, is of high importance. Our starting issue is that nowadays in the framework of construction of social identity basic identity encompasses civil, national, confessional, ideological elements which determine the state of a person in the system of social coordinates. The subject of this sociological research was to study the role of religion and ethnicity in the modern configuration of identity in Georgian society.