Socio-vital Institutions of the Cossack Everyday Life: Categorical and Conceptual Analysis

Abstract

Numerous scientific and popular works have been written about the Russian Cossacks, and in modern Russia, interest in Cossacks as a subject of scientific analysis is growing. Presidential Decree No. 505 of August 9, 2020, approved the "Strategy of State Policy of the Russian Federation in relation to the Russian Cossacks for 2021-2030", that emphasises "promoting the scientific study of the history of the Russian Cossacks, countering the falsification of pages of Russian history related to the Russian Cossacks". To ensure the scientific study of the history of the Russian Cossacks, it is important to understand the system of key categories and concepts that reflect Cossack everyday life. The development of a scientific toolkit to achieve this goal requires interdisciplinary research, including turning to historical sociology and sociology of culture, conceptualising the socio-vital institutions of the Russian Cossacks, revealing the features of Cossack everyday life.
 Vitalist sociology, in turn, paradigmatically supports the author's scientific installation and provides an expanded categorical and conceptual analysis of the ethnocultural sphere of the life activities of Cossack communities in a cultural vitalist key. Attention is drawn to the material side of the socio-personal evolution of Cossack communities in the historical everyday life of the Russian Empire from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century and the preservation, through commemorative practices, of the socio-vital institutions of the Russian Cossacks to the present day.
 The basic resource for life support is housing as a product of the creative activity of the Cossacks and a form of their territorial-spatial localisation within Cossack settlements. The cultural vitalist narrative presents traditional Cossack food, considered in a chronotopic key, positioning Cossack communities as a social group with rational consumption and at the same time external self-presentation.
 Historically, Cossacks have had predominant relationships with such an important resource for life support as clothing, and here we encounter profound symbolic interactionism in the self-interpretation of the Cossack costume. In other words, three key categories of Cossack everyday life are taken as an example for interdisciplinary analysis: housing, food, and clothing. This article is dedicated to their study by two scientists who have been working fruitfully in the capital of the world and Russian Cossacks, the city of Novocherkassk.