Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Life Activity of the Ethnic Group

Abstract

In this article the author examines the lifeactivity of the ethnic group as a special category in modern culturological and ethnological sciences. The author understands the life activity of such a social community as an ethnic group as a socio-technological complex of cultural processes, which aims at maintaining the relative integrity, bonds within the community, as well as the desirable change and transformation of sociocultural space in the interests of the functioning of thecommunity. The analysis of different approaches to the definition of theessential identity of the ethnic group and ethnic culture allows the author to consider the life activity of the ethnic group as a set of processes that ensure the vitality and highly adaptive and creative potential of ethnic culture. The basis of the life activity of the ethnic group is the continuity of the cultural tradition, which is especially significant for determining the nature of the interaction with the natural environment.