Youth in a Changing Karelia

A Comparative Study of Everyday Life, Future Orientations and Political Culture of Youth in North-West Russia and Eastern Finland

Vesa Puuronen, Pentti Sinisalo, Larissa Shvets

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351775687
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title was first published in 2000:  The book is aimed at uncovering certain features of the future of Karelia, which is partly situated in Russia and Finland. The authors believe that this can be done by studying in depth the opinions, values, norms, beliefs, fears and hopes of young people living in two neighbouring but profoundly different societies: Russia and Finland. Young people are constructing these societies in the 20th century. The book is based on a comparative research project, financed by the Academy of Finland, which was carried out during 1995-1997 by an international, inter-disciplinary research group. The novelty of the book is based on the use of different research methods and theoretical starting points. One of the crucial questions raised by the book concerns the applicability of Western theories in research into Russian society and people. The analysis shows that many of the concepts applied frequently in Western social sciences do not apply in research relating to Russian specific culture. The book proposes that more attention should be paid to the challenges of comparative research.

Part I

Introduction

Introduction

VESA PUURONEN, PENTTI SINISALO, IRINA MILJUKOVA and LARISSA SHVETS

One of the consequences of the rapid social changes going on in the countries of the “West” and in the former socialist countries is that on the threshold of the new millennium the future of these societies is difficult to predict. The aim of this book is to uncover some of the particular features of the future by describing and interpreting the opinions, values, norms, beliefs, fears and hopes expressed by young people living in two contrasting societies: Finland and Russia. The authors of this book believe that studying young people is indispensable if we wish to assess the future prospects of the two societies. They also think that the future is constructed by people, not totally freely but within a framework made up of particular structural and cultural restraints imposed on human actions. Within this context it can with certainty be said that it is young people who will be constructing their societies in the third millennium.

Our book is based on a research project financed by the Academy of Finland and implemented in 1995-1997 by an international interdisciplinary research group consisting of four Finns and five Russians. In what follows, the contents of this book will be described in detail.

Part I of this volume begins with an introductory chapter titled Living in Karelia - The Changing Life Contexts of Young People, by Vesa Puuro-nen and Larissa Shvets, which briefly describes the areas (geographical location, population, economic and social structure, political behaviour) in which the research has been carried out, and the recent economic and political changes that have occurred in these areas. The Introduction offers a fairly broad - though not comprehensive - view of the actual living contexts of young people and of the cultural prerequisites of their activities in the different cultural and institutional settings of the Karelian Republic (Russia) and North Karelia (Finland). The analysis takes as its starting-point the destruction of previous socio-cultural institutions and structures, changes in values and beliefs, and the process of modernization, all of which have been going on simultaneously in post-socialist Russia. The negative consequences of modernization are more prevalent in a relatively peripheral area such as the Karelian Republic, which is located on the north-western side of Russia. It is also noted that phenomena such as these are not only the result of rapid social and economic upheavals, but can also be found in Finland and other industrialized Western European societies which have already attained a modern, or possibly even late-modern, post-industrial, stage of development. Secondly, this introductory chapter describes the research methods that have been used and discusses the sample and the problems involved in determining the representativeness and generalisation of the results. It also includes a short description of the sample under investigation in terms of their age, gender, and level of education. The questionnaire used in the survey included questions concerning future orientations and the political culture, and also an extensive set of questions on the everyday life of young people, their time-use, social relations, social backgrounds and educational careers. The respondents were students at universities, vocational schools and colleges. In addition to the questionnaire, theme interviews and role-playing method combined with essay writing were also used to collect data. The methodology of the study was based on a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Part II, The Everyday Life of Young People, begins with Chapter 2 by Vesa Puuronen and Helena Kasurinen, The Everyday Life of Young People in Karelia in the Mid-1990s. This chapter presents a discussion of some of the theoretical, conceptual and practical problems involved in cross-national comparative research and describes and compares the everyday lives of young people in the Karelian Republic, Russia, and in the Finnish province of North Karelia. The paper is based on a survey carried out in the Karelian Republic and Northern Karelia in 1995 and 1996. The main theoretical discussion in the chapter is concerned with the somewhat vague and ambiguous concept of “everyday life”, the operationalization of which was found to be problematic. Problems connected with the definition and use of various classifications of socio-economic status are also discussed. This is linked with descriptions of the everyday lives, especially the leisure-time activities, of young people in the two regions. In addition, their satisfaction with various aspects of their lives, and the importance of different aspects of life for Russian and Finnish young people are compared.

In Chapter 3, Pentti Sinisalo and Nina Predtechenskaya describe the health behaviour of young people in Karelia. In the survey that was conducted, adolescents were asked to provide information about their general health, their smoking habits, and their use of alcohol and drugs. Comparisons were also made between male and female adolescents, and it was discovered that in Petrozavodsk young people evaluate their own health in more negative terms than their peers in Joensuu. It was noted that the chronic morbidity level is higher in Russian Karelia, a factor connected with poor food quality, bad living conditions, economic troubles within families, and indifference to any physical culture or sport. In both cities young males estimate that they are healthier than girls, while the difference between the sexes is greater in Petrozavodsk. Smoking and the use of alcohol are more common amongst Finnish school students than in Petrozavodsk. Awareness of drug abuse and the availability of drugs were much more common in Joensuu than in Petrozavodsk. Gender differences can be seen in these behaviour patterns, though in Joensuu females are more regular smokers than males, while in Petrozavodsk the situation is the reverse.

Part III, Adolescents’ Values and Identity Development in Changing Societies, begins with an introduction by Pentti Sinisalo and Anna Raija Nummenmaa which presents the general conceptual and methodological outline and framework of the analysis. Chapter 4, Value Orientations of Russian and Finnish Young People, by Pentti Sinisalo, Larissa Shvets, and Valentina Rusanova takes into account the fact that the social situations in Russia and Finland differ considerably. On the one hand, Finnish society is developing under conditions which are intent on preserving the basis of the established system and which are oriented towards transition to a post-industrial stage as one of the tasks of the future. In contrast, Russian perestroika has meant a change in the very basis of the social system, similar in its consequences to the 1917 revolution, setting up a massive crisis within the social system in all spheres of social life. The question which is accordingly posed is about how the younger generations of Russians and Finns actually perceive and adapt to these processes. Since this part of the study is concerned with an analysis of the values of Finnish and Russian adolescents, the analytical tools adopted here include Rokeach's scale for measuring terminal and instrumental values. This scale has frequently been used in international studies, including studies conducted in Russia itself. Schwarzt's and Bilsky's theory of the universal structure of values supplies the theoretical framework within which the structure of life values will be investigated using multiple scaling analysis.

In Chapter 5, What is Valued in Work, Pentti Sinisalo and Larissa Shvets start with the notion that the nature of working life in both Russia and Finland is changing profoundly. In the course of the 1990s unemployment has risen to a very high level in Finland, while in Russia unemployment, once an unknown phenomenon, has become a reality. Perspectives on future developments in work remain fuzzy. Hence, the purpose of this chapter is to analyse young people's attitudes to work within these contexts in an attempt to discover the aspects of work which are valued. The results are based on a survey and include a scale of work values.

Chapter 6 by Anna Raija Nummenmaa and Pentti Sinisalo, titled Gender Differences in Identity Development, describes general features of the identity development of Russian and Finnish young men and women. The theoretical starting-point for this chapter is to test the applicability of the Extended Objective Measure of Identity Status (EOMEIS) in a cross-national study, at the same time taking gender into particular consideration. The analysis shows that the measure is not culture-sensitive enough to tackle differences in identities with any validity across cultural and gender borders.

Part IV, which is concerned with Constructing a Personal Future, begins with Helena Kasurinen's Introduction, in which the general concepts, themes and methods of future orientation research are discussed. She then describes the contents of the following articles, and some of the conclusions made on the basis of the results of the various sub-studies will be presented. Also under consideration will be a selection of previous studies which deal with the theme of future orientation, especially within a cross-cultural context. Themes and concepts to be discussed include personal future orientations, time perspectives, attitudes (optimism/pessimism) to the future, the external/internal locus of control, and life management experiences. The article will also present the methodology used in the course of this research project for studying personal future orientation.

Helena Kasurinen's contribution, The Personal Future - General Aspects of Adolescents’ Future Orientation, is concerned with presenting research results related to adolescents’ future orientation. Kasurinen's first consideration is the degree of likelihood which young people attach to certain events happening in their lives in the future. The second matter then deals with when, i.e., at what age, young people think that certain events will occur in their life course. Within this context both traditional and modern modes of timing transitions are taken into consideration. Thirdly, attention is paid to the ways in which young people feel when thinking about their future life, raising the question of what young people expect with regard to their personal control over their futures, and the degree to which they express optimism or pessimism. Comparisons are drawn within the particular country (males/females) and also between the two countries, and connections between the results and selected background factors will be taken into closer consideration. The influence of school achievement and social background will be included.

Chapter 8, by Pentti Sinisalo and Anna Raija Nummenmaa, is titled Developing Occupational Goals and Plans. It begins with the notion that one of the main developmental tasks in adolescence is for individuals to reflect on and explore their occupational futures. The chapter approaches the topic by describing the cognitive maps of occupations possessed by young people in both Finnish and Russian Karelia. Under analysis have been the gender-type, prestige and probability of different occupations as potential future occupations, and one finding is that the gender-type of occupations is rather similar in both countries. Thus, in Russian Karelia business occupations carry a very high prestige value, a factor which reveals value tendencies in Russian society. In addition, future educational plans are connected with the educational systems in both countries, and the occupational aspirations of Finnish and Russian male adolescents seem to be quite similar, while there are remarkable differences between Russian and Finnish females. Two-thirds of the occupational aspirations of Finnish females are linked with social and care occupations, whereas only a quarter of Russian females share such ambitions. More than a third of the occupational aspirations of Russian females are intellectual in nature, whereas only 11 per cent of the aspirations of Finnish females can be identified as belonging to that area.

In Chapter 9, Personal Future in Hopes and Fears, Helena Kasurinen turns her attention to the hopes or plans on the one hand, and fears on the other, which young people expressed when asked to describe their future lives by means of a listing task method. In the course of this data collection the young people filled in a questionnaire which included several themes and measures. At the beginning of the section concerned with future orientation they were asked to list their dreams and aspirations for their future lives. Next they were asked to mention the obstacles and threats which might prevent their hopes from reaching fulfilment. The article thus consists in part of a presentation of the listing task method, combined with its results, which together were analyzed in two phases: (i) in terms of the plans, aspirations and dreams expressed by the respondents, and also in terms of the perceived threats and obstacles, from all of which seven content categories were formulated; and (ii) a more detailed analysis based on the contents of the adolescents’ lists. The results of the analysis include comparisons between Finnish and Russian young people and between males and females in their respective countries.

In Chapter 10, My Daily Life in 2010, Russian and Finnish Adolescents • Constructs of Their Future Everyday Life, Anna Raija Nummenmaa and Larissa Shvets describe adolescents exploring their future selves. According to the authors, young people imagine themselves in this situation as actors performing different social roles in the context of adult life. Their imagined roles also constitute an initial attempt to construct a place for themselves as individuals in a new world and a new generation. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to describe Finnish and Russian girls’ and boys’ constructs of their future everyday lives. From a theoretical perspective this chapter is based on Levinson's concept of life structure, which involves significant interpersonal relationships with other persons, with groups and with institutions. By analysing adolescents’ different relationships, the authors’ describe the social context of such relationships, the place of the relationships in adolescents’ life structure, and their subjective meanings.

Part V of the volume, Political Culture of Young People, begins with an Introduction by Irina Miljukova and Vesa Puuronen. In this they discuss the applicability of the concept of political culture to comparative research. As such, political culture is a concept that has been in use since the 1960s as a means of systematizing analysis of the attitudes, beliefs and social rules that form the basis of a political system. The most influential definition of political culture appears in G. Almond's and S. Verba's (1963) pioneering study of civic culture in five countries, which established the traditional or behavioural approach to political culture. Although Almond and Verba state that the concept of political culture permits the use of the conceptual frameworks and approaches of anthropology, sociology, and psychology, their definition of culture is rather narrow: for them, culture implies only a psychological orientation toward a social object. The principal critics of the concept have pointed out that, although culture is a leading component in the concept, Almond's and Verba's approach has a strong tendency to reduce political behaviour to simple background factors such as socio-economic status, nationality and religion, and hence culture in its entirety is not taken into consideration.

Chapter 11, by Irina Miljukova and Vesa Puuronen, Social Values and Attitudes of Russian and Finnish Youth, depicts the values of the respondents participating in a survey (N=800) carried out in Petrozavodsk (Karelian Republic, Russia) and Joensuu (North Karelia, Finland). A questionnaire was designed to measure respondents’ values and knowledge related to the functioning of the po...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: The Everyday Life of Young People
• Part III: Adolescents’ Values and Identity Development in Changing Societies
• Part IV: Constructing a Personal Future
• Part V: Party Political Culture of Young People
• Part VI: Conclusions