Modern world is dynamic, variable and full of risks, which requires the development of flexible and dynamic mechanisms to modernize regional social systems. For modern Russian regions, different in pace of development and people’s quality of life, it is important to develop such theoretical and methodological approaches to based to identify resources and problem areas of modernization. The research novelty lies in the analysis of modernization in a region using the theoretical and methodological capabilities of the system approach, the concepts of heterarchy and modernization. We emphasize the overlap of subject fields of terms “heterarchy”, “region”, and “modernization” in matters of principles (value basis) of modernization process management in the region using the heterarchy resources. Based on the results of the monitoring sociological study conducted during 2010–2016 in the Astrakhan Oblast sing the interview method at the place of residence according to the Standard Methodology of the all-Russian program “Socio-Cultural Evolution of Russia and its Regions”, we revealed the strengthening of the vertical of power, that is, hierarchical relations in the institutional and regulatory sphere. The growing institutional heterarchy, whose purpose is to complicate and imitate social institutions, is manifested in predominant non-market motivation among the residents of Astrakhan, as well as in fluctuations in values of market and non-market motivation, depending not only on the socio-economic, but also political situation. The imitation of socio-economic institutions demonstrates the dysfunction of life-supporting sphere of the region’s socio-cultural space and is a problem area of modernization of the region. Intellectual heterarchy (“the war for standards”) is fixed in reducing support for basic values simultaneously with the strengthening of primary social networks in the structure of the background knowledge of the region’s population. Moreover, the changed system of values is manifested in the reduced standard of social claims regarding the perception of the standard in assessing own health and the environment. Intellectual heterarchy in the region is complemented by geographical one as migration substitution of the population in a region with higher social demands by the carriers of nomadic mentality with low social claims. The existing heterarchies may indicate that the Astrakhan Oblast as a system is close to the reorganization phase which means the transition of the region’s system to a more sustainable state due to its simplification. With appropriate organizational design, low social claims of the region’s population may become the modernization resource of the region
Keywords
region, modernization, heterarchical system