The article is devoted to the problem of socio-cultural barriers to the consolidation of a regional community in the context of rising glocalization trends and an increasing role of regions in social development. In our opinion, consolidation in an unstable social reality can only occur as a regulated nonlinear process, oriented toward establishing strong interpersonal and intergroup communication, mutual trust and loyalty. The purpose of the research is to analyze socio-cultural barriers to regional community consolidation, associated with the specifics of value-normative complexes and attitudes of its constituent actors. We assess people’s dispositions concerning the problem of socio-cultural constants renovation on the basis of a sociological research we conducted in the Belgorod Oblast in 2021. It included a mass questionnaire survey (n = 500), an expert interview (n = 30), three focus groups. It is noted that social consolidation can be based on various grounds, but the most solid among them is socio-cultural consensus expressed in integration based on common values, social norms, behavior patterns and attitudes – socio-cultural constants that represent a kind of reference points for consolidation process. We analyze components of the value-normative consensus and conclude that its potential as an attractor of the consolidation process can be realized mainly at the microsocial level (primarily family and family-related environment), which significantly restricts the integration opportunities of the regional community. According to the results of sociological diagnostics we reveal the following barriers to the social consolidation of a regional community: fragility of the value-normative consensus, lack of full-fledged regional identity, insufficient focus of authorities and civil society institutions on creating favorable organizational and technological conditions for social conjunction. We emphasize that the implementation of any consolidation strategy at the regional level must necessarily take into account these barriers and provide for measures aimed at their minimization
Keywords
region, social consolidation, regional community, glocalization, Region, social solidarity, socio-cultural constants