Resilience of cultural attitudes of local communities to risks: the «group / grid» model
- Pages
- 106-117
Abstract
The study focuses on the empirical test of the grid/group model applied to the actual perception of the environmental risks by the local community (the case of the potassium mine development in the village of Nivenskoe, the Kaliningrad region). It tests to what extent the structure of the theoretically constructed cultural types (hierarchist, egalitarian, individualist, fatalist) being reproduced within the structure of the cultural preferences of the local communities. Different scales are being analyzed and tested, the application of the two of them is proven to be good for measuring various parameters. An original methodology is being applied for the assessment of the cultural types consistency in intense communication. The authors give a statistical account for the consistency of the cultural attitudes of the respondents. Using factor analysis, we compare theoretical presuppositions with empirically observed interconnections between cultural types statements. Out of five factors which have been distinguished, three generally correspond to the theoretically constructed cultural types in their set of variables — hierarchist, egalitarian and individualist, one for the mixed paternalist factor (manifesting features both of hierarchist and egalitarian types) and one less expressed anit-ethatist factor (expressing some features of individualist type but not setting any fixed group ethos).