The Problem of Ethnic Self-Consciousness in the Crisis and Post-Changing Conditions of Society

Abstract

Key words: ethnic norms, ethnic values, stressful realities, structure of self-consciousness, national self-consciousness, ethnic identity The situation formed in our society after the war and the epidemic, the socio-economic, financial, informational, and environmental rapid changes lead to a change in ethnic self-consciousness. It is also necessary to add the processes of transformation and globalization of ethno-cultural values in the current period, because they also play a major role in shaping the ethnic self-consciousness of the younger generation. The established realities necessarily predetermine a person’s self-consciousness and, shaped under their influence, realized by a person, and manifested in crisis and stressful situations in accordance with the characteristic individual reactions. The ethnic meaning emerges in the space of consciousness and self-consciousness, because in order to gain truth, a person does not directly refer to the objects of the ethnic world, but to their meanings, ideas about them. And in this situation, a person's cognitive ideas about the characteristics of his/her own group, as well as self-consciousness as a member based on his/her ethnodifferentiating characteristics and affective experiences, are very important. These ideas include a person’s sense of belonging to the group, an assessment of his or her personal qualities, and an attitude toward membership, all of which are used to determine the types of behavioral responses to a crisis under changing conditions. Currently, the study of ethnic self-consciousness conceals new possibilities for explaining the objectively existing relationship of the individual with the outside world. After all, it is the ethnicity that in the conditions of the current crisis is recognized by the scientists as a historically relevant “reference point” of human behavior, while ethnology is perecived as a basic science in the methodology of analysis and forecasting of this behavior. It must be acknowledged that the time has come for a global reevaluation of this complex psychological phenomenon regarding the realization of the world’s true multi-ethnicity, the idea of forming a world community and planetary thinking. Under these circumstances, it is increasingly important to realize the ongoing changes in the ethnic self-consciousness of an individual in a multicultural world.