Докса (Jun 2017)
TERRITORIAL IDENTITY OF ODESSITS AND IMAGE OF CITY IN INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCHES
Abstract
Territorial (local and regional) identities and processes which are contributed to their decline require interdisciplinary research. The city becomes one of the main specific and autonomous objects of social and humanities knowledge, such as sociology, urbanism, economics, political science, demography, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, cultural geography. It becomes also a certain socio-cultural «knot», and it is not only methodological, but also the historical origin of the coordinates in the social space. Style is a form of presentation of the identity of any real social community. Unfortunately, there are no good researchings concerning the territorial identity of Odessits. Among the most important principles that caused the decline of territorial identities, researchers call the rapid urbanization and industrialization and imperfect policies for the formation of national identity. Thanks to the accelerated urbanization, the city of the Soviet period created the type of «first-generation city dweller», which has not lost contact with the peasant subculture and psychology. They come into conflict with the meanings and behavior patterns that shapes the information society and imposes the commercialized mass culture. As a result, certain socio-cultural differences are fixed. The key problem is the comprehension of its own history, a political consensus around the assessment of its turning events. During the years of Ukraine’s independence, it was in the symbolic space of Odessa city and a new Odessa identity was made by the most active attempts of regional authorities. The program of positioning of Odessa as the center of development of transport, trade and tourist spheres, IT-technologies, as well as safe and reliable investment process «Odessa 5T» is accepted. The mechanisms for implementation of projects related to culture, branding and rebranding of Odessa is becoming urgent. Positive Odessa identity can not be associated with only one epoch or one symbol, it requires expression, incarnation in the system of recognizable characters, signs, attributes, gestures, and in a natural way should absorb the most significant symbols and images of all epochs.
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