Features of the perception and construction of sacred images by the generation Z (on the example of the technical university in the Republic of Bashkortostan)

Abstract

The actualization of the issues of the youth’s religiosity and of its scientific interpretation on the example of students, representatives of generation Z (centennials, Gen Z), determined the research questions of the article which aims at identifying centennials’ estimates of various religious phenomena and their interpretation of knowledge about it. The theoretical basis of the article are the ideas of social constructionism, which help to understand how young people take part in the creation of such a social construct as religion. The article summarizes the results of the sociological study of ideas about religion among students of the large regional university - Ufa State Petroleum Technical University (Republic of Bashkortostan). The sample consisted of students born after 1995, aged 18 to 26 (N = 1900); the author used the questionnaire with closed questions, narrative interviews and focus groups with the Eastern Regional Studies’ students. Based on the results of the survey, the author considers the youth’s ideas about religion, religious traditions and practices, their spread in the regional community, and the origins of religious sentiments and attitudes reproduced and constructed by the youth. The author notes the lack of unity in various aspects of the youth’s attitude towards religion, which indicates the blurring and eclecticism of religious ideas among the generation Z. Although students declare a wide variety of manifestations of religiosity, the relationship between religion and the existential understanding of the world is clear. Images of the sacred go beyond students’ religious worldview, which is due to the way knowledge about reality is constructed and to the individual need to sacralize knowledge. The comparative analysis of the construction of the image of the sacred by Muslim and Orthodox centennials showed some differences: Muslims are more religious; religious tradition seems to be transmitted from generation to generation mainly by the Muslim part of the Gen Z, and, on the contrary, is constructed by Orthodox students in the current social context. However, there is a general trend - religious identity of the believer is not strictly based on a certain tradition but is constructed with available knowledge and changes with new information, which is a typical feature of the generation Z.

Keywords

• religion
• student youth
• generation z
• religious representations
• social construction
• social reality
• identity