The study of life practices of rural households: the experience of field sociological researches

Recently, there has been a noticeable increase in the interest in studying various circumstances related to historical fate of the Russian village, with the possibilities and limitations observed during the evolution of economic social and demographic subsystems of the village. The global coronavirus pandemic that began in the first months of 2020 made the humanity to think about acceptable prospects and specific forms of the resettlement. In particular, the rethinking of urbanization development paradigms began. Literally before our eyes, scientific and design developments were intensified, aimed at a comprehensive analysis of the merits and balanced lines of the ruralization of modernization of oecumene. All these subjects are directly related to the problems associated with the analysis of those opportunities and limitations systematically arising in the course of the implementation of various economic practices of family households and farmsteads. The latter, as observations and statistics show, are oriented, besides the implementation of immediate production and economic tasks, towards gradual increase in the potential and general attractiveness of rural territories. This is a very important and promising process. However, semantic content of the latter is not always obvious and often hidden by the cover of everyday economic routine. In this regard, the problem of the evolution of social and economic practices of rural family households is a certain difficulty in terms of methods, techniques and procedures for obtaining reliable and adequate information necessary for comprehensive understanding of the relevant social and economic processes. In the study an overview of those empirical approaches that best meet the specifics of social and economic practices based on informal economic initiatives of household is provided. Many years of the research experience of field peasant expeditions are relied on by the authors.